GrahamH
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It does have that look about it alright – I was thinking how strangely modern it looked too…
Here’s a pic of the Bread Co replacement – the Hibernian Bank, with upper storey (if not two) visible from O’Cll Bridge.
It looks like a 30s toilet extention to a national school 🙂An embarrassing article, very comprehensive. All true and lots of it quite disturbing.
Saying that, reading it one would get the impression Ireland is a brash, crass, mini-America, across the board.
We’re not that bad by a long shot, but certainly in certain areas we’re well on our way if not there already.We have to get a grip on planning in this country, our core problem.
The current church is lovely isn’t it, that wine-coloured 30s brickwork always looks so good.
The fact it’s on an island gives it a charming toytown-like quality too 🙂Greggs Lane can be seen on many 18th century maps, as can the predecessor of Cathedral St, Stable Lane, of which there were 50 million others in the city at the time.
I don’t necessarily agree about Cathal Brugha St being needed up there though – it’s very wide and dilutes the impact of the ‘mall effect’ on O’Cll St, stranding the Findlater House terrace between it and Parnell St, almost detaching it from the rest of the thoroughfare – perhaps if it was narrower and a bit further southIt’s interesting that apparently none of the post-1916 buildings were damaged in 1922, imagine if Clerys had been hit just after opening their doors the same year – it would have been like the completion of the 8 year refurbishment of the GPO 6 weeks before Easter Monday 1916…
Just on the Bread Co building again, it’s facinating to note that some vestiges of that mad structure still exist today – not original features as such, but the precedent set by it.
As one would expect, post-1916 the owners of the building would have wanted to rebuild their premises to the original floor area considering the height of their building previously. And sure enough, despite the new regular parapet height and pompous neo-classical frills, they still managed to squeeze and extra floor out of the building by plonking a flat-topped storey on the roof, just set back from the street. It’s funny to see it in contrast to the street facade, an ugly unadorned lump – true 20s Irish architecture. It is the only building in the terrace (now the BoI) that has this addition. I’ve a pic here of it somewhere to post.Of course the Bread Building would be objected to and entirely with good reason – what a ridiculous thing to ever have happened.
If it was still there today of course, it would be wrapped up nice and comfy in fluffy nostalgia and would be untouchable as a monument to crazy Victoriana. The fact that its ‘oldness’ would be in character with its surroundings would also make it immune to any criticisim.
But of course it should never have been built in that location.Here’s a still from footage of Michael Collins’ funeral in 1922 in the newly wrecked Uppper O’Cll St.
The trees are pretty well established, but you can clearly see the newer ones amongst the older specimens.
To put some shape on the bomb site, the red lines indicate where Nth Earl St and Cathedral St are.That first pic has got to be a joke – all of that piled on top was excluded from the original renderings posted here!
How it works in relation to the Gaiety is unclear, but the fact there’s so much glass should negate much of that bulkiness that looks so terrible in large buildings next to older structures – and should offset the yellow brickwork nicely.
Still, does it loom over the Gaiety in any other closer renderings people have seen?Agreed – it is the institution that is important; ironically the basis of the cafe’s existance, coffee, is irrelevant here.
Service and product can be tweaked (overhauled more like) fairly easily.I’ve been talking to various older people about Bewley’s and they all have stories to tell etc, but notably every problem comes back to Campbells.
People remember the quality cakes that used to be sold both in the cafes and take away ones, and the quality coffee & service. Admittedly they all say Bewley’s was always expensive, but you were paying for quality.
But the quality went down the tubes and prices remained the same.And I think that’s backed up by what younger people have been saying too, that the place is a rip-off. Not being around when the place was somewhere special, they don’t distingush Bewley’s from any other standard self-service outlet, but are paying far higher prices.
The older china on display on the Nationwide programme (typical of RTE it was raced through and glossed over as quickly as possible), esp the red-decorated pre-war type is an element that should be reintroduced – as to the practicality I don’t know, but to bring back some individuality is essential – the fact that your’re served some coffees in a standard 2 star hotel catering cup is ridiculous.
It is the instituition and maintance of cafe-use that is important for Grafton St – for Westmoreland I can see the magical Fleet Room being successfully incorporated into the hotel, while the rest of the place can be altered. That central cafe area was like a hospital canteen.Agreed.
This is a fine terrace, unique in terms of how uniform it is, with regular windows and parapet marching down the street. The shopfronts in their original positions look equally fine, esp with the integrated doorcases alongside.
To reduce the length of this terrace and reposition the shopfronts for no decent reason other than to create an entrance to the college with ancillary accomodation is totally unaccepable.
These buildings and shopfronts make a fine and worthy contribution to the street and should not be interfered with.
To ‘open up the college to the community’ could be done equally with the reinsertion of shops where they should be.I agree about Trinity fudging this – at last physically offering something to the local community but almost using the gesture as a bargaining tool for the demolition.
Deal with the concrete monster (Engineering Dept?) facing onto the street along side the terrace, and leave these buildings alone.
Really, the cheek of them, the sheer cheek, it is extraordinary by any standards – letting the buildings rot, breeze block up shopfronts and two fingers to the street, and then come swaggering along years later and propose demolishing them. The cheek – I cannot get over this proposal.
Shame on Trinity.It’s surprising, considering the classical look came back into fashion just as the Bread Bldg went up. Suppose the Edwardians wanted new and shiny Georgiana – just like today really 🙂 Thank goodness they hadn’t discovered plastic yet 😀
I know the Bread was two-plot demoltion – now a single-width 8 storey building, that would be worth seeing!And even those frills were only added after the WSC broke up and the Corporation took over. Wonder how the WSC would have coped with the ousting of classicism from favour if they had stayed together. Would they have allowed more uniform window additions or wholescale demolitions of terraces?
