1780s – No.45 Lower O’Connell Street, Dublin

The end of a unified Wide Street Commission terrace at the corner of Abbey Street and O’Connell Street. A fine street facade for a public house was inserted in the later 19th century, later a YMCA Tea and Coffee House. In Victorian Britain and Ireland, the temperance movement often set up coffeehouses (also known as coffee taverns) for the working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the public house. Extended into No.46 around 1895 by George P. Beater on behalf of Elvery & Co and known as “Elephant House”. Destroyed during the Easter Rising of 1916 and rebuilt for Elvery & Co.

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