GrahamH
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gunter is suffering from the after-effects of sunstroke from his Billy holiday. I think a lie down for a week is in order.
One instance where the application of an angle grinder is more than merited on College Green!
Spot on Devin and Stephen with your assessments. It’s been a total mess. One of the newest delights is just around the corner on College Street, where crisp new slabs of quite attractive modern granite have been laid (though in place of historic granite from what I recall). The surface-applied strap pointing on what are machine-precisioned slabs just has to be seen to be believed. It actually looks like a send-up of contractors’ worst practices. Shocking workmanship, at public expense.
But clutter is the real big issue. It’s a scandal.
As an aside, watching the bus gate in operation yesterday, at least 80 per cent of drivers entering and then being directed out of College Green were women, quelle surprise 😉
Not that I’m aware of kinsella. Unless you know something I don’t? 😉
Thanks kceire for your offer. Feel free to do what you like with the above or any other information posted on here which may lead to constructive ends. Frankly, it ain’t my job to be chasing after authorities with such basic material, nor should I have to, as often as I – and many others – do. It’s all rather tiresome to be honest.
😀
Aha thanks for that Rory. The early 90s seems just about right for the installation of the aluminium. A shame the original glazing was removed so recently. Another handful of years and it could have been saved…
Fully agreed the entire building should be appropriated for a more suitable use – it would be ideal as an airy elegant retail premises spread over three floors, or a perfectly positioned cafe and restaurant (not of the current ‘family’ variety) with sweeping views of the Lower street through its dual aspect ranks of glittering bay windows. Residential could also be neatly incorporated into the attic storeys. Ludicrously, it appears most of these upper floors are largely redundant at present, as with much of O’Connell Street.
Far from the common perception that McDonald’s et al, as supposedly faceless international corporations, have poor presention standards, they are model operators compared with their Irish equivalents such as Supermac’s and Abrakebabra. The Irish outlets show scant regard for their own principal thoroughfare, and indeed actively exploit its heavy footfall to trashy effect, with banners, flags, postering, full-scale window blankouts, and music blasting onto the street through externally mounted speakers. The much-vaunted Irish ‘success story’ at its pinnacle I’m sure.
In conclusion, what can be done to improve the appearance and architectural coherence of the building? Well pretty self-explanatory measures really, the most pressing of all being the removal of the aluminium shopfront glazing and its replacement with something altogether more in keeping with the appearance of the building. Well crafted timber or bronze framing would work wonders. All postering needs to be stamped out immediately and could be done in the morning if the will was there to implement the O’Connell Street Special Planning Control Scheme. The permanenet cluttering Christmas light nets at upper storey level also require removal.
A further move I would suggest is the complete repainting of the cast-iron bays in a dark, almost black colour or brown colour, giving the sultry appearance of luxurious bronze inserts as was commonplace in the early 20th century. Indeed as early as the 1940s we have evidence of the windows being painted in precisely that manner (as with all of O’Connell Street Lower until the 1970s or so).
And again more clearly in the 1950s, with the neighbouring Wide Streets Commission pair still intact.
Painting the bays a dark shade would inject a much-needed spark of sophistication to this rather gawky building. All we need is some guidance from those in authority and with the incentives to make it happen!
G. P. Beater was 67 when he designed No. 45-46 Lower O’Connell Street. It appears this was his last large project in Dublin city centre along with the contemporaneous Abbey Chambers nearby. While his O’Connell Street building has its qualities, in particular its grandiose scale and massing when observed from a distance, one tends to feel that Abbey Chambers stands as a better monument to the skills and creativity of the quiet, unassuming man who proved an enduring figure in the Dublin architectural world at the turn of the last century.
It can also be seen that the original fascia with granite moulding has since been replaced with a remarkably similar matching modern stone to form a broader fascia, that while not as elegant as the original, and dropping below pilaster capital level, does a good job.
Lovely refined raised metal lettering there too. How design comes full circle…
Granite end corbels complete the ensemble.
Returning to the lofty heights of the upper floors again, the stumpy tower with its distinctive copper dome has its charms, even if it is absorbed into the attic storeys like someone with their neck pushed down into their shoulders.
Attractive from some angles nonetheless.
