GrahamH

23/7/2010

The attractive group of buildings at Nos. 51-54 Pearse Street and structures to the rear have just been restored and expanded as the premises of architectural practice Henry J. Lyons, designed by, well, Henry J. Lyons. It recently won Best Commercial Building in the IAA awards 2010.

The conservation report as submitted in 2008 appears to have been drafted by Arthur Gibney before his death, perhaps originating from one of the earlier applications for the site. It stands out a mile as a sadly rare example of an architectural heritage consultant who knows what they’re talking about, and is passionate about what they’re talking about. It is thoroughly well-informed, bedded in comparative analysis, and confident in observation. In fact, with the notable exception of Cathal Crimmins, it’s hard to think of many others who produce this quality of work in Dublin anymore.

The Pearse Street buildings bear a remarkable resemblance in date, design, function and morphology to the newly restored collection of buildings at Nos. 58-61 Lower Mount Street.

Both groups initially emerged as residential townhouses, both were altered in the mid-19th century with a central infill building on a formerly vacant site incorporating a carriage arch, both were unified into a singular composition, and both served as a major commercial premises.

As perfectly surmised by Gibney, the structures on Pearse Street “are a strange collage of architectural intentions, utilitarian expression and building interventions. […] Their current expression is essentially the result of changing patterns of use and interventions to fulfill specific functional purposes. Their special historic interest lies in their typological importance as a rare surviving example of a late 19th century workshop evolved from the mutation of a number of former house buildings with a builders yard.” Precisely the assessment we didn’t get over on Mount Street.

When we look at Nos. 51-54, we are looking at three individual buildings that have experienced varying degrees of amalgamation.

The bookend houses at each end are the oldest, built in the 1840s as residential dwellings in line with many of the other classically-informed modest houses built along the thoroughfare in the second quarter of the 19th century. The central, then vacant, plot was the site and/or entrance to the timber yard and offices of builders Crowe and Son, with the house to the right being acquired for their use. They sold out their interest in all the properties in 1873, probably to more builders.

We are not told when the central part of the building was infilled, other than, unsurprisingly, ‘later in the 19th century’.

I think we can be a little more precise in pinning it to the late 1850s, judging by the juxtapositioning of newfangled two-over-two sash windows with older Georgian grids positioned above. The notoriously bizarrely proportioned Georgian central feature window with squat panes of glass was born through later alteration, namely the shopfront.

The central and right-hand houses were both heavily amalgamated, presumably when the central building was built in the 1850s. They feature a highly unusual structural system of piers and supports of an industrial nature to the interior, coupled with equally idiosyncratic Victorian plasterwork of a type not comparable elsewhere in the city. The online photographs are difficult to make out, but from Gibney’s description they appear to use complex layering of cast plasterwork in a manner suggestive of merchant builders exploiting newly available plaster products in an innovative way. The staircase hall for example appears to feature a heavy cornice supported by enormous cast corbels on the walls. The boardroom upstairs is also heavily embellished, while joinery is of a neoclassical character – perhaps Edwardian.

In spite of the 1875 date tablet above the entrance, the likely origins of the handsome stucco shopfront, with its order of Doric pilasters and sombre entablature, is actually 1899 when J. & C. McLaughlin, the famous Dublin engineers, founders and art metal workers, took over the premises, moving from only a few doors down on Pearse Street. 1875 probably refers to the establishment date of the company. McLaughlin’s remained here right up until 1970 when the James Healy foundry kept the trade going a little longer into the final years of the 20th century.

We can see above how the late addition of the shopfront skewed the proportionality of the central window with its odd square panes, where presumably it was another two-ver-two before this. Perhaps the adoption of the Georgian model was an attempt to hide the window’s botched relationship to the flanking windows by making it more of a decorative feature of the façade. It was also a cheap conversion: the top sash it is not segment-headed, but a regular, squared sash lurking behind the brick arch.

The refined detailing of the shopfront is exquisite in its elegant simplicity.

The ground floor of No. 54, one of the original houses.

A scrolled end corbel.

Exposed again 😮

:p

Aha – interesting gunter. Yes the fine steel windows are a saving grace. A point worth making.

Indeed – what is now this.

One wonders of the type of thinking that went through the minds of owners and their architects in the 1970s and 1980s, when institutional frontages like this were ripped out or pasted over for a cheap shop front installation. One need only look at the success story of The Millstone restaurant on Dame Street (if admittedly with more inherited glazing that above) to observe how a retained historic frontage confers considerable prestige upon a business’s image. The above example is a particularly botched job – cardboard cut-out isn’t the term.

This corner building is one that never appealed to me. It doesn’t quite know what direction it is headed, with a fabulously vigorous ground floor contrasted with a weak classical upper elevation with overly elongated giant pilaster order and silly frippery about the windows. The Venetian windows at first floor level are also decidedly inadequate, and the facing materials of granite and sandstone curdle in the way they are used. The Fleet Street wing borders on crude.

