GrahamH
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Just taking a closer look at that Georgian and yikes, things do not look good at close quarters.
There is an impressive rubble stone mill-like building to the rear, so it would explain the grand merchant character of the house.
This was lying forlornly in the shop window…
In fairness now, the Salon of Carton House was not exactly the best choice of cover photograph for engendering in the typical novice reader an appreciation of the modest charms of architectural heritage…
Like this incredible nearby street of tiny urban vernacular cottages for example; one of the most unique streetscapes in Ireland.
As you walk along Mary Street North, the eaves of the houses are almost level with your head. Alas, in spite of being an ACA for the past five-plus years, this is now the solitary house on the street in original condition. A crying shame.
Curiously, the houses appear to have been built with rather gradiose chimney pots. The vast majority have been replaced in recent years, so it’s almost impossible to tell which are the originals, but the predominance of this square type above all others suggests this yellow teracotta pot is it.
A stack with notions indeed.
Also, just to record it for posterity, as we all know what’s going to happen, this beautiful little vernacular house and shop, with typically Irish classical shopfront and attendant grounds, survives a short walk away.
The house next door appears to be a later addition entirely, rather than a modernised house.
What can we say other than RIP?
Dear oh dear oh dear.
So finally, can we please put RIAI awards and AAI handouts to bed? They are not reality. This is reality. This is the coalface of architecture in Ireland in 2010. This is the standard of what gets lodged with planning authorities every day of the week. And it’s bloody ignorant.
Watch the spinning on this now and how ‘this is what you get with ACAs’, rather than ‘this is what you get with unimaginative architects’.
Also, some Christmassy scenes from the delightfully straight-laced St. Mary’s Road, which exudes an air of Protestant decency with its grand old houses, trim gardens and well-thumbed net curtains.
(I had to be restrained from pulling Santy out of the flower bed)
And the ‘night soil’ laneway.
Lol. The phrase saving the Irish from themselves springs to mind.
However unremarkable or modest the architecture of Irish towns may be, it is still a vernacular heritage that expresses the origins of place. Just because the sun doesn’t beat down on ranks of red tiled roofs, doesn’t mean our buildings are any less plain than those of a typical Italian town or village – indeed quite the opposite in many instances. Sadly, what does make our buildings unworthy is when they are decimated in a manner that strips away everything that makes then interesting and readable: the hand crafted windows hacked out, the chimneys lopped off, the stone roof slates replaced, the facade decked out in plastic, and faux heritage additions that are neither aesthetically pleasing or historically appropriate. Is it any wonder these buildings, and more specifically the streetscapes they inhabit, are undervalued.
To be a little more upbeat, here is a rare complementary, contemporary addition to a grand classically proportioned building of c. 1860, in the form of a crisp new shopfront.
Okay the polished stone may be a tad luxurious, but the proportionality and simplicity is there. A matching shopfront on the other side, a lick of paint and some restored upper floor fenestration and we’d be onto something.
A couple of doors down and these fine late Georgian houses have just been painted a very interesting palette of colours. Arguably the last house should not have been treated the same, but no matter.
The torquoise of the walls has been picked up in a satisfyingly robust splash on the doors and railings, while the windows and reveals are a lovely sea-green white. Extremely striking.
Though a shame the beautiful limestone of the carriage arch wasn’t stripped back. Never mind.
These fine knobbly railings feature all over Dundalk from the early to mid-19th century.
Strangely, the steps of this house’s front door step down at an angle – not quite sure what’s going on there. Great bootscaper.
On a less positive note, this little charmer with attendant grounds as shown here before was recently refused permission for demolition and the construction of apartments on the site.
All well and good, but this is the site today 🙁
They may have reapplied, but things aren’t looking good…
Ah Collon – renowned as the most intact planned Georgian enclave in the county. A lovely spot as your pictures (mostly) demonstrate. That limestone doorcase is incredible! Where on earth did that come from I wonder? Those hideously over-scaled lamps flanking either side are now cropping up everywhere in the county too – woeful aul yokes.
@gunter wrote:
. . . interesting window arrangement there Graham. On the basis of what we we just found out about Newry and what we know about Drogheda, could be worth looking into.