The shape of the dome is discernibly a flattened version of Arnotts’ of twenty years previous, as removed in the 1940s.
Sadly the original little urn finial has vanished and warrants reinstatement.
A pairing of Romanesque windows, also harking back to Arnotts. Some pretty leadwork too, if only for the viewing pleasure of pigeons.
A broken granite pediment provides interest immediately below.
The rear of the building is built of yellow stock brick characteristic of the era. The usual obsessive one-window-per-lavatory-cubicle arrangement evident too!
Some leaded timber casements and other curiosities also survive.
A further shared feature between Abbey Chambers and No. 45-46 is the carriage entrance to the side. Both have a corbel placed at an angle to the street.
(if No. 45-46 slightly, eh, grazed)
This brings us neatly to ground floor level and the expansive original shopfront.
Much of the 1918 shopfront survives, elegantly composed of pilasters of polished black marble. The capitals are refined and simply detailed, with handsome dado and skirting at lower level.
Of course the refinement of the original shopfront has long since been lost with the hideous intrusion of chunky and garish white aluminium-framed glazing, made all the worse by the sloping inwards of the upper panes and the infilling of newly exposed areas with cheap imitation cladding.
Lovely.
The white aluminium is particularly crass on the corner bay.
Wholly illegal postering and advertising across the board makes for the icing on the cake.
Taking a closer look at the original shopfront, it appears to have been glazed with timber-framed windows – I doubt luxurious bronze would have been used for such a relatively frugal structure. The leaded upper panes also suggest carved timber as a host framing material.
The windows pivot with an airy lightness of touch, as do the upper horizontal lights.
The panes are composed of eye-catching flashing leaded lights, many of which have survived such as below, though some have been replaced with modern sheet glass with applied leading strips.
Each apron panel is festooned with a frothy neoclassical swag of eyebrow-raising affectation, flanked by a panel on either side, which combined with the latter-day addition of milkshake pink into the mix, makes for a bizarre effeminate touch on what is a thoroughly masculine building.
The uppermost two storeys are faced in brick dressed with granite, including a heavy dividing dentilated cornice. This double-pile of attic storeys is probably the building’s most ill-conceived feature, clearly attempting to grapple with a problem faced by many of the post-1916 architects: how to articulate the two storeys left over above a two-storey monumental order above ground floor level. The traditional Georgian attic storey solution is thrown into disarray. McDonnell & Dixon cleverly skirted around the problem across the road with what is now The Grand Central Bar, by introducing a mezzanine immediately above shopfront level to absorb the excess height – it works to perfection. Eason’s double-height attic solution is passable, while Manfield Chamber gets away with its top-heavy composition by virtue of the broodiness of its architecture alone.
No. 45-46 has no such excuse alas, with its attic storeys appearing as little more than an exercise in copy and paste. Pairs of sash windows, the only timber windows in the front facade incidentally, are an inadequate point of difference to the cast-iron tripartite frames and granite dressings below.
The pilastered treatment of the brickwork here can be seen over and over again in Beater’s work, most famously at Arnotts.
The square tower with Romanesque flourishes also bears a resemblance.
More pilasters and indeed the same type of brick can be observed at Beater’s No. 93 Middle Abbey Street, as well as leaded-light windows with swagged apron panels.
More of the same by Beater can be seen executed in glazed terracotta directly next door at Abbey Chambers of 1920. The involvement of another architectural practice, Bachelor & Hicks, in the drafting of this scenic and largely well detailed design, comes as no surprise.
Now that’s some quality paving! (and architecture)
In assessing the flagship buildings of Lower O’Connell Street as rebuilt post-1916, it is easy to gloss over the most muted of this otherwise ebullient ensemble of structures, dressed as they are for the most part in a decorous cloak of stripped neoclassical pretension. By contrast, the corner building at No. 45-46 Lower O’Connell Street, sited at the junction with Middle Abbey Street, is without question the structure that is most expressive of the rational modern ideal, if sadly also the least illustrious of all the major buildings arising from the reconstructions. Indeed, taking account of its role as a pivotal corner building, it is probably the poorest design realised at this time relative to its siting and streetscape function.
