GrahamH

That image is just fascinating Devin, thanks for posting it! You seem to have the most bizarre, almost Pythonesque collection of ancient An Taisce material from goodness knows when 😀

What a loss indeed – that turret is just a delight, both the conical roof and the shaft reaching down the corner of the building, a typical design in the UK maybe, but probably the only one in Dublin outside of the fairly similar College Green sandstone building.

What I find bizarre about it though is that an owner of such a small property, and merely one part of a sub-divided one at that, would have the both the funds and the ‘vision’ to come up with a building like this!

You beat me to it Devin with that 1853 watercolour; that was one of the other pics I was going to post 🙂
Here’s a close-up of the divided Drogheda House. The divided section does appear to be washed or painted – though in the burnt 1922 pic posted earlier, the larger side is also rendered…

I wonder if the Wide Streets Commission developed that tall imposing terrace on the corner with North Earl St, certainly they drew up plans for one of the Earl St corners, I assume it was this one – the architecture seems to be that of the Commission, but it’s difficult to make out. The fenestration is a bit uneven too.

What I find very interesting though about the present day problems that Upper O’Connell St experiences, not least its commercial backwater status, appear to stem not from the 1960s or 70s, but right back to the very start – the 1780s and the opening of Lower O’Connell St!

The WSC did wonders for the city with this grand new scheme, but appear to have killed Upper Sackville St stone dead in the process, as it could no longer survive as a residential street while at the same time suffered the same problems as today in making a success of commercial activity – low footfall, nothing to attract people to the top of the street and Parnell Square, and a third factor startling similar today: a down-at-heel environment that detracted investors.

This extract from ‘A Summers Day in Dublin’ by William Makepeace Thackeray from 1845 offers a fascinating insight into the state of affairs up there, well over 50 years after the Lower end opened:

“The street is exceedingly broad and handsome; the shops at the commencement, rich and spacious; but in Upper Sackville Street, which closes with the pretty building and gardens of the Rotunda, the appearance of wealth begins to fade somewhat, and the houses look as if they had seen better days. Even in this, the great street of the town, there is scarcely any one, and it is as vacant and listless as Pall Mall in October.”

When one considers the by then ancient, plain and heavy architecture of the 1740s combined with the bedraggled mixture of stores, second-rate offices, shabby residences and no doubt houses sub-divided into apartments, it is no wonder the Upper street never took off. No doubt things improved a bit in the boom of the 1860s (turreted building a coincidence?), but even so it seems the Upper end was destined to being an office dominated backwater for the rest of its days – the very problem we’re experiencing today seemingly having originated with the very plan that made the street as a whole such a success!

I wonder if the WSC ever intended to give the Upper end the same treatment?

And just two quick comparison pics here, the very tip of Upper O’Connell St in c1903 with a delighttful grouping of carved timber shopfronts with elaborate Corinthian columns:

…and the terrace in 2005 :rolleyes:

I mean people nowadays can’t even be bothered to dress like the lady above.
Sigh – I don’t know….

🙂

But on a different note, does this mean that the Lower south-east section is about to be tackled at last?!

Yes those flippin signs are tacked onto so many of these posts. If the will was there, plain black poles hosting the signs would simply disappear into the background if used.

Look at that ghastly 80s brick chimney between the two houses in the background – shiny red brick in place of brown stock :rolleyes:

Edit: Sorry didn’t see your post till after posting this Alek!

Yes that could’ve been the reason also Phil about the view of the southside streets and the width of O’Cll St – or indeed the WSC just wanted to create a wide entrance at the river which would give the impression that the whole street was that grand width! Viewd from the two southside streets it would look very impressive.

This map here from the IAP shows the street as being tapered:

It’d be interesting if you had one of those laser pointer measuring yokes and see exactly how the street varies along its width – if you were eh, so inclined….

All the same if the upper is 150ft and the lower 165ft, there’s quite significant implications there for the new works with a loss of the width of two traffic lanes at the northern end.

Just on the Gardiner obelisks – J Seekski suggested before that these famous Hugh Lane/Charlemont House obelisks may be remnants of the Mall, and certainly their size looks identical.

At the time I said that they probably weren’t the originals because when they were reinstated outside the house in the 1950s, after being missing for some years, they were done so according to an image of the house from 1780 in which they are already in situ.
But considering the WSC works don’t seem to have begun until around 1777, it’s perhaps possible the Mall was removed during this short period, just in time for them to be in place for the 1780 image!

Either way, there was 32 of them originally, so at least some of them must still be kicking around! Wouldn’t be surprised if the odd one cropped up in a graveyard or two…

Most definitely – especially eastern Upper O’Connell St as its stock has all but been forgotten as a result of the 1922-29 reconstruction; there isn’t a trace of its past left.
As for the banker, according to Desmond Guinness, he was an alderman: Richard Dawson. Considering Gardiner was also a banker, it’s likely they knew each other rather well, which would explain a lot…

I have a couple of other images of this Upper stretch to post, but to reel back a bit further, I thought it would perhaps be interesting to see how the upper stretch developed, and indeed O’Connell St in general, through some maps – it makes it all a lot clearer.
Suppose most of us know some or all of the info below already, and some of the pictures have been posted before, but the maps are of interest in their own right anyway :). Sorry this goes on a bit – some of it is of course already covered by Paul in this site’s section on the Gardiners. This is spread over two posts as the six the images won’t fit onto one.

