GrahamH
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@archipig wrote:
The colours look like a cheap Xmas lantern decoration.
And your point being exactly?
🙂
Yay! Well done aj – twas rather obscure.
Presumably it’s left over from whatever once stood on the site of the DIT extension. But it’s a very odd size – not being quite two storeys in height, but well above one. Strange…
Just left as a lonely straggling remnant 🙁
Goodness knows clerical outfitters are equally rare in the city today…
The archway picture is neither of the above suggestions, though is not a million miles away from one of them…
Yes it probably would. There’s a huge coal hole cover outside Morrison Chambers on Nassau Street – one of the biggest Edwardian(ish) office developments in the city – that appears contemporaneous to the building, so it looks like old habits died hard.
Here’s another quick one. I will be very impressed with anyone who gets this – you need to be a snooper of the highest order to know where it is. Then again, it’s in such a surprisingly frequented place that you may just have stumbled upon it one day, should curiousity have gotten the better of you – as in this case.
It’s not in a graveyard or obscure city park…
The newly-painted cast iron columns look magnificent in bright and playful fire engine red.
While various pieces of cornice/guttering are arranged on the ground awaiting erection.
Surely that granite gutter a few pics up can be diverted away from such an important area. What is the obsession with gutters in the middle of pavements in this city?! Why can’t surfaces slope down to the road?
All in all though it looks like a great job. Now the icing on the cake would be a decent reinstatement of sash windows to the left facade – this meagre cost would make for an enormously positive contribution to the theatre facade and wider streetscape.
In a way the modest facade is the most characteristic feature of this institution: it follows the Georgian tradition of plain facade treatment with an architectural flourish only permitted about the doorcase – in this instance the canopy – while concealing a riot of internal decoration and plaster contrivance, as with many of the music halls of English and Irish cities in the 18th and 19th centuries. Restoring the facade to a venerable condition would do much to heighten this effect, even if the neighbouring building would appear to be a later acquisition. Hopefully its shopfront will also be receiving some sympathetic treatment.
26/8/2007
Well as deadline after deadline slipped by, look who was finally caught slinking along Dame Street of an early Sunday morning 🙂
Aww – it looks so cute bundled up all nice and cosy.
The canopy looks magnificent in its newly restored condition – the detail is so crisp, and the coloured glass so vivid.
Fantastic job!
Then later in the day, the delicate task of hoisting it into position began.
Quite a few expert hands on site to manage the job.
It’s wonderful that the firm who built the canopy around 1900 are the same company responsible for its restoration and reinstallation: Heritage Engineering of Saracen Ironworks in Scotland.
Hmmm – what will it look like in its refurbished state I wonder, especially in its newly exposed environment? Kitch is one thng, but day-glo green concrete pedestals are quite another! Presumably it’s been defly sanatised, chromafied and electrified for the generic generation.
How long exactly has this been on the street? Certainly since the late 1970s when this picture was taken.
And more recently, encased in ravishing PVC (as posted before).
Indeed has anyone ever noticed the ultimate shrine to Catholicisim that is the diminutive little shop premises – if it’s even that – just across the road from the statue beside the Savoy? It has such a tiny frontage that it appears to have passed under the radar of the latter half of the twentieth century. It’s window display is one of the most ‘innovative’ in the city…
I’d like to be a fly on the wall when Planning Enforcement come knocking with their clipboards :p.It’s quite likely it was from this premises that the statue was salvaged during the Civil War, rather than the nearby Gresham as is often said – assuming it was around at the time.
Sounds like the hotel just popped the sign up of their own accord, Stephen – a case for the above office methinks.
Yes that sounds likely.
An unrelated scheme, but as it was mentioned, some of the wildlife thingamajigs in the Green at the moment.
And even more unrelated, but I just thought these rotund fellows made quite the stoical scene, contemplating their little feathered world.
…annnyway – back to signs.
I’d also be more inclined towards the Royal; it’s always been the more idiosyncratic of the two. It’s also the younger, as this Gothic revival, rather processed looking bridge suggests. Now where on the canal it is…
(And who replaced the keytones with limestone?! 😮 )The coal covers on O’Connell Street were very well observed – noted them myself for the first time only a few weeks ago. It’s remarkable, indeed odd, they survived the alterations of the 1920s given the thorough rearrangements the pavements would surely have endured with all the building work.