Comprising one of the four ceremonial corners which denote the first major intersection on O’Connell Street, No. 45-46 is awkwardly upstaged by its eminently more refined trio of colleagues on the opposing sides, executed by the established architectural houses of Bachelor & Hicks, McDonnell & Dixon and W. H. Byrne & Son. Medium to large-scale practices, they played a prominent role in the Dublin architectural scene of the early 20th century.
The architect of No. 45-46 was also, perhaps surprisingly, a leading figure in Dublin commercial architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, he almost single-handedly built and rebuilt large tracts of the north inner city before and after 1916, in some cases even rebuilding premises he had only designed a matter of months before the Rising took place. His successful career as architect to Dublin commercial interests appears to have been based upon the major coup of acquiring the commission for the largest retail development in Dublin of the late Victorian period – namely the construction of Arnotts department store. This man was one George Palmer Beater.
Beater was undeniably a promoter of brick. Nearly all of his developments make abundant, often exclusive, use of the material in all its glossy, precision-machined perfection, if to rather glum effect. His buildings have a sullen, leaden character, regularly exuding that stuffy, closeted, Edwardian institutional sobriety which so fails to attract the eye or lift the spirit. Nonetheless, some designs do exhibit a curiously detailed, bordering on sinister, character which injects a morbid interest into the streetscape – his Hibernian Bible Society on Dawson Street ironically being such an example.
No. 45-46 O’Connell Street sits on the site of two former Wide Streets Commission terraced buildings of the 1780s, the corner one of which originally featured a tripartite window at first floor level demarcating the end of the terrace in typically reticent Georgian style, as with all WSC terraces on then Lower Sackville Street. Need the stark contrast in architectural thought in little over a century regarding the design treatment of urban corners even be noted…
Constructed in 1917-18, the erection of the new building was overseen by contractors J. & W. Stewart. Here it can be seen in 1923 facing the sparkling new Manfield Chambers across the road.
And for what it’s worth, again in the 1940s, where little has changed (aside from the completion of the Metropole) other than the colour of the buildings!
A solitary clue remains on the exterior of the building today as to the client and intended occupier of this flagship new premises: the small granite ledge which protrudes above the fascia at first floor level.
An innocuous enough feature, it could easily be construed as a frivolous feature balcony stripped of a long-lost railing.
Not so. It was purpose-designed for hosting none other than an elephant!
A wider view reveals all. It was of course to become the new premises of J. W. Elvery & Company, the sportswear suppliers – the elephant their well known logo.
No. 45-46 was pioneering on O’Connell Street for its time in its expression of structural form in the manner of the Chicago School: the internal concrete frame clearly expressed to the exterior through the use of narrow granite-clad pilasters framing double-height ranks of fenestration. In this respect, this building pre-dates the much-noted Clerys department store across the road by at least a year, where a similar design approach was taken.
The voids between the piers are filled with ambitiously scaled, cast-iron canted bays of double-height windows made by the MacFarlane & Company ironworks at their Saracen Foundry in Scotland.
It has a median now hutton! It’s getting the Dorset Street see, it’s not a corridor, it’s street! tree treatment.
@gunter wrote:
I don’t like the harshness of this design, the cheerlessness of the brick facades, the deep, eyeless socket, openings, the inhuman, aquarium tank, balconies, the low, garage door, proportions of the street level openings, the blocky massing, the institutional severity, but most of all I don’t like what I see as the abandonment of the principles that, by our buildings, we can make a street.
I disagree. I think this is a proud, upstanding civic building that makes a grand public declaration on a major, eh, ‘route’, while exuding a domestic softness at close quarters which makes it eminently livable. I think this would be a very nice place to live, and to live near.
Yes the entrances fronting the street are low, but I found these to be very comforting, bordering on cosy if that were externally possible, and an effective solution to the barrage of passing traffic. I used this route daily for two years – the buses especially are intolerable given the speeds they reach along this stretch, while in the mornings a bottleneck of cars sits outside your living room window. The intimate, shielded character of the entrances and small gardens takes account of this. Of course it shouldn’t have to, but if you were O’D&T handed this delightful context, what other solution is there aside from a buffer of landscaping?
I do understand the ‘inhuman’ description, but for me that derives soley from the window size, which I find of slight concern, both on-site and upon reflection. It appears mean.
