GrahamH
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It’s interesting to see how the Ilac as the first development in Ireland to usher in the first generation of UK retailers is now likely to be supplanted by the adjacent Carlton scheme with the latest wave of UK/international chains…
Just on the trees of the street again. here’s the new rather awkward lime as installed last week.
Quite a severe pruning is going to be required to level it off. Should fill out nicely and tone down with time.
As mentioned, the limes are so light and wispy, with beautiful expansive leaves.
The bushy oriental planes to the side pavements. They vary in size quite substantially, though trunk size appears to match.
Striking spiked leaves and fruits.
The ash trees to the median, interpersed with weeping birch. Very blah.
I finally got around to taking a look at the Carlton scheme in Wood Quay a couple of weeks ago. Suffice to say the file is in and out like a yoyo. Even while I was there two men edged towards the table, nudging “that’s it, that’s it”, as if a Golden Ticket was shimmering undiscovered amongst the paperwork. They turned out to be two ‘interested parties’ shall we say connected with the Henry Street buildings to be demolished. Most curiously, they were at pains to highlight to a bemused self that these buildings, don’t you know, are only post-1916! Bowled over is not the term to describe my reaction.
Sure they can be knocked in the morning so. Sorted!
Ah they were very pleasant and concerned about other aspects nonetheless.Just some general observations:
The new ground floor retail frontages – essentially the streets – are all to be clad in a stunning black basalt, dressed with, if I recall, a fawn/tan coloured sandstone for framing windows, coping etc. This part of the scheme appeared well-considered.
Facade treatment to the first floor to the retail parts and generally as a whole appeared however utterly chaotic – unnecessarily cluttered and busy with different elements, shapes, materials and exposed internal fit-outs clamouring for attention over each other. The streetscapes and shopfronts are also punctuated along their length with ‘lifestyle’ imagery in designated frames, which in itself appeared a crass and lazy feature-filling gesture but when this eventually descends into advertising will be markedly worse. This element must be cleansed from the scheme.
The roof appeared to work quite well as a concept, but its design uninspired and the supporting piers instrusive on the streetscape and lacking in finesse.
The public space at Henry Street looked absolutely appalling – so ridiculously cramped, incoherent and non-contextual. Whatever virtue the tower element may have (someone please enlighten me), its supposed importance in the scheme is completely lost with such a piddling space; in any event this pales into insignificance compared to the impact on Henry Street.
The Carlton facade ‘remounting’ – to use the diplomatic language of Arnotts – isn’t so much a building reinstatment as a token sop to ‘conservation’. The glazing of the adjacent corner building completely consumes its ground floor, relegating the facade to floating heritage wallpaper above a thoroughly contemporary and detached ground floor. It doesn’t wash. I fail to see how this shifting of the deckchairs can or will get permission. The exceptional circumstances for such interference with a Protected Structure do not remotely exist as they may have done with Arnotts in the creation of a viable street and square, nor was Arnotts a case of a complete removal of the structure as is with Carlton. Half of the point of its retention are the cultural and social associations with the building as it stands.
The apartment element opposite the Rotunda appeared arrogantly over-scaled.
A mixed bag overall, but mostly not in favour of the proposal.
Of course it is, and of course it should be (though given the status of those houses on Pearse Street one would be forgiven for thinking otherwise).
Interesting and rare to see the typical sparse Dublin Georgian railing coming briefly back into use as part of the classical revival a century after it fell out of fashion.
Orientals were been mentioned from the very beginning Landarch, so presumably those. This was the initial scheme Peter listed before, since slightly modified.
27 limes (in good odd classical tradition)
24 weeping birch
38 ornamental ash
70 oriental planes.The orientals are about 25 years old – presumably the same for the rest.
Here are some specimens going in on the Upper street (where they’re going to have the best impact) this time two years ago.
So did crap apples ever arrive? Are they those with with red berries on the median? And what of the ornamental ash – are they the more fullsome trees?
Yay – I was passing on Monday morning wondering when/how the lime was going to be replaced. The survivor looked so lonely on its onio. So is there a mini-O’Connell Street in the depths of Kildare somewhere where specimens are being grown simultaneously? 🙂 Obviously most semi-mature specimens are easily replaced, but clipped limes are a tad more difficult.
