Fenian Street is a street in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
.
Location
Fenian Street runs from
Lincoln Place at the western end, to Hogan Place at the eastern end, parallel with
Pearse Street
Pearse Street () (formerly Great Brunswick Street) is a major street in Dublin. It runs from College Street in the west to MacMahon Bridge in the east, and is one of the city's longest streets. It has several different types of residential and c ...
.
History
Fenian Street was formally called Denzille or Denzil Street, first appearing on maps around 1770. It was named after the son of
John Holles, Denzille Holles. It was renamed Fenian Street, after the
Fenian Brotherhood
The Fenian Brotherhood () was an Irish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). M ...
, who operated from the street in the 1850s.
On 12 June 1963, 2a, 3, and 4 Fenian Street tenement houses collapsed. This resulted in the deaths of two young girls, Linda Byrne (aged 8) and Marion Vardy (aged 9), who were passing the building when it collapsed. The collapse was blamed on the fast drying out of water saturated bricks after a period of heavy rain, and prompted demands for poorly maintained and dangerous tenement buildings to be demolished. In the 18 months after the collapse on Fenian Street, over 1200
Georgian houses in Dublin were demolished.
Architecture
No. 25 Fenian Street is one of the oldest buildings in the area, predating the layout of nearby
Merrion Square
Merrion Square () is a Georgian garden square on the southside of Dublin city centre.
History
The square was laid out in 1752 by the estate of Viscount FitzWilliam and was largely complete by the beginning of the 19th century. The demand fo ...
. Dating from the 17th century, the street would have been a coastal road at the time of construction, with the house facing the coastline and bay. The current building was first built in 1729 with a high pitched roof which was later amended to a more
Palladian
Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective and ...
style. The building was subject to emergency remedial works in 2015.
is a notable building on the corner of Fenian Street and Sandwith Street.
See also
*
List of streets and squares in Dublin
References
External links
News report on unsafe tenement buildings from RTÉ News 1 October 1971
{{Streets in Dublin city, state=autocollapse
Streets in Dublin (city)