A brand new planned Dutch street below. In a different league to Cork Street traffic-wise, but a small private buffer of one metre depth was a requirement between every frontage and the public pavement, just to generate a sense of ownership fronting the street.
And if Timberyard is anonymous, goodness knows what DeB&M blown up x50 can be described as!
Fingal will be gone in its entirety and Dublin Bus re-faced as it is a Protected Structure with a near-fully fledged townhouse surviving behind its deceptive curtain wall. Just a correction from earlier, the RDH has vanished in its entirety, with only the gable walls left standing for the benefit of No. 42 and the AIB.
Looking at the replacement building online, permission was granted exactly a year ago. It’s a standard, uncontroversial, anodyne affair, divided into two blocks to give the appearance of two buildings, one wider and taller than the other. Minimally dressed upper floors with expansive double-height retail at street level, the reinterpreted Georgian language works well with the compact No. 41 (left) but is repetitive, bland and wholly uninspired on such a large scale at No. 40 (right).
© Dublin Central ArchitectsNo. 40 was originally to be faced entirely in red brick, but this was changed by condition upon the intervention of the case planner. The use of brick on such a scale facing a visually independent major commercial building would be unprecedented on the thoroughfare. Brick dressed with stone in a contemporary manner could have been successful, but the lack of faith in modern architects to pull this off without descending into pastiche tends to draw one over to the planner’s favoured comfort zone of stone only.
Both buildings are now going to be faced in granite, detailed in a manner similar to the Ussher Library in Trinity, which is quite elegant. The window opes feature an opaque light box to one side which illuminates after dark.
Ah lads, you’re letting the side down here. Not the side of architecture, design or good planning, but sanity! I knew the “it’ll generate X amount of jobs” line would take down some men on Archiseek eventually. It happens to the best of us. But for those of us surviving, please, keep focused! Some day it’ll all be over – keep looking forward to that glorious day.
August is the expected time for a decision.
Meanwhile, as mentioned, the Royal Dublin Hotel has been demolished (with the exception of its southernmost bay to help support No. 42) in anticipation of the construction of a new office block to rehouse Dublin Bus’s head office. This part of the project, which slipped neatly under the radar, looks set to go ahead as it was part of a site swap with Dublin Bus. I’ve yet to see plans for this building, though I think it already has approval (?).
There are doubts that the Bord will approve the Carlton remounting, while the new opening into O’Connell Street may morph into an actual street rather than the proposed ‘public space’.
I don’t disagree on that one. But making a street from a heavily trafficked dual carriageway, where the public realm has already been shaped by pedestrian barriers, island ‘refuges’ (as road engineers themselves have the audacity to title them) and galvanised steel lampposts and other furnishings, is no easy task. I agree that so much of Cork Street and St. Luke’s ‘Avenue’ has failed to create a modern street, but I wouldn’t dump this problem at the door of Timberyard, it being one of the more successful components. The sense of enclosure, digestable make-up of blocks and visual animation it generates along with the adjacent yellow brick development on the corner with Ardee Street is the most successful piece of contemporary streetscape along the entire the by-pass.
I don’t think it would be fair to blame the ills of this ‘street’ on the stoicism, or the lack of retail, or the stern demeanor, or whatever, of Timberyard. Its design is justified – sadly it is the rest of the street that fails so miserably to step up to the plate.
I was so reluctant to comment on this ambitious development on a thread titled Dublin’s Ugliest Building (gunter’s double-edged mind working overtime as ever), that I actually forgot about it entirely. Perhaps no bad thing for the adjective-weary, but to leave matters hanging on tributes as glowing as: “Alot better then what was there before, namely dereliction”, is something that just cannot be allowed.
It has to be agreed that this is not a pretty building. This is not always a bad thing however, as striking forms and strategic massing can often exude a confidence and generate a sense of place which go far beyond that of the School of Sculptural Functionalism – Sod The Residents favoured by so many social housing experiments of the 20th century. I think this scheme balances a grandiosity of form and scale with human intimacy and domestic detailing quite well. The beautiful use of brick – probably the first large-scale use of the material in the city for purposeful architectual ends in the past twenty years – need not be overstated. It speaks volumes.
