GrahamH

Well their presence on O’Connell St is always noticable – and reassuring, though they should get up a bit more from leaning against the GPO all day; it’s probably notorious within the force by now: ‘ah I’m GPOing today’…

@Thomond Park wrote:

Marlborough St…is an utter disgrace when you consider that this Street contains

1> The Cathedral of the majority religion.
2> The National Theatre
3> The Planning Appeals Board
4> The Headquarters of the Department of Education.
5> The most important Tourism and hospitality College in the Country

That’s a very good point – it is a major street, yet is in bits for the most part, including the public domain of the Catherdral area even if the buildings are of significance around here.
It’s a very strange place all the same – it doesn’t feel like a street because it varies so substantially in nature along its length, from a parkland feel around the Dept of Education, to deserted roadway further up (lovely Gerogians though), to a coach park in others, to 70s timewarp at the southern end.

Agreed it is in a disgraceful condition in parts, and generally poor overall. Whatever about the delays on O’Connell St, the IAP hasn’t come next or near any other street at all! Marlborough St, Sackville Place, Parnell St, Westmoreland St, D’Olier St, College St, Hawkins St, Burgh Quay…

At least some owners are making an effort on Marlborough St – these Georgians are just coming to the end of an extensive restoration and look magnificent, incl the delightful pawnbrokers sign]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v219/Dublin1/MarlboroughStGeorgians.jpg[/IMG]

Stephen you raised an interesting point about Marlborough St not needing expensive granite paving, it doesn’t, or most other streets for that matter. But what is so ridiculously ironic at the minute regarding this idea is the fact that the temporary concrete paving currently going down on Upper O’Connell St to accomodate the new works is without doubt the best paving this area has seen in 20 years! Upper O’Connell St has never looked so good!

It really goes to show the shameful, shambolic ignorance the Corporation, and even latter City Council paid to this street. Since the mid-late 90s O’Cll St’s paving was in bits – dangerously so in places: and yet only now, at the end of the old layout’s life, when it is needed least in terms of expected lifespan, brand new concrete paving is laid for temporary works lasting perhaps 12 moths, despite it beingh capable of lasting 12 years!

The regular new kerbstones and evenly laid paving slabs highlight more than anything the shambolic state of the older pavements, but moreover how simple and cheap it would have been to replace them, even as late as 1998-2000 in anticiption of the IAP works.
There is a form of paving in between salubrious granite and dereliction – something the Corpo didn’t seem to pick up on.

Some pics of Fr Matthew and wow, he is indeed marble! What a transformation!

Can’t wait to see what he looks like in contrast with the deadpan limestone base – what a contribution he’ll make to the streetscape. He’s turned into one of the finest monuments on the street! Considering he’s been there since 1893, it’s hardly surprising he was that dirty.

Also Larkin – the plinth looking very well:

He doesn’t look much different on top – as to be expected really: just traffic dirt removed and a protective coating applied:

Finally William Smith O’Brien has just gone uder scaffolding and cleaning is already underway – there’s suspicous rumblings going on inside 🙂

We can expect him to emerge sparlking white too, given he was sculpted of marble also and is blatenty white in most old photographs such as above.

Or favourite Irish kerbstone 😀

It’d be difficult to draw up a shortlist of posts though, as smaller ones can’t really compete with the larger.
Also the more well known ones will always have a headstart – bit like the bridge poll, it might as well be titled ‘What is Dublin’s most famous bridge?’ 🙂 (though O’Donovan Rossa has proved surprisingly popular)

That’s interesting about Leeson Park – trying think of what’s there now but it escapes me…
Still lots of lovely little green column posts in the area though, often gas orginally but with c1900 electric decorative heads on them with delicate foliage detail & shamrocks etc.

Yes the centred lights are very effective at lighting the streets. Despite the new ones being contemporary, they’re still traditionally styled – essentially they’re the lamp of the standard Dublin silver column painted black.

A year for repaving is pushing it, not least considering it’s much more than just a paving job, but certainly two-three years is not an unreasonable expectation. The pace has been exceptionally slow considering less than half has been completed in that time alone – remembering that the south-eastern section has yet to be dealt with in any form. The time taken thus far would not be so disagreeable were it not for the six year delay it took to get physical work started on the street in the first instance, as has been said so many times by so many people. And this in turn after proposals since the 1980s to get something done about the street!

To reminisce also – I remember standing under the vast canopy of the lower median trees next to a mock-Victorian iron seat in freezing November of 2002 and thinking of how amazing O’Connell St was going to look upon completion in a few years time.
It was impossible to imagine the thoroughfare without the trees – what it would look like minus their canopy, without the trademark heritage lampposts, without the traditional seating, without the red brick-edged wide median, without the man who used to always sit on the seat opposite Eason’s.
It was exciting that O’Connell St was going to be cleared out of mismatched elements and a cohesive scheme for the whole street, the whole street, was to be constructed from scratch.