Oh great. So a notorious IRA head was shot dead in broad daylight outside the pub across the road, and you want me to flounce into Sean’s Tavern extolling the virtues of 17th century gabled houses?!
I’ll see what the weather’s like tomorrow…
Returning to a building that was profiled here before, this grand c. 1800 house with Edwardian shopfront was recently ‘restored to its former glory’, with a ghastly developer shopfront installed in place of the pretty right-hand residential window – now unlettable – and badly detailed Georgian sash windows in place of the perfectly appropriate Victorian sashes seen here before works got underway.
The above was the completed result, yet here it is barely two years later.
It’s extraordinary how a building can deteriorate so markedly in such a short space of time. Of course the job was superficial from the outset, with paint slapped over render and rainwater goods that needed repair, cheap sash windows that were falling apart before the job was even finished, and a roof that was never repaired and is now worse than ever – all for the usual cheap buck that plastered over the past seven years of non-productivity in the Irish economy.
The sash windows of the top floor were also inappropriately designed with squat little horizontal panes of glass – a big no no in classical principles of proportion. One need only copy and paste a pane formation from the floor below to demonstrate that these should have been three-over-sixes with tall rectangular panes, as shown to the left-hand window.
The adjacent building, seen above, looks extremely ancient and requires further investigation. It’s not protected at the minute.
There’s nothing wrong with its clientele – though I’m open to correction on that.
@rumpelstiltskin wrote:
In all fairness, let’s be totally honest here, there’s nothing whatsoever “grand” about this town. It’s a run of the mill, ugly, boring, Irish town. It has nothing of any distinction in it. That Riddler’s building can only make the place more interesting. The way you’re talking, you’d think it was constructed next to Leinster House.
In which case, large tracts of your above description can also be applied to gloomy, anonymous, down-at-heel, and in part thoroughly mediocre Kildare Street.
There is indeed nothing grand about this part of Park Street, nor did I say there was, but as a collective of well planned, principally early 19th century commercial streets, Dundalk exudes a grandeur above that of many Irish towns, including its competitor Drogheda. In fact, it is precisely the above perception of Irish towns as being run of the mill, unremarkable and uninteresting that fuels developments such as the above, and its ilk as we regularly see elsewhere on this site. Such a mindset encourages the piecemeal demolition of vernacular streetscape, or where redevelopment is desirable, the insertion of mega-structural, bombastic infill which makes little or no reference to its environment. This planning approach is short-sighted and leads to the very result as first outlined – incoherent, haphazard and mediocre streetscape. It does nobody any favours. In fact, it encourages more of the same.
The above images, taken on a freezing, gloomy winter’s day, do an injustice to the town. As shown earlier, this is some of the town’s grandeur.
Such quality streetscape, if dominated by traffic and on-street parking.
Some of Dundalk’s strong legacy of railway housing, incrementally ruined by replacement windows, as with every streetscape in the country.
Not to mention the developer contribution. Did you ever see the like…
Whatever next, Punchbowl. Before you know it, the infamous Pheonix Bar will be attracting the same clientele as its Dublin park equivalent!
Louth, like many other counties, has a marvelous conservation officer, but such a role can only be a drop in the ocean with the sea of planning applications and unauthorised developments taking place across two of the largest towns in Ireland, plus an entire county of buildings. Expertise is needed amongst standard planning staff; this is the coalface where the action happens.
I’ve been watching this handsome pair of Edwardian houses on the Avenue Road for a number of years. This is them in 2007 looking precariously on the verge of descending into decay.
This is them precisely one year ago to this day, with the right-hand house burnt out.
And this is them today. Both burnt out.
This day next year, a planning file is being adjudicated on for their demolition?
Such a shame. From what can be made out of what remains, they had good staircases, timber-clad ceilings in the porches, pretty glazed timber doors and fibrous plaster flourishes. All gone.
It is upsetting that there is so little that is positive to report from a short visit to a town like Dundalk. And in all honesty, I have never ever visited a provincial Irish town and observed so much as a single decent contemporary intervention on a commercial street, anywhere. Architects must take the brunt of the blame for this, not planners.
