Survey Data
Reg No
50020016
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural
Original Use
House
Historical Use
Shop/retail outlet
In Use As
Shop/retail outlet
Date
1770 - 1790
Coordinates
315436, 234057
Date Recorded
15/03/2015
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached two-bay five-storey former townhouse, built c.1780, having recent shopfront to front (east) elevation. Now in use as shop, with apartments to upper floors. Hipped roof, set perpendicular to street, hidden behind smooth rendered parapet having cut granite coping, with brown brick chimneystack. Smooth rendered walls. Square-headed window openings having masonry sills and replacement timber windows. Square-headed window and door openings to recent shopfront. Situated on west side and south end of Parliament Street.
Appraisal
Parliament Street is the first example of formal axial planning in mid-eighteenth-century Dublin. When George Semple designed the rebuilding of Essex Bridge (1753-55) his plan showed a new wide street linking the bridge to Dublin Castle, and this plan for the street was implemented by the Wide Street Commissioners in 1762. Many of the buildings, including this one, were adapted and rebuilt in the nineteenth century. It shares a parapet height with its neighbour to the north lending a sense of continuity to the streetscape. The decreasing scale of fenestration to the upper floors attributes a hierarchy to each floor, creating a pleasantly balanced façade. Historic maps show that the building was formerly numbered 25 Parliament Street. It is described in Thom's Directory of 1862 as being in use as by a merchant tailor and military outfitter.