The plaza element has materialised as expected, and hugely successfully save perhaps its median area being a bit strange.

The side pavements have materialised as planned, again very successful.

The quality of the works promised has materialised, the attention to detail superb: for example the way the paving elegantly slopes down at crossings to meet the road level as if lightly pressed down like modelling clay – really exquisitely executed.

The exposure of the monuments has materialised to great effect – now once again central features of the street.

What has not materialised, what as I and most people I know were most impressed about was the Champs Elysées-like order intended for the thoroughfare – the bold, radical even, but nonetheless simple planting arrangement for the median space.
Likewise the street’s symmetry has been diluted with granite paving spilling over for no reason from the plaza onto the roadway, and the plaza into the median-proper due to a lack of tree definition.

The very first aim of tree use on the street that the IAP sets out is to ‘create a high level of spatial definition’.
It also states at the outset of the Public Domain section ‘How often have we witnessed…street-planting which is inappropriate to its location, all contributing to a feeling of clutter and over-design on an ad hoc and unintegrated basis.’

Also: ‘A properly constituted strategy for the creation of a visually cohesive and coherent public domain will be based on the identification of precise needs for each component of the urban fabric…’
Unfortunately it doesn’t identify the layout and form of the street as a one of them 🙁

Of course most of this is entirely subjective; one person’s cohesiveness is another’s chaos – and yes the ordered symmetry has materialised with the side pavement trees, but the median ones just dilute their impact to a degree that is detrimental to the cohesive design intended. I feel the street very simply is too narrow and too fragmented, especially the lower end, to accommodate so much variation.

Yes eerie is an appropriate description, including the daylight hours! It is a most bizzare place now: not a main street, but not a secondary one either, located just off a major thoroughfare yet recieves little to no traffic. It’s more of a leftover space than a street.

It’s in a prime loaction yet there’s absolutely nothing on it – including people! Do you ever get the feeling walking along here that everyone’s very hushed and slightly nervous cause the street just feels so silent and weird?!

Agreed about the Luas works not finishing the place off properly; whereas the lack of traffic is great – it’s now one of the most pedestrian friendly streets in the city – some landscaping is badly needed. Not to go on about the linear thing again, but considering there’s no breaks on Middle Abbey St at all save the Arnotts car park, a very impressive avenue of trees could be planted here that’d really look fantastic.

Something along the lines of the beautiful species of tree on Talbot St of all places – anyone see them?
They probably get mostly ignored due to people walking with their heads down along here for obvious reasons :), but they’re very attractive, esp when ‘leafing’ if there’s such a word, in spring.
I’m sure Peter knows what they are…:

Regarding O’Connell St, agreed about the median not being a fiasco. From a functional perspective it’s simply the bikes that are causing the problem – get rid of them and all is solved in that respect, though considering the attention to detail in the manner they were put down it seems they’re permanent… The fact as J. Serski pointed out that the median is now narrower than the old does not help either in fitting the bike parks in, whatever about the appearance.
Abbey St should be able to absorb a lot, as well as Cathal Brugha St for the northern end.

It’s a pity the Luas sub-station could not have been sunk; its sheer scale is going to significantly bulk out what is supposed to be a simple kiosk, not a dominant structure. Judging by the pictures though it will be finished off very well.
And just on the sinking of services, why was this 80s signal box dumped back down from space into the middle of the Eason’s pavement?!

Agreed that it is important to acknowledge the quality of the works executed – and yes the plaza is really magnificent, especially now in the summer sun; the limes look fantastic!

…which really confirms for me what a disaster it has been not to have used them on the median, or indeed any regular planting scheme. It has been such a cop-out to go for the ‘intimate’ or ‘varied’ or whatever they’re calling it scheme of sextets of trees.
The entire the street has been almost ‘plazafied’ as a result, not just the area outside the GPO.
To see how magnificently the limes define the Plaza, not to mention how good they look in their own right makes it such a crying shame to be able to see the scheme that could have been for the street at large 🙁

Regarding the maintenance of the median, it’s difficult to envisage an alternative layout given the monuments on the street and how traffic and pedestrians would interact if the median was removed, and indeed what would replace it. No doubt all options were considered at the planning stage and this was decided as the best or at least most workable of layouts.