29/12/2009
A year on and sadly Dundalk’s main streets continue to decline. The town has been crippled by the triple-impact of the economic downturn, cross-border shopping and an oversupply of retail space generated by The Marshes shopping centre, which is sucking the lifeblood out of the centre. Thus, there are multiple vacant shop units – some the largest and most prestigious in the town – short-let occupants with associated low-grade standards of presentation, and a plethora of historic vernacular buildings – the very essence of the town – falling ever more into decay through a lack of occupants and/or pride in owner-occupiership.
This state of affairs is merely being compounded by the most low-grade developments conceivable for a grand 19th century merchant town. This is the latest offering, courtesy of McGahon Architects and the granting hand of Dundalk Town Council. Noah’s Ark comes to Park Street.
The newly incarnated Ridleys – more colloquially known as riddled – with a rubble stone-faced, blank, expressionless facade on a traditional street of render-faced vernacular buildings, complete with a third-storey of an exposed smoking area. You couldn’t make this stuff up. You just couldn’t.
And an elegant top-up of the adjacent property’s chimneystack.
Not to mention a gable-end coated in synthetic slates, for which one would be hard-pressed to find a precedent north of the River Lee.
This is beyond anything I thought possible of even the skew-ways standards of provincial planning authorities. It is so utterly obscene in its ignorance of context, its eschewing of most references to adjacent vernacular, its incoherent form, scale and detailing, its crass and ill-informed choice of materials, and above all its crude and gratuitous expression at rooftop level of a town’s already notorious alcohol-fuelled culture and nightlife. Is it any wonder this important street was not made an ACA in the new development plan. Clearly vested interests do not want it to be.
All the while, classical vernacular terraces, such as this one further down the street, languish in substandard presentation and ill-informed alteration. In the case of the third building in, permission was recently granted for this arrogant double-height shopfront, while the original margin-light sashes vanished and PVC went into the attic storey.
More of the same can be seen two doors down in the other direction. This is the very latest addition to Dundalk’s commercial core. Really, what can be said about an upturned finger? It requires no further comment.
Dundalk has such strength. This is a magnificent, well proportioned mid-19th century commercial edifice a little further down Park Street, where 1970s shopfronts were recently stripped away to reveal the most breathtaking double-fronted classical limestone shopfront with carriage arch, lurking in pristine condition underneath. What a coup!
What a difference it would make to the street if just the original windows were put back and the façade given a lick of paint. That is all that is needed to lift it, yet the effect on improving the street would be a multiple of this. It is such a shame people do not see this.
Root around a little down the carriage arch, and what do we encounter only a little gem of a Georgian doorcase in pristine condition, with a most unusual concertina-like folding mechanism or fixed sidebar, and delicately glazed fanlight.
Remarkably, this all survived a recent heavy-handed cement rendering all around it.
The emerging Nightmare on D’Olier Street.
It is now clear that this is a 1950s intervention.
Why on earth was a rebuild of these two facades not conditioned as part of planning?! Was any investigation even made into the brickwork beforehand? What is particularly galling is the fact that the concrete-framed substructure of the 1950s red brick houses appears to have been demolished – these are a careful facade retention!
With ghastly double-glazed, top-hung casements left pock-marking the attic storey.
In some of the original buildings, they don’t even open. Appalling stuff.
As for those highly invasive lighting units! I don’t remember lengths of gunmetal powder-coated steel strips being one of the trademarks of the Wide Streets Commission.
It’s this sort of thing that just makes us a laughing stock in this country when it comes to conservation. Just what was the amount of profit due to be derived from this quantum of development by 2006 standards, taking account of the vast office and commercial insert to the rear? Why on earth was the opportunity not taken by the city authorities to enforce the complete restoration of the capital’s flagship Georgian terrace? Do they honestly think in the heat of the 2000s property market that a conditioned rebuilding of the two facades and the reinsertion of the original pair of shopfronts here, would have made the development unviable?
It beggars belief what the city has lost here. A golden opportunity just let slip through its fingers.
15/12/2009
One hardens to the treatment of old buildings in Dublin. In this city, you’re forced to toughen up to the botched jobs, ill-informed alterations and new insertions, and on occasion wholesale demolition that still occurs from time to time, with the capital’s historic building stock.
