gunter
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
@Seamus O’G wrote:
I think that amount of the BOI building may very well be visible from Leeson Street Bridge, I am, however, sceptical that that was or is the case at the lower level (along the canal) where the picture seems to have been drawn.
Your observations have been cordially noted.
@Peter Fitz wrote:
No sure if either stack up though, certainly some artistic license used either way.
Let’s get one thing straight, what was drawn was what was there, I will not have gunter’s drafting accuracy impugned. To settle this matter, later today I will go down there with a bloody camera, like I should have done in the first place.
Phil got it straight away! the IDA building on the Fitzwilliam Tennis Club site, OK.
@Seamus O’G wrote:
But how can this be, Gunter? What’s happened to the stretch of Georgian houses along Lower Baggot Street -i.e. IBEC (ca. no. 90) to Fitzwilliam Street. If it was Wilton Place you probably wouldn’t have been able to see the B of I buliding above the Baggot Street rooftops, and surely not to the extent which is depicted?:confused:
Seamus: gunter didn’t invest his sketches with imagination, if it wasn’t there it wasn’t drawn.
I think we’re seeing the top four and a half storeys of the 9 storey B of I block over the four and half storey roof-tops of lower Baggot Street, that would be about right, no? Must go back down when the leaves fall and have a look see.
Graham: On the Georgian, your logic is flawless and the street might even been mentioned in a different context.
I should have acknowledged that Phil nailed it first with ctesiphon also in the pack.
On ctesiphon’s:
I know this one, but alas am currently unable to locate it@Seamus O’G wrote:
. . . the IDA/An Foras Forbatha (sp?), WMK, etc, building – was built on the former grounds of Fitzwilliam Tennis Club.
Perhaps Gunter has a picture in his extensive collection of Rod Laver serving for the match against a backdrop of Georgian Dublin – as apparently he did in the Irish Open on a number of occasions – to help us get our bearings right.:D
More interested in the short skirts, I’m afraid.
Spot on about the building site!
The full sketch with B of I in the distance and canal in foreground.The half demolished Georgian is on the other side of town.
I do realize that dodgy sketches of buildings demolished in the 1980s places some of the more juvenile members at a disadvantage, which also pleases me.
A slow day, so here’s a couple more teasers from the attic:
A Georgian and it’s half demolished neighbour from the 80s, all cleared shortly afterwards.
A detail of a sketch showing an office block under construction.@jdivision wrote:
I think it’s dreadful and have thought so since the “brickwork” was unveiled.
I’ve never been a fan of tiled-on brickwork, but at least here it’s just used as a framed panel and the colour is perfect, if the intention was to reference Dublin brickwork from the early Georgian period, i.e. when York Street was originally developed.
I also like the composition of the York Street elevation which does a nice job in varying the module width (not dissimilar to original plot widths) and it has a base and, best of all, a top. Even on narrow streets, roof-scapes can be important and this one (York Street frontage) has an elegant roof-scape.
It all breaks down a bit on the Mercer Street frontage, but eventually an opposing streetscape here may reduce the impact of the clutter on the roof here and the dodgy composition.
@GrahamH wrote:
ahhh South Frederick Street.
Made it too easy!
The oriels would have stumped me too, I have absolutely no memory of them either, must have blanked them out.
South Fredrick Street today.@hutton wrote:
K and L – St Georges as well… and they’re not the only ones 😉
Are N & T part of the cornice of St. Georges, Hardwick St. ?
Y might have been a bit too difficult, this is a slightly wider view which may help.
The first 3 houses (one half shown) are still there, the other 7 were demolished in the late 80s or early 90s.
Y +@Seamus O’G wrote:
a pure guess at Y. Holles Street.
Y has a slight slope, but it’s not Holles Street. It would be a bit older than that too.
@hutton wrote:
Re: Lower Mount Street
Indeed it was Seamus – the wreckers got hold of it in the 70’s and 80’s, and destroyed what was one of the finest Georgian Streets in the city – its all well documented in Frank McD’s “Destruction of Dublin” 🙁
I don’t think Lower Mount Street ever had the unity of Upper Mount street, but that doesn’t excuse the wanton destruction of so many of it’s original houses. For years, the street became a bye-line for dreary ‘modern’ office block architecture, didn’t somebody likened the streetscape of Lower Mount Street to ‘the view from the inside of a coffin’ ?