Some of the later pedimants etc are quite attractive, esp the scroll-like ones. Whatever about these additions, the rendering of the odd facade was totally inappropriate – the Bread Bldg kocked one down for its sins 🙂The Bread Co building surely must have been the tallest building ever built in Dublin till the 60s, excluding churches and domes.
The PVCs are there quite a few years – but yes, their exposure with the removal of ivy is most unfortunate, whatever about their presence in the first instance. They’re a nasty chunky type too which doesn’t help, not that any manifestation PVC is appropriate here – but considering that PVC still prevails in attic storeys on Merrion Square, its presence in the comparitive backwater of Beresford Place is hardly surprising.
The corner Georgian is looking fantastic after its restoration, it really is the best looking Georgian in the city now – I have a pic of it somewhere to dig out.
And what was particulary impressive about the Luas works here were the curved replica railings that had to be installed in place of the original right-angled ones outside the house – they are perfect in every detail, as is the granite plinth.
And the sashes look so fine now that even the idiot who threw in the PVCs next door muct be kicking themselves.This terrace must be fully restored, just a pity the Victorians gave the left-hand corner their trademark treatment.
Ha!
An interesting point on the site is made about the economic contribution it offers to the city centre – Grafton St doesn’t particularly rely on Bewley’s but one would assume that Westmoreland St does to quite a large degree.
If you think of the hole created with the absence of the café on this street, you might well ask is there any hope left for this thoroughfare – Westmoreland St without a familar institution, that’s a big people-puller is not a pleasant thought. Hopefully the cafe will be maintained in some form in the hotel.I was in Grafton St at 12.30 – there’s crowd control at the doors, goodness knows what it’s like at lunchtime.
There’s a fantastic atmosphere inside – a staff member was singing Molly Malone and nearly brought the house down at the end. The place is packed to the rafters with well-wishers and souvenir hunters – one woman asked a waitress to hunt out a cup for her to bring home, she came back with a cardboard one 🙂 I had to make do with a couple of sugar sticks. It’s so funny in the shop area at the front, there are aul ones literally raiding the place for bags of coffee and tins etc. The shelves will be empty by this evening.
It was so full inside I had to stand on the stairs to eat, and balance my coffee on a shelf – so watch out, there’s muffin crumbs all over the floor…
And best of all the staff were incredibly good-natured – another Bewley’s first for Dublin.It was George Lee’s favourite news backdrop in the crazy boom years – the IFSC being the centre of the financial world :¬)
Was wondering this – it probably would have been easier to knock em off with a big hammer than try rendering over, esp with the corbels.
Presumably they were granite, suffice to say in the Victorian photos they’re painted white. so it’s impossible to tell from these anyway.Here’s a quick pic compliation showing the windows on the corner with Eden Quay – I have a detailed pic of the Clarks corner window before 1916 but it’s in a book and I can’t transfer.
It’s interesting too to note the later impact of the Bread Co building on the terrace – (apologies for resolution)Extraordinary how our field of vision has diminished in 120 years 🙂 And who do those people think they are cluttering the place up like that?!
Francis Firth took a similar ghostly photo a little later in the 1890s – the difference is certainly marked even taking into account pedestrians. And today it’s a view you often don’t see beacause of the buses parked/pulling up on Grafton St.
At least decent traffic signals are going in at the moment in place of the terrible old ones – here’s hoping the sequencing will be tweaked too.It sounds like a very interesting report – I’d like to get hold of it too.
Agreed.
And another thing that particularly annoys me is the continuous references to the ‘marble-topped’ tables of the place. They are anything but marble topped – rather they have cheapo melamine-like tops with a veined-effect on the surfaces.
Now I fully agree that the marble should be reinstated – God knows its about the only place nowadays the poor stone can be used without looking dated or frumpy.
I was appalled to find no marble tables in there recently and to feel the MDF underneath the table lip.
Either have timber or stone, not a cheap substitute.Had to laugh at the memories of the cake-tiers on the tables – if old Bewleys does return, they’re something that’ll stay in their grave 🙂
There’s a good bit in the OPW’s ever-useful book ‘Building for Government’.
Also the Gallery itself has a book about its history, architecture and development available in its shop if you’re up in Dublin.Anyone see the newly cleaned facade of the building facing onto Leinster Lawn – probably the only major cleaning job in recent years to go virtually unnoticed.
It’s great to be able to contrast directly with its sooty mirror image across the way, the Ntl History Museum.
It appears there’s a good bit of Portland stone in the facade, the texture & colour of which wasn’t noticable previously, and the frieze along underneath the cornice is now beautifully evident. It’s such a difference; what once was a very dull, cold-looking building has been transformed into a warm, glowing and inviting institution.
The Ntl History Museum is being tackled at the moment – the only problem now is that Leinster House looks manky in the middle 🙂Just to quickly drag up the corner building with Bachelor’s Walk again – the tripartite window on the first floor is an original WSC feature. I was trying to fnd out a bit more about this development and it turns out this Wyatt-like window was a feature used to terminate all of the WSC ‘blocks’ on O’Cll St – and sure enough looking at various photographs, they can be seen at every corner facing into the street. They have flat pediments with elegant classical corbels supporting them at the ends and on the mullions dividing the windows into three.
Similar features were to be used on Dame Street.And not only that, the second floor window directly above the tripartites on every corner has a little flat pediment to further terminate the simple ‘palace’ facade nature of the blocks. It would also appear that facing the river, the third window from the corner (the central one), on the first floor on both quays also has a little flat pediment to match those of the corners.
Just interesting I think, I often assumed the Sackville Mall development was even plainer than the streets south of the river – although it was from the perspective that none of the other windows had any stone dressings at all.