It is the road, and will always be the road, that detracts from this development though. Plonk it in a lavishly landscaped green setting and it would be transformed, as any design concept for this site would. It’s difficult to imagine that any softening of the architectural language – while acknowledging some degree of a tempering effect – would make such a difference, relative to the impact of the road on the scheme, as to warrant a radically different design. Likewise, the harshly engineered environs of the fronting pavement and public street area to the side do the development absolutely no favours.
The most successful aspect of the St. Luke’s Avenue facade for me is without question the easternmost (right-hand) block as viewed from the east. It is beautifully scaled, deftly modelled and elegantly detailed, with the neatly inset balconies harmonising with the wider facade being a particularly accomplished achievement. The block handles the corner very well, and is slenderly proportioned in a manner that proudly bookends the whole development. It is therefore a shame that the view of the same corner from the west is so blocky and leaden. It looks like it had a crew cut.
The low central brick section with its slatted timber inserts is beyond beautiful – the timber is fabulously detailed. Which is sadly more than can be said of the timber-clad storeys above. I find this section doesn’t work in the slightest – it is the 21st century equivalent of the fibreglass curtain wall apron panel on a concrete office block. It lacks substance, permanence and indeed relevance in the wider context of the solid, hewn-out-of-rock like formation of the rest of the development. The absence of relief in its blank facade, and the expansive use of timber suggesting structural form rather than an architectural accent as seen elsewhere, upsets the whole cart in terms of how the various blocks join together into a coherent whole. It looks like a grubby, infilled afterthought, and does an injustice to this otherwise accomplished piece of streetscape.
I like the rear elevations and enclosed winter gardens, and the open rooftop gardens set into sheltered cut-outs (commonplace in the Netherlands) look like fabulous spaces. The abundance of red paving at ground level I found a tad nauseating however.
The interiors of the apartments were surprisingly spartan. I thought social housing had moved up a gear, but clearly a budget fit-out is still the order of the day (I’ve seen similar standards in Louth social housing). The odd bedroom and kitchen I saw into were also surprisingly small – perhaps family units are more generously sized.
But definitely a thumbs up from me. Balancing public grandeur fronting a dual carriageway with residential intimacy is no mean feat. I think it’s been pulled off admirably.
If there is one wider niggling concern – and a point that was also on the mind of the person I viewed the scheme with – is that this is without question the Delany, McVeigh & Pike Coombe Housing equivalant of the 21st century. That was a similar 1970s development (just around the corner) of ambition and urban integrity, which sadly has not aged well. If there is hope for Timberyard, it is that the choice of material has been superb, unlike its glum predecessor, while strict controls regarding window, door and other element replacement and alteration should avoid the piecemeal deconstruction of the scheme’s design intention.
Well this is only too true. Aside from The Lighthouse, there really is no draw for the average citizen. But this is because Smithfield is a work in progress; as things stand it’s a residential area, which by definition is somewhere an outsider has no reason to frequent. The odd bewildered tourist has greater cause to attend than locals, and if shown what they were in for from the outset, they wouldn’t bother either. For citizens there are no cultural draws. There is no retail of note. There are no services. There are few commercial/office uses. Therefore there are no people. But this can change if the square and its hinterlands can be resolved in the longer term (though how the suburban housing on the eastern side can be ‘managed’ is beyond me – it should never have been permitted).
In the interim, a market is definitely the way to go. It could be an especially vibrant spot on designated summer nights, with a special evening market with a festival-like atmosphere, the cinema, al fresco eating and drinking – a real night out in a neat package. It can’t be that difficult to cobble together with a bit of guidance from the planning authority.
@ac1976 wrote:
I thought you were a northsider!
I’m neither! I’m omnipresent 🙂
Ah a voiceover artist who can speak correctly – how refreshing.
Anyone care to guess where this curious little chappie resides?
He’s in the city centre, and most unusually, the only animal carving on the entire dressed stone building.
The litany of disasters that are the bus gate ‘improvement’ works at College Green continue as ever.
The latest ravishing addition of an industrial-girth galvanised steel pole right next to John Henry Foley’s exquiste representation of Henry Grattan flanked by those iconic seahorse lamp standards. My, how municipal pride in the public realm has simply collapsed in just a century.