But certainly agreed it is nothing short of redundant in places with the bicycle parking there; it is ridiculous, not only making the area hostile to pedestrians as a route, but also contributing in a major way to the already undesirable clutter of the space. And whatever about the bicycles, the motorbikes are just a joke.

I walk down this median stretch almost every day – it is ludicrous that the only space for pedestrians to get by behind Sir John Grey there is at times a mere two feet of pavement – essentially the kerbline – either side of the parked bikes in an effort to continue on to the Abbey St junction.
The amount of people walking down in this direction that cross over to the side pavements before even reaching the bikes is notable.

Fundamentally with the median the case for retention other than the monument aspect has two elements to it, i.e. the median should be retained firstly to define the linear nature of the street, and secondly to provide an alternative, not to mention more relaxed and pleasant route for pedestrians. As I see it the first case has not been fulfilled at all, while the second only in part.

Regarding the median lampposts – never liked them since the moment they went in, both their design which is seen in every ‘cool’ urban development in the city, not to mention Western Europe, and more importantly their number: there’s a set of two every 15 paces! Combined with the mixture of trees, traffic poles, Luas sign poles and everything else that is going on, it’s just busy busy busy. The coherence of the median, the purpose of the median, is swallowed up.

To use pastiche lighting on a large scale on the street I think would have been a complete cop-out though – modern street furniture is generally highly compatible with older environments, unlike what one may think about using the form with buildings, in most cases furniture is detached from the buildings around quite unlike any other form of structure.

But I agree about the new tall posts; first and foremost if you take them out of their environment and view them objectively as pieces of design, they fall flat on their faces. Unlike other lampposts that have graced the street, whether they be the first 1892 electric posts, the Celtic-influenced 1903ish ones, or the grand modern Art Deco posts, they all held up in their own right – these new ones don’t. They’re functional and crude, doing two jobs in one – although I think the domed heads are well-designed as said before.

Whereas I wouldn’t like to see pastiche lighting on the street, posts that were broadly classical in nature, i.e. simple but elegant should have been used, something Edwardian design successfully managed by combining classicism with modern influences. Posts that look well on their own as well as in a team marching down the street should have been used – as have always been used on O’Connell St in modern times.
Also I hate those gimmicky sign yokes attached to the lampposts – just a personal thing suppose – but I really detest them – and they’re popping up in every town and village in the country! I think they’re particularly inappropriate for the capital’s main street though – think they look naff 😮

Some good points – gasp there’s good points graham? 😮 🙂 – the quality of works has been superb, both the materials and the craftsmanship.
Also the levels of maintenance have shot through the roof – from litter cleaning, to emptying of bins, to polishing of bins, to replacement of trees, to tweaking of traffic lights, to road and pavement cleansing and sweeping – really superb. The newly completed end is being kept in pristine condition.

Also late at night the street feels a million time safer than before, open and spacious, brightly lit in white light and so much more inviting than before. This was a major aim of the IAP and it has been hugely successful I think.
(though just one point about the plaza lighting – the lamps at the top for some strange reason are not directed into the centre of the plaza – rather pointed just below around the area of the posts themselves. They need to be tweaked tol ight the median of the plaza also – very surprising considering this is the whole purpose of them!)

What do you mean J. Seerski about the pavaemnt sizes being inconsistant? Regarding the granite kerbstones, presumably they’re being restored and kept ofr other uses. By now the CC are well aware of their value across the city – not every removal has negative intentions behind it anymore!

If not better – what a lovely breathing space it could have been for that whole area.

Changing things for the sake of the new is something that is widespread in Ireland today and by no means just limited to public bodies or private companies. Unfortunately it’s what’s fuelling so much in contruction at the minute, particularly poorly designed bog standard housing; the allure of the new hides everything until five/ten/fifteen years down the line and only then it’s realised that ‘today’ or ‘now’ is no better than any other time – things go in and out of fashion as ever.

Agreed that O’Connell Monument needs to rise out of the ground, in which instance I think it’d look better without the railings judging by that earlier pic. But in the current situation they could look very well.
Surely they’re kicking around somewhere in a CC yard or in use surrounding a flowerbed in a park somewhere – it seems highly unlikely they would’ve been dumped or sold on – they would have come in handy for a twee use in a public garden somewhere. The Corpo hadly sold on the O’Connell Monument railings – would they…?

Here’s some pics of the newly restored, slightly shell-shocked looking Sheahan Memorial. It was in shadow at the time so I had to focus on details. It seems just a cleaning and weather treatment job was done, leaving minor damage as it was.There’s a pic at the bottom too:

Reigned in by the authorities yet again – Larkin looks like he’s ready to explode with rage 😮

Also a pic here of two of the information signs gone up on the hoardings (sorry about quality):