Survey Data
Reg No
50010643
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Original Use
House
In Use As
Theatre/opera house/concert hall
Date
1760 - 1770
Coordinates
315568, 235031
Date Recorded
29/09/2011
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Terraced three-bay four-storey house over exposed basement, built c.1765. Now in use as theatre and offices. Built as pair with No. 37. Pitched slate roof with clay ridge tiles behind rebuilt red brick parapet wall with squared render coping. Rendered chimneystacks with clay pots to party walls, shared with No. 37 to south. Having mixed cast-iron and replacement uPVC rainwater goods. Flemish bond red brick walls with moulded granite ashlar plinth course and granite platband over rendered walls to basement. Cast-iron brackets below ground floor windows and cast-iron lantern on bracket. Gauged red brick flat-arched window openings with rendered reveals and rendered sills. Granite ashlar sills to basement level openings. Historic replacement one-over-one timber sliding sash windows to basement, recent replacement timber sliding sash windows elsewhere. Cast-iron balconettes to first and third floors. Square-headed door opening within painted stone Tuscan doorcase having engaged columns with responding pilasters on plinth blocks with tooled limestone plinth, columns and pilasters surmounted by moulded lintel, cornice and entablature with open-bed pediment housing replacement stained-glass fanlight. Replacement timber door to opening and stained glass to sidelights. Door opens onto granite flagged platform flanked by wrought-iron railing with wrought and cast-iron boxed corner posts on replacement granite plinths. Matching gate accessing limestone flagged basement, shared with No. 37, via steel staircase with cast-iron handrail.
Appraisal
This dignified building maintains a shared typology consistent with the early aspect of this square and is an integral component of the streetscape. The house was built in the 1760s by Henry Darley who also built five other properties on the eastern side of the square. The fine well-balanced façade is greatly enlivened by the tripartite doorcase which augments the building's presence within the streetscape. Its sympathetic timber sash windows and the foreground stone plinth and decorative cast- and wrought ironwork enhance the appearance of this building. Parnell Square [Rutland Square] was the creation of Dr Bartholomew Mosse (1713-59) who in 1748 leased four acres at the junction of three important sites: the Gardiner Estate, O'Connell Street [Sackville Street] and Parnell Street [Great Britain Street]. There the New Gardens were constructed, a landscaped tract of land with illuminated paths, obelisks and loggia: these are now the site of the Garden of Remembrance. Entrance fees to the gardens funded the construction of the Rotunda Hospital to the south, Mosse's life ambition, and the success of the gardens precipitated the development of the surrounding square. 36 Parnell Square West was, along with its neighbour at 37 Parnell Square West, repurposed as Club na Múinteoirí by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) and its garden was developed as a hall (1925-6) to designs by Arthur O'Connor (1880/1-1930).