Clearly they’re late 19th century at the earliest, so would conform with a commerical premises that was built/altered at that time. Or else they’re actually c.1922, but it’s hard to believe coal was still being used on such a domestic scale by then. Turf-fired central heating or at the very least mass-importing of coal to the rear of the new office buildings would surely have been more pragmatic…
I’m not 100% on the ‘swing’ required, but it’s a shame the opportunity wasn’t taken when the DART was being developed to investigate moving/replacing the Loop Line further to the east behind the Custom House. Perhaps doing away with Tara Street and taking advantage of the vast acres of derelict land north and south of the river, including the IFSC site for the new line. The new Platforms 5, 6 and 7 could have been purpose-built to the east of Connolly instead, with the current 1890’s platforms given over to further terminating space that Connolly has so desperately needed for the past decade.
It would have created extra rail capacity, and improved the wider city, partially funded by selling off Loop Line sites. The Custom House Liffey vista would largely have been restored, as well as the Gardiner Street vista of same, and indeed ironically that of Connolly Station itself down Talbot Street.
lol – but adapted to the Irish context: clad in red brick :p
I really like this development too – pass it regularly. There’s a great contrast between it and tiny little two storey cottages that literally abut its gable wall. I keep meaning to get a pic, as illustrates in very real terms the difference in density achieved with alternate models of housing.
Yes we’re lucky that it’s at least monochrome.
This development, lostexpectation has to be viewed in the context of Westmoreland Street being an Architectural Conservation Area, and also in the context of being one of the first planned and unified retail streets in the city – at the very least modern-day developments, contemporary or otherwise, should be sympathetic to the original ideal of modestly contributing to a greater whole, regardless of design.
Both shopfront proposals above just scream maximum impact and all-consuming greed, not just because its an historic street, but by any standards its not the ideal of any principal thoroughfare to have retailers competing for the most garish impact on the streetscape. The design of these shopfronts is also blank, expansive and ‘applied’ in appearance; they neither integrate with nor visually support the upper floors of their buildings.
It’s just a typical one-size-fits-all approach: vaguely crisp and modrin – it’ll do grand :rolleyes:
The aim of Westmoreland (and D’Olier) Streets from here on in is to consolidate shopfront design into a varied, but standardised module, that in scale and proportion matches each neighbouring unit. This Guinness store is an applling trend to set – to apply this logic elsewhere, we’d permit Spar and Centra and Lifestyle Sports to have similar expansive advertising plates marching down the throughfare. Eh, no thanks.
The mounted floodlighting is also totally unnecessary, and logos are not permitted in an area of planning control. So yeah – every rule in the book broken really. That’s why it’s been erected.
The neighbouring house has beautifully maintained sashes, sadly such a rarity in Irish towns.
Around the side it has a classic Edwardian ‘seaside sash’ on the staircase – these are quite common in this area, as it’s near a river.
They tend to be more popular near water for some reason; maybe it’s just the Edwardian tendency to build near water lol. Nice bit of cylinder in there for the nerds amongst us. *whistles*
A grand late-Victorian streetscape nearby – lots of original features.
Magnificent windows in a delighful corner building on Chapel Street – what survivors! The ‘grand’ public facade to the street has later plate installed in the original sashes 🙂
Across the road, another amazing step back to the early 20th century. A lovely Victorian in the classic ‘Dublin style’.
And for what its worth, nearby, an incredibly enormous chinmey atop a miniscule vernacular terrace. What on earth?!
Surely a bakery orginally.
It’s sights like these that make Irish towns a joy to visit 🙂
And already falling apart.
What pray tell, is the logic of these yokes?
What was once an intriguing, readable, well-proportioned vernacualar building is now just another piece of developer tat, smothered in yet more ubiqutous slurry of yellow paint. And how crass is the colour of the shopfronts.
As if to confirm the superficiality of the whole restoration, the chimney stack and degenerating roof have received no attention – the first on the list of any decent job.
It’s a shame to have to be negative on this, but really – there are so few elements to get right with a classical vernaular, and they’ve failed on all fronts. Even when protected and ACA listed.
I see An Taisce submitted on the application – can’t see what it says online.Just around the corner in a separate development we have this plastic delight installed in a rubble stone warehouse conversion :rolleyes:
Nonetheless Dundalk, like many towns, is a treasure trove of vernacular design – it has street upon street of the most amazing period housing stock with original features. They’re so exciting to explore, and many are impressively ACA-protected, even if this means little on the ground.
Just look at this wee fella round the corner from the above development 🙂
It’s like a wendy house, with the most fantastic fenestration! There’s so much of this type of domestic architecture in the town. Alas I’d no choice to photograph it given it’s up for sale – those sashes are quite likely for the chop 🙁
And located in a delightful pair of cottages, the neighbouring one featuring once uber-cool early plate.
Lovely roofscape too.
6/8/2007
I’m not sure if this is more suited to the Dundalk thread, but this thread seems to be increasingly covering vernacular stock as well as windows, so is perhaps more apt.