Drew’s design by contrast is a marvellous exposition that does justice to this corner site, at once commanding, upstanding and proud to make its presence known on the streetscape. It demonstrates Drew’s typically skilful handling of proportionality and wonderfully sophisticated detailing. The step down to Fleet Street is particularly well handled, making for a harmonious yet almost entirely distinct expression on that thoroughfare. More than a few hints of his Rathmines Town Hall in there too. A shame it wasn’t executed, more than likely for reasons of cost rather than any classical deference to Trinity down the road. Interesting to see the humble scale of the Wide Streets Commission stock next door.

It was also this site that gave the gothic ICS/Blood Bank building its nickname ‘O’Callaghan’s Chance’, as the architect J.J O’Callaghan came in second place to the winner George C. Ashlin in the above mentioned competition. As a result, the critical O’Connell Bridge site a few doors down became O’Callaghan’s chance in the following period of the late 1890s.

Dammit Devin! I was hoping this one would beat a record at some point – now it just may be prompted to come down (even if in the next decade or two). It beggars belief this yoke has sat here for so long without anyone in authority so much as batting an eyelid – indeed, as far as I can remember it has been here for close on two years at this stage.

And not only that, the tatty newsagents next door has all manner of non-compliant clutter and ‘attendant features’ about its frontage, including LED strips around the doorway that beat the best efforts of Korean restaurants on Parnell Street, while right next door on the other side, as we speak, there is lurid pink signage being erected on what is one of the last historic shop fronts in this part city, on College Green, on a Protected Structure. A particular delight is the mammoth sheet of perspex that has been siliconed in in place of the plate glass, and this is before the internal signage, postering and sandwich board for the milkshake-making occupant arrives to decorate the windows.

Without question it is the appalling standards of planning enforcement along Dame Street that is causing this shoddy presentation to spread like a cancer through the so-called ‘Grand Civic Throughfare’. The chic, if inappropriately historic-styled new shop front of Le Circ further up the street has just been modified barely a year after it was installed, once a deep and sultry aqua-marine blue, now painted lurid pillar box red, with salvaged two-over-two sash windows stuck into it! Kitty’s Cottage comes to Dame Street! Likewise, the beautiful turreted sandstone building on the corner of Grafton Street has a shop unit on the ground floor that has gone through three different uses in the space of a year, including an application for a café that sadly never went ahead. Now it’s a cheapo travel agents if I remember right, with nasty primary colours used on its nasty boxy timber inserts in the pointed gothic opes.

It’s all just getting way out of hand. Still nothing has happened with the totally non-compliant frontage of Spar in the Burton building, nor with yet another Asian restaurant that has opened across the road with a totally illegal stone-clad fascia and shop front that can be seen from outer space, nor the horrific newsagents that has morphed into an Indian restaurant across the road from Dublin Castle… nor nor… it just goes on and on.

Not only does enforcement has to be stepped up, but legislation just has to be streamlined. The court-based system doesn’t work. Local authorities should be able to issue fines on a time period basis – as long as your non-compliant works stay in place, the more you continue to pay. It’s the only thing that does work.

Yes that does colour matters considerably, Punchbowl.

But even on an objective basis, I think this frontage has considerable panache: an elegance that is let down, if not virtually obscured, by a tatty decorative appearance. Of course one could not advocate such a use of aluminium today, not least as has been demonstrated, it doesn’t appear to last without considerable retreatment or renewal. And the material is not fashionable to the contemporary eye. Just as the use of bronze or brass in shop fronts is considered passé, doesn’t mean we ditch it, especially where a material is as inoffensively used as on West’s frontage. Indeed the pilasters are positively regal – much better detailed than the dross we commonly get today.

Full agreed on that utterly hideous green; it makes this one of the most unbearable buildings in the capital to look at. But just imagine the upper elevations painted a soft cream, with windows and reveals in a dark buff shade (Conservation Code #567841), complemented by a slick new narrow fasica with crisp mounted lettering. The sultry shop front (spruced up a notch) would look simply fabulous. No contest.

Even the fusty, quaint window displays with morbid faux roses tacked onto fabric panels appear to date to the 1960s. Certainly they’ve been there for a decade or three.

The timber paneling is surely original.

Macabre qualities aside, this will all shortly be another sad loss of one of the last of the Dublin old school of retailing.

The reason for the closure of the store is not entirely clear, in spite of the official line that the discreet clientele the store once attracted no longer exist to sustain it in business. Only last August the store applied for planning permission for: “Refurbishment of ground floor shop floor to include: essential maintenance and repair of the historic joinery and shop fittings; the replacement of the late 20th century cabinets/counters with high quality timber units; the upgrading of security and the upgrading of mechanical and electrical services.” Little more than a few months later, and the business, with reserves of nearly €400,000, claims it can no longer survive. The various media articles covering the story at the time all quoted oddly erratic explanations for its closure. What is perhaps of greater relevance is that Joe Moran of Manor Park Homes now owns a majority stake in the business, and the value of the property, with apparently unused upper floors, may not have been realised…

In any event, any Section 57 Declaration commissioned for the property over the next while should unquestioningly, in my view, list the shop front as being an intrinsic part of the special character of the building. Careful consideration must be given to any proposed alteration. One possible solution to bring the frontage up to date for modern retailing requirements, is to allow for the removal of the lower window aprons in favour of full-length display windows.