I think the lime trees were one of the best additions to O’Connell Street. They’re a delight when in full bloom: wispy, soft and quite light in appearance in spite of their bulk. The lack of density with their large leaves gives them a lightness at close-quarters, and also a tactile quality. And I prefer them when they’re slightly wild and need a good haircut – they appear humourously awkward and put on a great show when its windy. Autumn also does them justice.
And of course there’s been a long history of ‘limes’ in Dublin, particularly popular it seems in the 17th century: out at Kilmainham, the gardens and walks of the Castle, St. Stephen’s Green, and various other references.
Agreed with Peter re the oriental planes – they’re going to look spectaular and already look great. They have a very distinctive bulbous shape, supported rather precariously by an elegant narrow trunk. And the leaves are so delicate and wispy. Another excellent choice.
Which is more than can be said for the weeping birches on the median – don’t get me started on those yokes again 😉
Great news about Ulster Bank too. They got to work fast! Further Information requested a more suitable location for the ATMs than under the new central arched window, suggesting the new shopfront at No. 2 as more suitable. The bank replied noting security reasons as precluding that option, but proposed moving the ATMs to either side of the new window of No. 3-4, which was approved. I don’t see why the first option was a problem – you see ATMs in windows everywhere. A shame the new facade has to be compromised in this way, but a relatively small detail.
While getting my watch battery changed in their recently I asked about the cabinets lining the walls which look to be of c. 1920 vintage. And sure enough they are the original post-1916 fittings dating from the premises’ (and terrace’s) reconstruction after the ‘troubles’. Bits n pieces of 1980s fittings in the mix too. The eh, ‘robust’ plasterwork appears to be of a mixture of dates, though possibly mostly original.
There was no need for the slap though – I only noted that it was a fine set of cabinets she had there 🙁
Still contentious I see.
Back in 1995 the OPW were faced with a dilemma. They’d just completed the last bells and whistles restoration job at the Castle, encompassing for the first time the restoration of the vast majority of buildings to the rear of the site surrounding the former ‘Pound’. It also of course included the conversion of the Pound itself into the Dubh Linn Garden.
Yet when heads of state and their entourages were due to alight from their helicopters, they would be greated by the glowering rendered rump of the Bermingham Tower, St. Patrick’s Hall and Entrance Block of the State Apartments, none of which had ever received any architectural treatment over their 250 year history, in contrast to the Bedroom Block to the east.
Hence in the spirit of the hedonistic, faintly patronising, and we’ve-reached-the-end-point approach to art and architecture of the 1990s, it was decided – tongue firmly in cheek – to acknowledge the lack of architectural treatment of this part of the State Apartments by painting its constituent parts various colours (which were well chosen and strategically positioned).
In spite of it not quite washing with puzzled tourists (heck Dublin Castle full stop is a puzzle to tourists), I think it works to dramatic effect. Impact without major intervention, and giving a whole new dimension to the rear of the State Apartments. A rare instance of the painting over of historic render being acceptable.
To actually raise a real contentious question would be to suggest an architectural treatment for this part of the Castle today.
The rear altar is an exquisite piece of design – intricately detailed and elegantly proportioned.
Miraculously all original silverware purpose-designed for the location survives, and serves a beautiful architectural role. The altar table, again blending harmoniously with the whole features the Last Supper – presumably in plaster. Alas the local prized Carrickmacross lace conceals the heavy vigorously carved cornice of the table, while a nasty modern marble frame was tacked around the Supper insert in the 1990s. The florescent tube is hardly tasteful.
Fine stained glass.
Sadly a number of interventions, all of them recent, have so injured this building. Incredibly, the entire mosaic-clad marble-edged altar with intertwining vine motif was boxed in and covered over with carpet around 1994.
An elderly canon at the time probably instigated the move, but it has not since made good and looks thoroughly awful, especially as the carpet has become more dishevelled over time. Indeed I would be interested to hear views on how a problem might be resolved upon its removal. That is, when Vatican II introduced lecterns etc, the lectern you see to the left and the marble chair to the right were installed on nasty modern marble islands, atop the original mosaic. If the carpet and central plywood step are taken out again, how should these incongruities be dealt with? Extend the side altar steps (currently concealed) to encompass them?