The neo-Georgian blocks were probably a reaction against the commercial, as much as the artistic, failure of the earlier ‘modern’ blocks, but they, in turn, brought their own shallowness to the streetscape. In any radio discussion on the state of Dublin, Lower Mount Street would always be mentioned and everyone knew exactly what was meant.
A couple of shots of the street today, including the neo-Georgian block that replaced the three houses in the sketch.
. . . and the next section further east, where an extensive renovation and conservation project on a group of houses that, I think had been a convent, has just been completed.
Some signs here that the street is on the way back up, or is it just the trees?@Ebear wrote:
Stephens Place/Lower Mount Street?
Very good!
X is Lower Mount Street just behind O’Dwyer’s Pub. The laneway runs to an archway on Upper Mount Street, with the mews in view to the rear of Merrion Square East.
@alonso wrote:
is x near baggot street lower – with the mews being Lad Lane? Only other guess would be Fitzwilliam Lane
For X, alonso and phil are in the right general area; south side Georgian core.
All order seems to broken down on this thread.
As far as I can tell, were still looking for a bunch of heads (surely K & L must be Hardwick St Church, if G is), a garishly tiled entrance lobby, a door knocker featuring a hand fondling a knob (is it a religious house by any chance?) and a plaque with something on it about public lighting & water meter station (no picture supplied)!
If that’s where we’re at, now might be a good time to throw in some sketches, which may not be very accurate, of some houses that aren’t there any more, with the same question: where?
X
YOne is dated ’24 Jan 1982′ and I think the other would be from about the same time, or slightly later.
@ctesiphon wrote:
More of the same ill-informed tosh from the Irish Daily Mail, 25.ix.08:
If only there was as much concern for the trees that died in order to produce the paper on which this crap was printed. Such a waste of life…
Don’t make them go out of business, they’re the cheepest place to re-run planning ads when you’ve missed the deadline the first time round.
@shanekeane wrote:
Let me get this straight. This idiot insulted the guy who curated the Venice Biennale in order to get him back because he told the truth about the general shittiness of Irish architecture, and you think it was a good article?
So Frank McDonald is an idiot! that’s insightful.
This is the man who stood up and exposed to view (with very few others, notably Uinseann McEoin) the bastards who were busily destroying this city.
Not just that, more than anyone else, Frank McDonald is the man who introduced the subject of architecture into the daily debate through the medium of a daily newspaper, when all others treated architecture as a no-go zone, or just reprinted the developers press releases and promo pictures.
IMO, if it hadn’t been for Frank McDonald, public consciousness of architecture and planning in this country would still mentally be in the 1980s.
From what I know of Betsky, he is also a shrewd critic of architecture, but, by many accounts (not just Frank’s), he is a lousy curator of an architectural exhibition. To me, what made McDonald’s article interesting was his willingness to criticize the whole show, rather than just laud the various Irish exhibits, which is what the majority of his audience would have been expecting of him.
Every time the state of dress of an international architectural emperor is questioned by our own tiny architectural community, I see a glimmer of hope that soon we will have the confidence to shape our own architecture and stop being in awe of these people and the stuff they strut.
The less than effusive reaction to Foster’s offering at the Clarence and O’Laoire’s blunt rebuke to Liebeskind are other recent glimmers of hope.
Where I would suggest that Frank may have gone off the boil in recent times was on matters such as the current revised draft DDDA development plan, the whole ‘Liffey Island’ pprposal, the ‘high rise’ debate and several significant development proposals for sensitive city centre sites which have legitimate conservation issues in the process of being trampled into the ground.
Great post reddy.
BTW, I think Frank had a bit of a return to form in the IT today, he had gone pipe and slippers there for a while.
‘J’ and ‘S’ are a pair, and a high class pair at that.
They are screwed into the front facade at first floor level of no. 40 Bolton Street (3 doors from the Henrietta St corner).
The house is a probable former ‘Billy’, like no. 39 next door, which is how this picture found itself in gunter’s collection.