Up until recently, this delightful relic of times past stood picturesquely derelict on Church Street in Dundalk, leading into the main street of the town. A late 18th century merchant’s townhouse, it was clearly modifed around 1900 to accommodate a retail premises, with elegant timber shopfront added and its Georgian sash windows replaced with more fashionable plate.
The fast-disappearing soft pink paint also a distinctive remnant of 1930’s vernacular decorative treatment.
It suffered a small fire recently – all round a great opportunity for sensitive restoration.
Only, this is what it looked like during the works.
And completed as of a few weeks ago.
The late Victorian plate replaced with mock-Georgian sashes, and a hideous boxy plywood concoction tacked onto the ground floor.
What a monstrous contrivance. On a protected structure, in an ACA!
Similarly, the delightful Edwardian shopfront has received equally ridiculous ‘heritage’ treatment, with B&Q mouldings Pritt Sticked about its facade. They look even more incongruous in real life.
There were three sensitive options for this development: 1) Leave the ground floor residential window as it was, 2) Install a matching timber shopfront to that of the 1900 model on the other side, or 3) Install a decent contemporary interpretation. Instead we got the worst of all worlds – a typical developer piece of rubbish that compromises the entire building.
Similarly, why were the Victorian plates just dumped? Why ditch one aspect of the building’s history and retain another (shopfront)? Indeed if nothing else, the plate would at least have offered the opportunity for efficient double glazing. Instead, we have historically inaccurate, single-glazed, rubbishy mock-Georgian sashes in their place.
While decent enough from afar, if a tad chunky for the 1780s…
…up close they’re cheaply and clunkily beaded.
30th July 2007
RTÉ
22nd June 2007The Irish Times reports that department store Arnotts is to take over rival Debenhams’ lease on one of the biggest outlets in Dublin’s Jervis Street shopping centre. Arnotts said yesterday it was acquiring the lease on the 7,400 square metre store from early next year.
The paper says London-listed Debenhams bought Irish chain Roches Stores last year for an initial €15m payment and an earn-out deal worth up to a further €14m. The sale meant Debenhams got a bigger premises close to the Jervis Street shop in what was Roches Stores’ Henry Street branch.
The Irish Times says the deal with Debenhams opens the possibility that Arnotts will use the Jervis Street outlet when it goes ahead with the planned redevelopment of its existing store on Henry Street, part of the same key shopping area in Dublin’s city centre.
King Sturge Property
19th July 2007The oldest department store in Dublin, Arnotts, is to take over Debenhams’ lease which anchors Jervis Street Shopping Centre fronting Henry Street.
Henry Street is Dublin’s equivalent to Oxford Street being one of Europe’s highest performers in terms of footfall, clocking up an impressive average hourly footfall level of 15,000.
The store provides 108,000 ft² GIA with a net retail area of 86,579 ft² arranged over basement, ground, upper ground and first floor.
Speaking about the acquisition, Richard Nesbitt – Executive Chairman of Arnotts, said “We are delighted to acquire this important retail site at a time when we are embarking an ambitious development plan which we believe will revolutionise shopping in Dublin City Centre. Over the longer term, this additional space will consolidate Arnotts as the leading retailer in the area”.
King Sturge and Savills Hamilton Osborne King advised Arnotts.
Ends
At last – a half decent use for this store. And hopefully it will also signal the reconfiguration of what has to be the most appallingly non-street accessible, disorientating, inward-looking store in the capital – not to mention the elimination of all those frumpy UK high street fixtures and fittings. This store dated exceptionally quickly; the contemporaneous late-90s Arnotts refurbishment is positively cutting edge by comparison.
ahhh… *clicks*
Do you have a wider shot Blisterman?@Paul Clerkin wrote:
is it on parnell street
Afraid not, though a very good guess. It’s in a similar ‘down-at-heel’ environment alright, to use that wonderfully diplomatic local authority term for a kip.
I took a good look at the Newmarket buildings the other day, ctesiphon. Interestingly, on three of the eh, ‘crenellations’ there is a set of three stone date-stamps: 1798, 1948 and 1998 (cut out of your shot below).
What would these refer to? The latter at least refers to the date of the brick facades, as you were correct regarding the age of the wall. It’s classic 1990’s red brick with those distinctive (and horrible) little scarry undulations, and the granite dressings are thinner than an Eazy Single – but oddly, move but a few metres away from the building so for the textures to become hard to see, and it bizarrely transforms into a 1940s building.
Even standing in front of it, it looks old! It’s extraordinary how it manages to trick the eye in design and colouring from a distance – as can even be seen above – and then it reveals all up close. Perhaps it’s a 1998 replica of a 1948 design?
Incidentally this building, including the tree and a smart new bus stop on Cork Street are all currently starring in one of the Lotto ads with the little furry fellas.