It is disheartening to this happening with modest streetscape buildings. But when the same begins to afflict the city’s prestige terraces, you realise something is seriously, seriously wrong.
I got a glimmer of what those watching Fitzwilliam Street crumble before their eyes experienced back in the early 1960s on D’Olier Street this morning. The two central 1950s reproduction houses in the centre of the perfectly uniform Wide Streets Commission terrace of yellow brick, the Commission’s best and the city’s best, have just been rebuilt in machine-made RED BRICK.
I really don’t have the energy to express my sickness at this development, that I just knew from day one would be utterly botched. What has just happened in architectural terms is worse than the wholesale demolition of the end of this terrace here and on Westmoreland Street in the 1980s.
The other possibility is that they were wrongly rebuilt in red brick in the 1950s, and a vigorous cleaning has unearthed the error after half a century, in which case why on earth were they not re-pointed in yellow?!
I’m getting great mileage out of this Charles W. Cushman Collection. These might as well go here, given this thread absorbs nearly all Dame Street-related matters.
1961 🙂
What a scene! And talk about safety in numbers! Not only do so many people cycle, but also look at the age spectrum. When was the last time you saw a 10 year old cycling in Dublin city centre? Or in any urban context for that matter?
Even if he is dressed like he’s 75.
Of course, what is really of interest is the heart-breaking loss of the scene’s backdrop. What a magnificent, strong streetscape; exuding authority, institutional confidence and civic grandeur.
A criminal loss. Little else compares in the city today.
Likewise, the understated elegance of decorative schemes. This Wide Streets Commission terrace appears to be newly cleaned and re-pointed, probably by the last of the old school craftsmen who died out over the subsequent two decades. A potent new coat of Victorian claret to the windows too.
Note the attractive sultry tones of the fabulous right-hand shopfront, now painted a grubby gloss cream, and the sophistication of the paintwork adorning the present-day Toni & Guy shopfront. An art we have well and truly lost.
Turning our attention to over the road and a little further west, to the mother of all photographic gems 🙂
The notoriously elusive demolished Wide Streets Commission terrace in full colour! 14 houses in total were swept away here as part of Dame Street’s road-widening scheme, butchering three streets in the process.
Again, it is breathtaking to note the prevalence of a fully intact array of traditional shopfronts well into the second half of the 20th century. The charcoal one to the right is a real beauty.
As for the eye-catcher of G. Roche’s…
The original 18th century sashes even survived to the upper floors – just with their glazing bars chopped out.
A time when cycling was so leisurely, one smoked one’s pipe while dawdling up a hill!
That application refers to the Grand Central building on the corner with O’Connell Street, not Wynns Hotel. It is the result of recent enforcement proceedings taken against the banners’ illegal erection.
Of course, if our planning laws were stringent, standards were upheld, and consistency in planning practiced, no right-minded invividual would go to the effort and expense of applying for retention for such patently inappropriate structures on a Protected Structure, in an ACA and a SPAC.
A 1961 view of Lower O’Connell Street by Charles W. Cushman shows the current Grand Central Bar building by Bachelor & Hicks under scaffolding, probably for its first cleaning, 1960s-style, with a blasting of half of Dollymount Strand at the pressure of a steamroller.
It also shows us a sophisticated streetscape of dark and sultry fenestration, where even approaches to white are toned down to an elegant cream. My, how crass we are today with our generic Dulux Brilliant White.
No matter how long you stare at the Ulster Bank, it is impossible to make out what lunacy is going on. Either there is a rank of freaky space-age lamps suspended on cables from the parapet, or there’s a scaffold precariously clinging onto the upper floors.
Or both.
A marvellous view here of the lower west side, with the last of the readable Wide Streets Commission buildings still standing on the site of the modern-day Schuh building, later to become the infamous Brutalist-with-cladding Burgerland, latterly the Crazy Pound Shop (yeah!). Now only straggling remains of the WSC survive.
The nasty random timber glazing of modern-day Burger King appears to have only just replaced the original semi-circular steel window that used to fill the arch, while the delicate balcony has also been removed. The degrading legacy of the 1940s and 1950s can of course be seen everywhere.