Also, what is it with Irish Catholic churches and lighting! I find it hilarious how universally Irish Catholic churches have the worst lighting of any institution I know. What’s with the desire to light their churches like car parks?! Blackrock used to be lovely and subtly lit until Celtic Tiger crassness came along about two years ago and completely shattered the atmosphere of the church.
It’s disgusting!
Have you ever encountered anything so revolting. It beggars belief – not to mention ridiculously wasteful.
What was once this (on a sunny day)…
Is now this horrific scene.
And the same to the exterior where all-singing brackets and floods have been tacked onto the building. So much for being a protected structure.
Anyway, a delightful building who’s qualities lie in uniqueness of design and surprising quality and completeness of concept and execution for a relativaly minor country church.
(A bird was caught up in the top window when I was there, desperately trying to get out with much noise)
All original entrance doors and joinery survives to the rear underneath the gallery, although the end bays were sadly plugged with more doors to create additional lobbies in the 1960s.
The seating which is in excellent condition uses the same timber.
One of the pair of confession boxes in the building.
Vivid Stations of the Cross.
These were all of stained timber until they were painted over in the 1990s…
The altar and chancel is, or rather was, the real delight of this church. Beautifully reticent, free-flowing Edwardian-like mosaics cover the chancel wall, with ceramic corner tiling to window reveals.
Alas there are growing damp problems, and 1960s radiators scar much of the beautiful work.
Three heads flank the doorway.
And Plunkett to the centre.
The interior is a rather spare hall plan, but its walls are sufficiently articulated with piers and arches to hold interest towards the altar. Celtic motifs abound. Byrne also used a marching procession of rather thin applied arches to the exterior walls of Christ the King in Mullingar. The chancel also bears some resemblance.
Exposed trusses with steel cables ties form the roof (apologies, no tripod this time).
I don’t know who the stained glass is by – a Dublin firm if I recall.
A choir gallery to the rear is supported by an arcade of polished granite columns.
I recall Praxiteles wondering what happened to one of the smaller organs recently removed from Armagh. Well one ended up here – and while a welcome instrument – is a disastrous addition to this modest church, completely compromising the east window.
Beautiful design for Tipperary there – did it ever come to fruition? The spire looks very ambitious for such a relatively modest church.
One of the better designed churches of the early 20th century that largely managed to escape the machine-cut granite-clad barn template of later years is the Church of St. Oliver Plunkett in Blackrock Co. Louth, built c. 1918-1922. It’s a delightful, if at times tried and tested, exercise in Hiberno-Romanesque, designed by Ralph Byrne. It is without question one of his more successful works, if not in fact his most accomplished in terms of completeness of form and execution. Blackrock was and is a wealthy parish – its inhabitants of the 1910s clearly wanted that forcefully expressed.
Unlike most churches of the time that merely used such a motif in pinnacles or as a token gesture for a small bellfry, ambitiously Byrne designed the entire bell tower to mimic a round tower. What a statement it makes: as political as it is religious.
The perfect site was chosen for the church, on the edge of the village sited on high ground looking out to sea towards the Mourne Mountains.
It is built of rubble-faced limestone with finely crafted granite dressings.
The endearing almost freestanding sacristy has a faintly Arts and Crafts influence to it – alas riddled with PVC from the 1980s. Presumably it had one-over-one timber sash windows or leaded iron casements before this.
Recent crass additions including loudspeakers for a synthetic bell and radio antenna have not improved matters on its otherwise fantasy skyline.
Beautiful greeny-grey slates adorn the roof, while its crisp and elegant rainwater goods have thankfully been painted recently for the first time in over 20 years.
An octagonal baptistery balances the opposing bell tower to the left of the main facade.
The entrance front with east window is at once forceful and dramatic, executed entirely in hard cut granite, appropriate in the harsh marine setting.
And the entrance below.
First Boards Dublin City blatently steal the idea running it into a gazillion-page extravaganza, then the regional forums take it up, and now this!
Thank goode$$ for the franchi$e clau$e 😀
Yes it’s a trophy isn’t it – I couldn’t put my finger on the term. It’s a breathtaking display of decadence and ostentation consuming prime urban land at the ceremonial heart of the capital/country with a manicured lawn. Of course the ingenuity of the whole concept is that it is just that – a manicured lawn; so completely unassuming and reticent that it couldn’t possibly be working towards such nefarious or underhand ends :p
And I absolutely love it – feck off gunter with your manky students! Off to the Bashery with you.Completely agree about the planters outside the Berkeley notjim – I like to think of them as a subtle piss-take, just to avoid the mortification that they’re actually serious.
