Sunlight Chambers is a commercial office building on the corner of Parliament Street and Essex Quay in the Temple Bar area of Dublin. It was designed by architect Edward Ould in an

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style and was named after Lever Brothers' Sunlight detergent brand.

History

Lever Brothers was founded in 1895 by brothers William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), and James Darcy Lever (1854–1916). Together with chemist William Hough, the brothers created a soap that used

glycerin Glycerol () is a simple triol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, sweet-tasting, viscous liquid. The glycerol backbone is found in lipids known as glycerides. It is also widely used as a sweetener in the food industry and as a humectant in pha ...

and vegetable oils such as

palm oil Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 36% of global oils produced from o ...

instead of

tallow Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton suet, primarily made up of triglycerides. In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton suet. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, inc ...

. The resulting soap was free-lathering. At first, it was named Honey Soap but later became "

Sunlight Soap Sunlight is a brand of laundry soap, laundry detergent and dishwashing detergent manufactured and marketed around the world by Unilever, except in the United States and Canada, where it has been owned by Sun Products (now Henkel Corporati ...

". In 1899, the brothers leased land opposite

Grattan Bridge Grattan Bridge () is a road bridge spanning the River Liffey in Dublin, Ireland, and joining Capel Street to Parliament Street, Dublin, Parliament Street and the Dublin quays, south quays. History 1st Essex bridge of 1676 The first bridge on t ...

on the banks of the River Liffey to set up a Dublin branch of their company. They hired Liverpool architect Ould, who had previously designed various buildings for the company's

Port Sunlight Port Sunlight is a model village in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England. It is located between Lower Bebington and New Ferry, on the Wirral Peninsula. Port Sunlight was built by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in ...

model village near Liverpool. The Dublin building was designed and constructed between 1900 and 1910 and named after their then-famous soap brand. In the late 1990s Gilroy McMahon architects restored the building and repainted the exterior in a 'light umber' colour.

Design

Ould designed the building in the Italianate style. This was unusual for the area, which was dominated by genteel Georgian and

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

architecture that tended to be externally restrained and internally decorative. According to Ireland's National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, the building is marked by distinctive

faience Faience or faïence (; ) is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white Ceramic glaze, pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an stannous oxide, oxide of tin to the Slip (c ...

panels that depict the history of soap production. While Essex Quay was laid out in the 1720s, Sunlight Chambers is the oldest remaining structure in the riverside area. The sculptor Conrad Dressler was engaged to design much of the external frieze work on the building.

Sister building in Newcastle upon Tyne

At almost the same time, Lever Brothers built a branch in Newcastle upon Tyne, which they also called Sunlight Chambers. Although the Newcastle branch was designed in a modified

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

style rather than an Italianate style, both Sunlight Chambers feature characteristic circumferential friezes.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures completed in 1910 Buildings and structures in Dublin (city) 20th-century architecture in the Republic of Ireland