(Once upon a time :D) O’Connell Street was first born over 330 years ago with the laying out of Drogheda Street in around 1670 by the infamous 3rd Earl of Drogheda Henry Moore, along with Henry St, Moore St, Earl St and various other ancillary streets.
As can be seen in Brooking’s 1728 map below, Drogheda St was a fairly narrow, but nonetheless long thoroughfare. As far as I know it was a commercial rather than residential street, but I can’t confirm this. It may have been a mixture. (There’s a modern day street layout superimposition on both maps)

It ran down from the present-day Parnell St to Abbey St, and was but a third of the width of O’Connell St today: roughly 50ft. It seems Henry St still reigned supreme in the fashion stakes however upon the completion of Drogheda St, as it was wider and closer to Capel St and the all-important bridge – O’Connell Bridge of course being non-existent for another 120 years. Henry St also had all buildings facing the roadway whereas Drogheda St was a bit of a mess.

In 1714 Luke Gardiner purchased the huge Moore holding, which in addition to the aforementioned streets included vast tracts of land to the north. However he didn’t get round to tackling any of these old streets until the 1740s.

Eventually in 1748/9 he demolished the western side of the upper part of Drogheda St down as far as Henry St (perhaps an indicator of its crucial importance as an access point).
As can be seen on the Bernard Scalé map below from the 1760s, he replaced the old Drogheda St terrace with fashionable new houses. It’s interesting to note how the houses get larger the further away they are from the busy Henry St 🙂

What I’ve yet to discover is exactly how much of the eastern side of Drogheda St was demolished, and how much, if any was retained. In the map above, the houses at the very top with Great Britain St are very small – possibly the only remnants of it.

What can also be seen is the last straggling piece of Drogheda St to the south, which no doubt benefited greatly from this exclusive new development next door. You can see there are lots of buildings covering over what is now modern day O’Connell St. I’ve marked in the site of Clery’s as a guide to the location of the brick remnants of the buildings seen here, excavated just outside the department store during the Lower works two years ago.

Anyway, as posted before, here’s the 150ft wide Sackville St with Gardiner’s Mall in the centre. The Mall itself was 48ft wide, and later planted with elm trees – most likely the scene depicted here was a building site at the time of creation in 1750.

The Mall was lined with low (probably granite) walls, with obelisks topped with oil-fuelled globes. This must have been an extraordinary sight in pokey old Dublin of 1750! Also rarely commented on are the equally attractive bollards marching the entire way down the street lining the side pavements. I wonder where these all are today?
Here’s spooky view of what they would have looked like from the rear of the Rotunda in 1858. Maybe this is them – are they still there today?!

Two interesting points to note between Joseph Tudor’s image and the map is that the present-day corner building with Henry St could very possibly pre-date the Mall, being a survivor of the terrace of neighbouring buildings on Henry St demolished to make way for the Mall.

The second point is fun – as I’ve always suspected, the first houses there on the right of the Mall never even existed! Look at the comparison – nothing but a derelict site, and this is roughly 15 years later! You’re a liar Tudor, a liar and a cheat!!! Thinking you can delude us romanticising old fools in our modern age that your time was such a classical utopia. 😀

Also it appears that some old Henry St buildings remained facing onto Sackville Mall; somehow I suspect they shot up in value 🙂

Another detail here about Upper O’Connell Street.
The largest and grandest house ever to be built on the street was that evident in the middle pictured below (now the site of Burger King :rolleyes: on the corner with Cathedral St – one would wonder if the lane was put in place just to allow direct access to the house’s stables. It’d be interesting if Cathedral St has its origins in this)

Six bays wide, it featured the original and best glowering birds up on the parapet – no PVC here 🙂
So we’ve Gardiner to blame for setting the trend…

Well maybe not Gardiner, beacause he leased the site to a banker who built the house, who in turn sold it to none other than the Earl of Drogheda himself – so he ended up living in a house built on what would have been his street but a few years previously!

Here’s a great image of it in 1922 in all its forbidding burnt out glory:

It’s very easy to make out how early the house is in terms of Georgian design – the house was six bays wide so the entrance was placed off centre, a big no no later on. Also the doorcase itself still has a heavy baroque influence with that arched pediment. The window surrounds to the sides appear to be later.
It’s a great pity the house had survived 1916 up to 1922, but was obviously destroyed beyond repair in the conflict on Upper O’Connell St.

Not that it hadn’t been altered earlier though: here it is in the late 19th century where the right-hand two bays have been chopped off and replaced with that fun Victorian turreted building J. Seerski mentioned before:

If you hadn’t seen this picture, the later 1922 image would have led you to believe the whole house was still intact!
At least some of the fine buildings of this end were replaced with equally if not more distinguished structures in the reconstruction, and a unified scheme at that.