GrahamH
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Ooops you’re right J Seerski – for some reason the elimination of half of the upper street slipped my mind 😮 🙂
Yes this picture was taken in 1911, quite some time before the Civil War. Now that you raise it, I’ve never actually wondered what this terrace was built as post-1922 – though presumably similar to the Savoy terrace given the nature of the two corner buildings you mention, of which only one remains. Though did any of the Georgians survive given the mixture of buildings you mention that Findlaters occupied post-22?
Think a few pictures are in order…
Brilliant pic Frank – thanks!
Whatever about the fantastic perspective the pic offers, it’s even more interesting just showing how quickly they’re getting to work on the monument.
Presumably this was taken on Friday and Daniel’s being cleaned already – just three days after the scaffolding started to go up!
You can see another conservationist down on the right too – cleaning his, well, you can make it out there yourself… 😉
Good to see the trusty old kitchen roll in use on top there 🙂
Clearly it’s a painstaking process all the same given the size of the tools in use.It’s a pity there’s so many seagulls around – they’ll wreck it before the scaffolding barely even comes down.
Saying that, I’ve seen pictures of the head with a lot more droppings that those currently there, so the wind and rain must help somewhat.
Particularly looking forward to the appearance of the limestone base when cleaned.Regarding the Pro-Cathedral, reading some info by Desmond Guinness he says that the Pro-Cathedral was planned for the GPO site too, but they settled for the less conspicuous site of Marlborough St on account of anti-Catholic feeling post the 1798 Rebellion. Unless he too succumbed to the ‘rejection story’ put forward by the Church, and that in fact they wanted the free site all along as Thomond Park suggests…
So I don’t know…every single source I have says it was anti-Catholic feeling or anti-Catholic Corpo or Establishment forcing it to move…
Either way it still doesn’t explain why the Wide Streets Commission didn’t develop the terrace across the road.The order to build Lower Sackville St was granted in 1777, and it appears to have taken 7 or so years for all existing buildings to be demolished and the roadway to be laid out, as building of the terraces seems to have started in 1784 as far as I can make out.
Why would they stop building, or at least stop building in the same way, once reaching the now Clery’s terrace? :confused:I really ought to go to the Pearse St Library to find out more; they have every single WSC map and proposal in their City Archives. They must be magnificent to look at.
They ought to reveal all…Yes, I’ve seen that too and it’s very comprehensive.
The D of D does refer to McDonald’s book 🙂Yes the building was named after Findlaters who occupied the site for many years in a hodge-podge collection of buildings.
Here’s a picture of the 5 buildings they occupied:
And just look at the chimneys on them 🙂
Yes – and scribbling on the newly restored columns too :rolleyes:
Some beautiful images there – thanks! When you look closely you can see the slight distortion alright in the conjoined picture 🙂
I haven’t been in the auditorium since the restoration – apparently complaints about the way the seats are raked, or rather how they aren’t…
It’s such an inviting building to use now – the difference is extraordinary from the dingy place it once was – though those vast walls and acres of floorspace probably make it even more intimidating now 🙂Heheh – briliant!
But was the Pro-Cathedral not planned for the GPO site? I thought it moved to the inconspicious Marlborough St after this rejection rather than the terrace across the road. Was it planned for here too?
Were many WSC members sympathetic to Catholics?Great photo Ros – impossible to get a long shot of the building without a wide lense!
I was exceptionally annoyed (still am) that vast sums were lavished on this building’s exterior and interior, yet they failed to reinstate the Victorian sash windows – instead keeping the chunky timber casements put in probably when the building was rebuilt after fire in the 1940s.
They would have made such a difference 🙁Otherwise it was a job well done, and the entrance columns, which used to be black, look fantastic in that regal red.
It was built as the town’s Corn Exchange in around 1859-64 just at the end of the Italianate craze, but the company went into liquidation inside a few years when it moved into the town’s ownership. A quite grand auditorium was built inside I believe, but it was gutted by fire and replaced with a vaguely Art Deco interior.
Shiver…
But an arguement that is also put across is that if people do move into villages and small towns, all they’ll be living in is suburban estates tacked onto the side of them – perhaps not as alienated as the vast estates we see at the moment, but still harshly urban (for people who want to live with even a degree of rural ambience), poorly designed and developer driven…
Well classicism is always going to win favour in these decluttered times 🙂
Yes the New Mart Monster Store/Delany’s/Imperial Hotel/Clery’s – what ever you want to call it – was an extraordinary building. Very unusual to have such an early, not to mention so large an example of Victorian architecture in Dublin city centre.
As far as I can make out the Imperial Hotel opened in 1837, but probably in a couple of Georgians like the Gresham, before the new building was built with the monster store on the ground floor, in 1850-3. The door there to the right provided access to the hotel and the floors directly above it are also distinguished from the rest of the facade by a slight change in design. I woudn’t be surprised if this famous 1853 watercolour of the street was commissioned by the owners…
The burnt out shell of it post-1916 is an extraordinary sight.In the reconstruction the new Clery’s consumed the whole terrace right up to what is now Sackville Place: you can see in the image above that there’s more buildings to the right of it unlike today.
The only thing that I can think of about this terrace’s height is that the site was left undeveloped because of the major building proposed for the site – notably plans for what is now Connolly Station to be located there, opposite the GPO.
But if so, then the WSC must have had plans for the site long before the railways, if they left it undeveloped in the 1780s.
Did they have something in mind?Yes, the density of five storeys that these were built to is impressive, and how extensive office space was built above retailers at ground level which really helped in boosting the city centre.