And don’t ya just love the flourishes of tarmac. It’s these little touches that make all the difference eh? :rolleyes:
And of course the pole lends an additional column to proceedings at the Bank of Ireland. Pearse must be rolling in his grave.
And as for these yokes.
I thought I’d leave all the other (many, many) scenic delights for a decent camera.
Now there’s a notion! Something that is desperately needed in Dublin. Public space and the lack and/or presentation thereof is probably the most pressing issue in the city centre at the moment after transit issues.
Regarding the above BoI works, we got some action in respect of the rusty setts, which have been dug up again around the chainsawed line (I’m sure the contractors were delighted), and the newly laid setts integrated with the old as they should have been. Thus the scar is no more. Wasn’t too difficult was it? Alas the kerbstones and the paving slabs abutting them remain an incoherent mess.
Over at Trinity, the beautiful curved pavement is being nastily treated with more red tile slabs, upon the apparent wider insistence of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland on the specification of street paving, in spite of nearly every other historic city getting by just fine without them. Not only do they destroy historic paving, look awful in all contexts, but they’re also a pain in the foot to walk on, especially where they ridiculously extend the full way back to the rear of the pavement. Why on earth?!! College Green is turning into an uncomfortable nightmare in decent shoes. So yes, they are also a crime against comfort and fashion! I know of a number of people who hate them for this reason. They are also an inconvenience for buggies, prams and, ironically, wheelchairs.
We also now have no less than six traffic signal/telecoms boxes sitting over outside Fox’s and Halifax, in addition to all the other junk. Also, why the considerable time, expense and visual chaos of finnickily faffing about attempting to accommodate the trees on both College Green and College Street, when both spaces would have been better served by just hacking the scrawny yokes down, is completely beyond me. One can only take it that this was purely a PR gesture – nobody has the guts, vision or determination to take on O’Connell Street Round II. What a crying shame.
As a final note, I observed this evening that even the grey tiles (if still uncomfortable and ugly) on the very odd part of O’Connell Street are far superior to both red and fawn. So yet another missed opportunity.
I would tend to side with johnglas’s argument that Smithfield is a work in progress, the only problem being that the ‘work’ halted some years ago and is unlikely to pick up again for the foreseeable future. The loss of the original fabric of this, one of the most ancient planned quarters of the city, is deeply regrettable (Franc Myles’ storytelling regarding the contents of its former inhabitants’ cesspits being particularly illuminating), but we must not let that drag down what we currently have (whatever that may be), while also allowing this history to inform the future use of the square.
Two issues stand out for me, other than the many mentioned above which I’d broadly concur with. Firstly, the new Markets, when/if/ever they open, will act as the critical link between the city core and Smithfield. Frankly, the long-term health of Smithfield is almost entirely dependent on this project; in the interim, I agree an open air market is the way to go to get bodies over there. An urban quarter, however attractive, cannot sustain itself in isolation from its regional setting within a city. If Smithfield presented the most beautiful and vibrant urban scene in Dublin, it would still require connectivity with the centre to achieve its maximum potential. The Markets is the critical link between Capel Street and Smithfield to revitalise the area, while also acting as a draw in itself with knock-on effects for Smithfield. (And agreed Stephen the results of the recent restoration of the main building are sadly fading already).
The other, related, problem as I see it is that Smithfield is completely disconnected from the south side of the Liffey – constituting at least a third of its catchment area. All focus is always placed on the east-west movement dilemma, but north-south connectivity from the commercial and residential zone of Dame Street, Christchurch, Cornmarket and the wider Liberties is an absolute disaster. I won’t go near Smithfield, in spite of it being a cobblestone’s throw across the water, because it is a nightmare to get to. The traffic management of the quays, coupled with the headwrecker that is the environs of the Four Courts, makes this a no-go area for southsiders. A number of the quay junctions don’t even have pedestrian crossings, never mind the chemical lung-filling, minute-plus waits at every set of lights one encounters. It couldn’t be made less attractive if it was tried. Even for myself, as an ardent battler against the tides of the ‘public’ realm in this city (and with plenty of visual stimulation en route), I just refuse to go over there from the south side. It’s just not worth the stress of it all. Thus, for most people I can only imagine that it’s northside access only, and Luas or nothing.