Otherwise, the character and integrity of this charming shop front, which sits in a sophisticated quiet elegance adjacent to virtually every other shop front along this stretch, must be retained. It is the very last if its kind on Grafton Street, and one of the few worthy design statements of its era in the city at large. It also stands as an important and enduring reminder of the venerable Dublin institution that served the city for nearly three centuries, as jewellers to the Lord Mayor, and by appointment to Queen Victoria and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

22/3/2010

A rare surviving element of 1960s shop front heritage in Dublin is in danger of being lost from the capital’s main street.

The sensitively designed shop front of the former West jewellers, installed c. 1965, gives a contextual nod to the blind-arcaded shop fronts of the Wide Streets Commissioners of the 18th and early 19th centuries, thoroughly reinterpreted using modern materials.

The famously reticent jewellers closed on Grafton Street in mid-February of this year after nearly three centuries in business. First established on Capel Street in 1720, the firm later moved to College Green in 1845 and subsequently to the present-day River Island premises on Grafton Street, before coming to rest at its current location at Number 33 in 1965.

It is rare in Dublin that reproduction design works to such elegant effect, and less still when dating to the 1960s, a time when historic shop fronts were being replaced across the city to make way for more contemporary models of retail expression – not an updated version of the same as in the case of West’s.

Contrived of champagne-coloured aluminium pilasters framing landscape-shaped display windows, the shop front utilises a contemporary material in an ambitious way, employing further strips of purple-toned aluminium as window aprons and either side of the splayed inset entrance bay, as well as above the marching array of fanlights.

The purple elements have become extremely tired but can probably be re-coloured.

The fanlights are of course the principal delight of the frontage: beautifully proportioned and delicately detailed.

The quirkily designed Ionic capitals appear to be of carved and painted timber.

The current metal fanlights, although venerable in appearance, seem to be a later addition. This snapshot of a Dublin film reel from the late 1960s, shortly after the shopfront was installed, shows what appear to be painted semi-circular panels in their place. Quite visibly this was an unsatisfactory arrangement that no doubt led to their hasty replacement with the current, more substantial ensemble.

A shame those beautiful cylindrical copper lamps have vanished!

It does indeed have protection, Satrastar, but only if your building is a Protected Structure or is located in an Architectural Conservation Area. Even the replacement of the glass, never mind the entire original window, will be deemed as materially altering the character of the structure, therefore requiring planning permission (which would be refused).

So I think it is agreed amongst pretty much everyone – and from all ends of the architecture and planning spectrum on this website – that this is categorically not what O’Connell Street and this new city quarter warrants or deserves in design terms. Therefore a systems failure has to be identified, either in our planning process or in the architectural profession, or both.

Developers and some architects have often been heard in recent years waxing on about overly-prescriptive planning laws, yet surely the outcome of the above is precisely the result of a lack of clout and clarity in planning policy? Or more pointedly, the erroneous interpretation of planning policy? Alternatively, one can argue that the relative ‘freedom’ offered by planners in this case was to enable architects to come up with imaginative and creative design solutions in accordance with best design practice. Architects, after all, know best when it comes to design – right? Why shouldn’t they be given the rudder on this one? Logic would dictate that they should.

The reality is that we see both professions culpable in this:

In spite of some worthy Additional Information modifications made by Dubln City Council, an effectively illegal interpretation of the O’Connell Street ACA under the 2000 Planning Act led to the initial grant for the scheme by DCC: -1 for planners.

The initial proposal was over-scaled, crudely integrated with its host environment and ignorant of existing building grain and street patterns: -1 to architects, and -1 to planners for granting it.

An Bord Pleanála then gets called in to clean up the mess as usual. They enforce planning policy and civic design character by decree – hardly the best method of producing creative design solutions: both +1 and -1 to the planning system.

Architects come back with a thoroughly dismal redesign that could not express in bricks and mortar the concept of a mean-spirited, begrudging sulk any more if it tried. The O’Connell Street frontage attempts little distinguished sense of urbanity or clarity of expression, never mind anything that approaches a civic-minded outlook for the first major intervention on the capital’s main throughfare in nearly a century: -1 to architects

An Bord Pleanála now reassesses, and grants permission on the basis of a raft of conditional redesign measures that attempt to address the refusal of the promoters to engage in a meaningful manner with the critical planning and design issues at stake. The result is a compromise that does nobody any favours, and where the energy that is expended in the whole arduous process would have been immeasurably better spent concentrated on a thoughtful and engaging urban design proposal – critically, had the guidance been there from the outset.