Despite the WSC development all about the city centre, most of it is still only 4 storeys, even much Grafton St not going above 4 floors.Which is why I’ve wondered about this terrace beside Clery’s for ages.
There is something very suspicious about it. How is it that all of O’Connell St is 5 storeys, yet this terrace is only 4?
Ever since Lower O’Connell St was built in the 1780s this single terrace has always been 4 storeys – why?!
Not even the Wide Streets Commission developed it, or properly at least.And through the Victorian age, past the Edwardians and out the other side of 1916 it still remained at four storeys!
No wonder Horace O’Rourke was dissatisfied with the way Lower O’Cll St was redeveloped post-1916.Why would the owners only rebuild to the previous height – was it just not worth their while going higher or was there another reason? It’s almost as if there’s sightlines being protected or something…
The image below is a composite of the terrace ‘through the ages’, including a Georgian terrace on the site in 1818 which seems to be a surviving part of Drogheda St given the older window frames and mish-mash of heights etc.
In a later Victorian image below, the parapet seems to have been regularised, if not the entire terrace rebuilt according to the WSC at late stage.This terrace really doesn’t seem to make sense, especially when one considers the old Bank of Ireland next door, which as you can see in one pic, has been historically taller than the others since the Victorians got away with a tall structure next to the bulk of the old Clery’s.
So when rebuilding started – this single tall building to the side of Clery’s was rebuilt to its original height, while the rest of the terrace was still kept to its orginal four storeys!
In the context of the rest of the street this terrace is not successful in adding to the whole in height terms.😀
Leave my jumpers alone – pink is the new black I’ll have you know!
Anyway architecture students aren’t ones to talk – I can just see you now, all lined up in your black polonecks scoffing at the masses belew 🙂Increasingly are buildings going to be designed with smokers in mind, with sheltered areas that are part of the architecture of the building rather that just afterthoughts tacked on?
It is interesting how people congregate alright – schools and colleges are notorious for it. This is definitely an area that greater thought should be put into, especially considering the throngs of smokers shoved outdoors nowadays.😀
Ah, when I was young now, back in the day…
Just sounded so funny ‘it allowed for perching’ lol.
Hate groups like you lot – intimidating everyone going by. Bet you made sheep noises too 🙂Yes, the coverings are great, even if they do cover some of the white bark of the weeping birches on the median.
The lower stretch is usually very empty between 9 and 11 or so – great time to be there 🙂Manfield Chambers needs a restoration of its magificent steel windows (the wooden interior frames are a bit unfortunate from outside).
Also a removal of the nasty replacement windows in all of its top floor is in order, including the Abbey St elevation, as with that billboard.The Clarks shopfront supports the upper facade well, esp the piers aligning with the columns above.
The term cities is so often used in this debate.
There are alternative settlement patterns you know 🙂Yes DaM, had to laugh at the lack of connection between the issue of one-off dveleopment and rural walking.
One would wonder though if many tourists find it a charming feature of Ireland to have the landscape dotted with houses – ‘the lights of the parish sparkling in the hills’…
Itr is ironic that the term parish is often used when often there’s not a church to be had for miles.Have to ask again though – is the issue of sustainablity regarding car-dependancy a void one?
No matter what way you look at it, the oil’s going to go inside 50 years at best, with prices soaring in the interim.
It is often noted with the one-off issue that the long-term is not considered. Well if one does consider the long-term, alternative sustainable energy forms will have have to been developed by then; all our one-offers could be sailing around in their wind generated-electricity powered cars…
Likewise septic tank technology will have moved on, or rather the technologies that other EU states have will finally have been enforced over here.Is this not an issue of traffic generation, cost of supplying services, and aesthetics, rather than an environmental one?
Apologies if that sounds naive, but I just think we need to look in the long term on all fronts.…the unfinished and endearingly lop-sided lampposts being particularly worthy of conservation…
Here’s the new trees on Lower O’Cll St. This whole stretch up to the GPO looks best in the morning I think.
The sun just bounces off Easons and Manfield Chambers and the GPO and new paving and the shiny bins etc – lovely and bright and warm – so uplifting 🙂And loads of space around then too, with the wide pavements being deserted at times.
I don’t think they’ve ever been cleaned, save the bases of the plinths of some of the monuments which may been pressure-washed but a handful of times over their lifetime.
Agreed that it is money well spent – indeed I would have thought it to cost over the half-million mark given the scale of O’Connell and Parnell. Presumably the former is guzzling most of the funds.
These monuments are of national importance even if they’re nothing spectacular by international standards.
The fact that Dublin City Council is shouldering the entire cost is a credit to them – even if they’ve no option 🙂I just wonder, what would some parties/people’s reaction be if it were necessary to carry out an extensive and costly restoration of the Albert Monument on Leinster Lawn…
Here’s Eloquence with the nasty wound in her upper arm – I’d get that seen to 🙂
Here’s the link to today’s interview with Frank McDonald and Dick Roche.
Emer O’ Siochru is interviewed as the first item on the programme. Scroll to roughly 1 hr 35 mins in for Roche & McDonald.http://www.rte.ie/rams/radio/latest/rte-todaywithpatkenny.smil
Just listening to it, you have to ask the question – what is the point of making procedures more favourable to those with direct links to an area? What is the point?
If there is nothing wrong with one-off housing, why the emphasis on those with links to an area or those with special needs?!Thanks for telling us about that Fergus as I missed it the past few years. Went along today – what a great way to spend a lunch hour 🙂
The amplification is a bit unfortunate but necessary tool. An electric keyboard however was an apt subsitute to a William Moore harpsichord 🙂
Very good crowd gathered – with Kennan & Sons acting as a wonderfully evocative backdrop – setting the Georgian scene:
