The Montague Burton Building is an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

commercial building on the corner of

Dame Street Dame Street (; ) is a large thoroughfare in Dublin, Ireland. History The street takes its name from a dam built across the River Poddle to provide water power for milling. First appears in records under this name around 1610 but in the 14th c ...

and

South Great George's Street South Great George's Street is a street in south-central Dublin, Ireland. History Early history and naming The area is associated with Early Scandinavian Dublin. Four burials excavated near South Great George's Street were also associated ...

Dublin, Ireland 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 cen ...

. It was constructed between 1929 and 1930 and designed by architect Harry Wilson. Named after

Montague Burton Sir Montague Maurice Burton (15 August 1885 – 21 September 1952) was the founder of Burton Menswear, one of Britain's largest chains of clothes shops. Early life Born Meshe David Osinsky and a Lithuanian Jew in Kurkliai, Kaunas provinc ...

, the founder of the Burton department store chain, the building was originally home to an early Dublin branch of the menswear retailer. It later became a

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

electrical store. Currently, it is home to a branch of

SPAR SPAR, originally DESPAR, styled as DE SPAR, is a Dutch multinational that provides branding, supplies and support services for independently owned and operated food retail stores. It was founded in the Netherlands in 1932, by Adriaan van Well, ...

that is known colloquially as "gay SPAR" by members of the city's

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

community. This is because of its close proximity to The George, which is one of the city's oldest gay bars.

Architecture

The building is typical of early 20th century Burton stores. Montague Burton was known for selecting prominent city centre corner sites. Leeds-based architect Wilson designed the Dublin store in the Burton in-house style, which was almost always Art Deco. According to Ireland's National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, the building is an example of post-

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

retail development that makes use of wraparound shopfronts. Its roof, while having a

mansard A mansard or mansard roof (also called a French roof or curb roof) is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope, punctured by dormer windows, at a steeper angle than the upper. The ...

appearance from the street, is actually flat and incorporates five pyramid-shaped roof lights. The entire building is on the city's list of protected structures.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures completed in 1930 Art Deco architecture in Ireland Buildings and structures in Dublin (city)