GrahamH

It can be a real suntrap during the day alright – the heat emitted from the walls is something of a unique experience during the summer 🙂

Forgot to post this link about the Carlton from Art Deco Ireland – some details of its interior (although no pics) and exterior:

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Salon/6941/carlton.htm

It’s a pity there’s no large capacity cinemas around anymore; extraordinary to think that the Carlton held 2000 people while the Savoy just across the road held a further 3000.

Widening the sunken section I’d see as important for security and ease of movement reasons; it’s too cramped getting by people sitting along the benches & kinda awkward too passing them all like you’re on a catwalk – although this would alter the crucifix formation…

Despite the security concerns regarding how low it is, it nonetheless creates an impressive drama when you ascend from below up the flight of steps to the sculpture. Likewise when leaving and going back up to re-enter the ‘real world’ again at the eastern side.
As you say, most of the 60s landscaping is worth retaining.

No doubt :rolleyes:

Good point about access to the Garden of Rememberance: the single-entrance layout is quite intimidating in the area of the city it’s in, but especially because you’re stepping down out of sight of others at street level which leaves you feeling quite vunerable.
Having to come back the rather boring way you came doesn’t really help matters either.

But I wouldn’t say it’s as awful as you make out Greg, but if the whole or most of the square was to be redeveloped then it’d be open to some changes.
It’s direct connection with the nationalist nature of O’Connell St’s statuary and its history still makes it a suitable location for a Garden either way.

Is there anything but the Seaman’s Church? 🙂

Really ought to give these bollards a rest but I hope to have the final answer at last.
I found another Laurence pic, probably taken on the same day as the previous one, but from street level. It has a better resolution and look at what you can make out:

…a very substantial 3-arm lamp-standard sited right in the middle of the quadrangle of bollards. It looked much smaller in the first pic, but this pretty much confirms it – the bollards were installed round this significant piece of street furniture for protective and decorative purposes.

It has to be noted that this island is standing in the middle of an undefined street layout where there’s no footpath or kerbstones in the centre. It appears this part of Upper O’Cll St (that is now the median) was used as a Victorian taxi-rank, where all cabs & horses lined up. Hence it was also important to highlight exactly where O’Cll St ended and where the cab line ended, not to mention to define the road-layout of the wide O’Cll St for those entering from the north.

This pic from around 1900 from a bit further down outside the Gresham also shows the cabs, or maybe it was just a parking space:

Admittedly this doesn’t solve the trapdoor mystery though – unless it is an Underground access shaft…

Or it mistakenly assumes that George’s Quay runs all the way down to the Grand Canal Basin, and it is that proposed site it refers to.

Certainly this is a national issue, but I don’t necessarily agree that the location ought not be decided by the capital.
The Abbey is to remain in Dublin, so from that perspective at least the debate about relocation is localised (although also including those who know the city well).

Whereas it is a national institution, physically it is in the city’s ownership, and by and large it is up to the city to decide where it goes in the best interests of the institution, and the city of Dublin.
Just as if it were to be moved to Cork, I would want to leave it up to authorities there to decide what would be the best location; they know the city best, and what location would work, look and feel the most suited for the Abbey and Cork city.
As for letting the public decide, now that is a different issue altogether – something I wouldn’t favour – only cause it’d immediately come down in favour of the Carlton 🙂
The only way to do it properly would be to have extensive proposals drawn up, put on display, and only those that viewed them would be allowed vote – it simply wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

As for O’Connell Street being as important to Dublin as the Champs-Elysées, well it would have been had the 19th century not ravaged the place architecturally but conversely had the quality traders that period spawned stayed on to this day.
Certainly then it would be one of the great streets of Europe.
In terms of scale, it is as important to Dublin as the Champs-Elysées or the Unter den Linden, and in historical terms probably even more so. It depends on what level you view it.

But it is the layers of history so unabashedly evident all around on the street that makes it so important to Dublin. The architecture, for all its glories and not-so-glorious points, tells so much of what happened in this country – socially, politically, aesthetically……and any other allys you want to want to add to the list 🙂

It is a unique place – albeit until recent times for all the wrong reasons.