Agreed on the latter point – no point in indulging in hyperbole (although you’ll appreciate it being derived from frustration). My concern with this process is not so much the political desire – and driven appropriately by general public desire – to have certain transport systems implemented in the city centre, but rather with the advising bodies that one would expect by definition, most notably the RPA, Dublin Bus and to a lesser degree DCC, to have the expertise to implement these schemes in all their many facets, including consideration for the public realms and spaces through which they pass. Alas this is not the case in respect of the latter, in fact the one area that is given the very least consideration when planning these schemes – treated as an incidental to be dealt with with a couple of trees and a crate of slabs of Chinese granite. The Liffey bridges are however, unplasterable over, and will stay with us forever. Similarly the idea of more buses – and presumably therefore more stops and termini – in the city centre is equally unpalatable a notion, if at least a shorter-term issue. The Luas link if/when it comes along will scar the city centre for decades if its wiring system is implemented across the board. These are all factors which concern the implementation of these schemes – which as mentioned ought to be distinguished from broader policy objectives.
If they’re issues considered trifling relative to the transport problems of the city, insignificant in the context of growing environmental concerns regarding public transport, or lofty and ridiculously idealistic in the context of general public opinion, then I think we simply haven’t matured enough to be able to implement large-scale infrastructural projects in a considered fashion that respects existing urban grain (and indeed reinvents it such as in the case of well designed stations and stops). At times I think what we’re still doing is comparable to the boom in house construction of the past 15 years – we need units now – build now and plan later. In fact if the Loop Line Bridge hadn’t been built back in the 1890s, I’d have little doubt that we’d be proposing it today as an economical solution to our transport woes.
As for College Green, the proposal to colour the roadways wasn’t so much a tangible solution as demonstrative of freezing the central core as a pedestrian zone during the light changes. The expanse of roadway from the lights outside the BoI reaching eastwards towards Trinity is a typical example as such – roadway that is used regardless as a safe crossing point, yet by laws of discipline most people feel obliged to use the ridiculous little strip marked out near Grattan. The same to be said of the southern side, or over at the Moore island. Indeed many crossings in the city for that matter.
😀
Ah he’s been on a tangent about Grafton Street since day one.
I find it all quite disturbing that a bunch of suburbanite TDs who come into the city for Dáil sittings and a frolic of a Sunday afternoon before Christmas who listen to the grand projets of a handful of quango invitees to their sittings, are making decisions that affect the very grain of a city of which they know absolutely nothing about. These decisions to slap a bridge here, a temporary crossing there, and a stack of extra buses pouring into the city have serious consequences both for the appearance and livability of the city core.
Given the emphasis on improvements to College Green in news reporting, what would make a world of difference in the morning if the will was there would be to pave/colour tarmac all or the majority of the roads to the centre of College Green, moving all lights back out of the central zone of current crossings, thus effectively freezing the entire central area when lights turn green for the pedestrian, instead of this ridiculous them-against-us ranking up against the numerous stopping lines. At the very least current crossings need to be made substantially more commodious.
The chaos of the current College Green is absolutely farcical – why even the most basic of measures to improve the lot of the pedestrian are not implemented here is utterly beyond me. Yet another example of waiting upon a bells and whistles scheme before anything even approaching common sense gets implemented.
And incidentally, the primary driver for short pedestrian lights sequences is not the private car in the city core – it’s increasingly the demands of buses and their timetabling. How this is set to improve with even more of them in the centre I’d like to see.
Some pictures of the model.
Truky awful turn-corner treatment, and more gimmicky stairs. What crude features heralding the entrance to a new street.
The hole gouged out of Henry Street. And do note the Ilac-like four storey blank wall attempting to conceal the slaughter of this historic streetscape. No point getting worked up about this – it’ll be tossed out on appeal.
The view looking north to O’Connell Street – a surprisingly short thoroughfare. Attractively designed apartments to the left, but too tall.
The residential element at the Rotunda end of the site. Elegant forms here, but the lower portion of the building is far too tall. This site can take an element of height, especially as it juts out terminating the view from down Parnell Street, but it needs 2-3 storeys lopped off to preserve the primacy of the Rotunda as well as to scale it into line with its surroundings.
