Mount Street Lower () is a street in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

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

The street runs from Merrion Square to

Northumberland Road Northumberland Road () is a Victorian street in Ballsbridge, Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland. The street was named after Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland in 1844, and built on the site of the earlier Blenheim Street. The pr ...

. Mount Street Upper runs parallel to the street to the south.

History

Approval was obtained from the

Wide Streets Commission The Wide Streets Commission (officially the Commissioners for making Wide and Convenient Ways, Streets and Passages) was established by an Act of Parliament in 1758, at the request of Dublin Corporation, as a body to govern standards on the layou ...

in 1791 to develop the street. It was developed by Crosthwaite and Grant, having purchased the land from Samuel Sproule. The buildings were well received, but construction paused in the mid-1790s and resumed in the 1800s. There were 29 houses on the street by 1834. During the events of the

Easter Rising The Easter Rising ( ga, Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the a ...

, one of the more successful battles for the Irish volunteers took place at Mount Street Bridge, now known as McKenny's Bridge. By the mid-20th century, the houses were largely

tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

s, which housed a large inner-city community. The whole street was zoned for offices and none of the houses were listed for preservation. Over 60 Georgian houses were eventually demolished. The first office block was Prizebond House, which Frank McDonald described as "one of the worst modern buildings in Dublin" which replaced a terrace of 9 houses, one of which had belonged to Neil Goold-Verschoyle. Prizebond House was designed by M. W. Design in Cheshire, and was completed in 1970. Bridge House (later Lombard and Ulster House) and Ferry House were both designed by Burke-Kennedy Doyle for Dodder Properties. The same company developed Clanwilliam Court, on the site of Clanwilliam House which had been destroyed during the battle in 1916. The complex was built between 1974 and 1978, with 6 office blocks designed by Austin Murray. Only a small number of the original Georgian houses have survived: numbers 3–6, 15–18, 31 and 64. Number 64 was built for the Putland family around 1790, and is a large 5-bay house with 4 storeys over a basement. It was purchased by the

Bon Secours Sisters The Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours is an international Roman Catholic women's religious congregation for nursing (''gardes malades''), whose declared mission is to care for those who are sick and dying. It was founded by Josephine Pot ...

in 1866, who added an Ionic tripartite entrance, and a large room at the rear which was the chapel. Of the modern office blocks, the 1991 buildings at 65-66 by

Andrej Andrey, Andrej or Andrei (in Cyrillic script: Андрей, Андреј or Андрэй) is a form of Andreas/ Ἀνδρέας in Slavic languages and Romanian. People with the name include: *Andrei of Polotsk ( – 1399), Lithuanian nobleman * ...

and Danuta Wejchert are deemed the most successful. At 67-72 is the office block designed by Stephenson Gibney & Associates for the Irish Diary Board in 1972. The long brick facade of Grattan Court is deemed to have been particularly damaging to the streetscape.

References

Sources * *

External links

{{Streets in Dublin city, state=autocollapse Streets in Dublin (city)