O’Connell Monument is in an advanced state of neglect, and would remain so until the 1980s (to be promptly permanently damaged!), while the delightful Metropole by Aubrey V. O’Rourke can still be seen adjacent to the GPO with its ranks of grand torchieres at first floor level, to be demolished 11 years later.
That is a most pleasing massing of forms and materials with an appropriate scale. Why can’t we have more of this when it comes to urban infill down in the city? Very nice.
@spoil_sport wrote:
These courts, for me have no more presence than the new eircom HQ across the river, or Dundrum shopping centre.
Alas, this sums it up for me too. Chic and attractive, but little of the gravitas one would expect of the preeminent public building of our times in the city, and immediate descendant of the Four Courts. In concept, it has touches of the Elysian in Cork – not that I wish to taint it unduly with such an association – but also of trends in architecture generally of late, where the form of a building is given the same status, indeed if not less, than the materials it is built of. It is akin to the typical Irish homebuilder, where it matters little what the house looks like, as long as ‘expensive’ materials are used in its construction and fit-out.
While the Criminal Courts of Justice unquestionably attempts a bold form, it is let down by too many self-conscious, ‘high quality’ materials, but moreover, a multitude of elements that seem to have been employed to accommodate or showcase them.
I suppose what it comes down to is, should glazing be used to such a dominant degree in a public building in a way that makes it look like every other commercial building in the city? A Custom House constructed of red brick would be quite the spectacle.
@goneill wrote:
John W Elvery + Co waterproofers and sports outfitters at 65/66 Dawson Street/corner Nassau Street?
Spot on goneill! The replacement building (which coincidentally has also featured on this thread) employed a chamfered corner too. How this part of Nassau Street and Dawson Street has changed…
gunter, correct on the Fownes Street corner building: the former Crown Life offices by Thomas Newenham Deane. I should have trusted my initial judgement and left that darn sandstone course out!
A curious, idiosyncratic little chap – the only carved animal on the entire building.
photopol, those are just marvellous photographs you have on your website. You’ve a great eye. Well worth a look everyone! http://www.photopol.com/gallery/fgallery.html
So, we have the crown yet to be identified. The white surround is baffling.
We also have this chappie in limbo, who is at human height on the street.
And if I might add another from Charles W. Cushman, dated to June 1961. Any ideas as to its whereabouts? Not a word photopol! 😉
The corner building is oddly like a miniature version of Thomas Read’s rounding the Cork Hill and Parliament Street junction.
@gunter wrote:
Just checked Shaw’s Directory and it appears that the rebuilt version was in place by 1850, which narrows the alteration down now to just about five years, c. 1845 – 1850.
For anyone still with us on this (:o), we can now narrow down the date of alteration of this curious Georgian building to a single year. The entries for Thom’s Dublin Street Directory for the premises in the relevant period are:
1845
No. 68 William Harrison, saddler and harness maker
No. 69 John Hughes, fruiterer; John Keegan, tobacconist; Maria Healy, linen draper1846
No. 68 William Harrison, saddler and harness maker
No. 69 John Hughes, fruiterer; John Keegan, tobacconist; Maria Healy, linen draper; Mrs Robinson, dress warerooms1847
No. 68 William Harrison, saddler and harness maker
No. 69 Edward O’Connor, fruiterer1849
No. 68 Rebuilding 🙂
No, 69 Vacant1850
No. 68 Vacant
No, 69 James Hughes, watchmaker & jeweller1851
No. 68 Rathmines Omnibus Association – waiting room
No, 69 James Hughes, watchmaker & jewellerExasperatingly, the 1848 edition is the only volume out of the entire 19th century collection missing in the Pearse Street Library! Gah!
The apparent gradual depletion of tenants over the course of the mid-1840s suggests a deliberate evacuation of the building on the part of its owners, and that the alterations were planned rather than the result of a fire or other random occurance. It is likely most of the major rebuilding took place in 1848.
The gold chip omnibus tenants with their waiting rooms in No. 68, albeit under a number of different names, were still in the premises well into the 1850s, and probably for much longer.