More evident here.
The new street leading to the GPO Arcade. Again these ten storey apartment blocks are just too much for the city core. Eight should be the limit across the board in the city centre.
I came across a 1969 edition of Plan magazine the other day, containing this topical article:
A News View Commentary
Michael QuinnGetting Rid of a Rogue
Gilbeys, the outstanding big edifice, in a style of a rogue Victorian in Upr. O’Connell St., Dublin is to be redeveloped. As the newspapers express it, it will be in a sophisticated ‘mix’ of shops, showrooms, offices and extensive car parking. (How all of these parkers in underground blocks are going to enter and leave the city by our choked traffic routes is anybody’s guess. In some American cities, I hear, they tax you now if you provide parking in your blocks).
Gilbey’s is owned by International Distillers and Vintners Ltd., a U.K. company. They plan to move to a new premises on that masterpiece of urban streetscape, the Naas Road. The planning permission being sought by IDV for O’Connell St. Covers Nos. 46, 47, 48 and 49 O’Connell Street, and 15, 16 and 17 Moore Lane, a vital ‘backland’ link with the area to the rear. This is where an international consortium, plus Dublin Corporation is to carry out a £4m. redevelopment on a 7.7 acre site, centred on Moore Street.
Gilbeys/I.D.V. does not own No. 48, although its planning permission brief will cover these premises, and the yard at the rear which is rented to Messrs. Gill is the property of the Royal Liver Friendly Society, which has its headquarters and district office there.
I cannot see that there will be much of urban Dublin left in Irish hands when all this is finished.
Gilbeys, O’Connell St., Dublin, another outstanding facade about to be engulfed by the shopping centre – car park juggernaut.
ENDS
(Improved picture taken from Freddie O’Dwyer’s Lost Dublin)
The mentioned development would appear to be the outline permission Frank McDonald described as Gilbey’s attaining before flogging the building to Star (Great Britain) Holdings, who demolished it in March 1973; only the stone medallions of Palmerston and Gladstone above the entrance were salvaged.
Gilbey’s often reminds me of a little bit of Dawson Street on O’Connell Street. Indeed more than most of us realise I think, there’s whole layer of 19th century development of a commercial/semi-institutional character that comprised the likes of enormous heavy buildings like Gilbey’s that has vanished from our streets. O’Connell Street was the mothership, followed by College Green/Dame Street and Dawson Street. Grafton Street and Westmoreland Street were more refined in their premises’ execution.
Of course the ‘sophisticated’ mixed use development never came into being – Dublin County Council as it was at the time leased the entire completed block in 1975, famously commandeering “the ground-floor shops to create a preposterous council chamber, sound-proofed against the citizenry, where there is a ‘public gallery’ with seating for a total of eight people.” Presumably the rest of the room was consumed with stationary cupboards stocking a select range of brown envelopes catering for the most discerning under-the-counter dealer.
It is indeedy Punchbowl. This was once one of the largest houses on Sackville Mall, and probably the largest on the west side. Here you can see it proudly dominating that side of the street – a big five bay affair.
It also marked the boundary between Gardiner’s low cost numbers – the dodgy duplexes if you will – to the south end of the Mall compared to the generally more exclusive three-bay houses – the modern-day executive mansions in Phase Two – to the north.
A few years ago the cladding from the ‘proscenium arch’ of Dublin Bus was taken down/fell off and has never been re-erected. If you pass by today you can clearly see the substantial extent of the old brown stock brick walls of the original house (though it had been much-altered in the 19th century). How much of the rest of the building survives I don’t know.
That is utterly monstrous! What a horrible form – gimmickery at its worst. And Henry Street looks like its been hacked to pieces, whether you knew it or not before the proposed interventions. Well they’ve made it easy for us anyway – this element at least doesn’t stand a chance.
(edit: gunter’s post overlapped mine, no time to properly respond))
Here’s the vacant No. 45, which is (rightly) not protected, as it has an ACA to look after it :rolleyes:
To put some shape on things, the Carlton as currently extant will be removed and its width roughly replaced with the new street. Where the derelict site is and possibly a sliver of the Fingal offices will become part of the new department store, as will the re-erected Carlton spanning the rest of the Fingal site and No. 45 beyond.
Red: New street
Blue: Glazed corner with setback
Yellow: Carlton
