THE PLAN by the ESB in the early 1960s to knock down 16 Georgian houses on Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Street to create a new headquarters was strongly opposed by preservationists, including the newly re-activated Irish Georgian Society. But their influence was not strong enough to prevent the demolition, partly because of the still prevalent view at the time that Georgian architecture was, like the country mansions of former landlords, a symbol of past oppression.

The case against demolition was well put by an article in Country Life, reported on by The Irish Times today in 1962, although its provenance would have done nothing to change the views of those who saw this type of architecture as alien.

Preservation of Georgian Dublin

An article in Country Life states that it would be unreasonable to try to preserve Georgian Dublin in its entirety. “Old buildings decay, new types of buildings are needed, people live in a different way,” it says. “Ireland is not a rich country, and the amount it can spend on its architectural monuments is limited.”

The article suggest that certain areas of Dublin should be designated as national monuments in their entirety and that others should be abandoned completely.

Of all the areas to be preserved, the most obvious and defendable would be that around Merrion and Fitzwilliam squares, the centre of fashionable Georgian Dublin, which is still almost entirely intact, prosperously occupied and on the whole well maintained by doctors, lawyers and the like, and by the Government itself.

“Yet it is right in the heart of this area that the Government are proposing to demolish 16 houses in Fitzwilliam Street to build new offices for the ESB. Fitzwilliam Street joins Merrion and Fitzwilliam squares, the two finest 18th century squares in Dublin; and, together with the north sides of these squares and with Fitzwilliam Place, forms what is claimed to be the longest stretch of untouched Georgian terrace architecture in existence, five-eights of a mile long.

“A case can be made out for their demolition. They are good standard late-18th-century terrace houses, but, taken by themselves are not of superlative quality. They are not in good condition. The Government intends to hold an open competition for the building that is to replace them; and it might be said that a good modern building would improve, rather than destroy, an 18th century neighbourhood that is to a certain extent lacking in variety.”

The trouble, the article points out, is that once one large new building has infiltrated itself, the argument that the area should be preserved as a complete 18th-century one would be immediately weakened. It would become increasingly easy to insert another building and then another, until, one morning, Dublin would wake up and discover that its 18th-century character had vanished.

The article suggests that there would seem to be no insurmountable reason why the ESB offices should not either move out to another site, or expand at the back of their existing site, where there was plenty of land available for development, without impinging on any important Georgian frontage.

“If they were to draw out of Fitzwilliam Place altogether there should be no difficulty, in this exclusive part of Dublin, in converting and letting the houses as flats and business premises for professional people. The argument that the houses are in bad condition is one with which it is hard to feel any sympathy: it would indeed be scandalous if a Government department were to use its own past neglect of fine buildings in its occupation as an excuse for vandalism,” the article concludes.

www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1962/0528/Pg005.html#Ar00501