Survey Data
Reg No
50100050
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Previous Name
Scottish Temperance Life Assurance Company
Original Use
Bank/financial institution
In Use As
Shop/retail outlet
Date
1905 - 1915
Coordinates
315936, 233739
Date Recorded
23/05/2016
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached two-bay three-storey gable-fronted commercial premises with attic storey, built 1910-12 and dated 1911, having replacement timber shopfront. Full-height return and fully abutted to rear. Pitched slate roof, hidden by raking parapet with limestone coping, and having concealed rainwater goods. Orange brick walling laid to English garden wall bond, with limestone dressings, stepped quoins, and having flush platbands at first and second floor window head levels. Square-headed window openings having moulded limestone architraves, moulded sills and cornices, latter to first floor being linked by segmental drip-moulding over carved date-stone in limestone panel. Group of three attic windows in carved limestone frame, each window separated by engaged Doric columns, having entablature with segmental central section over carved laurel wreath, and shared moulded sill on four corbels. Timber sliding sash windows, one-over-one pane to first floor and attic and six-over-one pane to second floor (lower sashes taller than upper).
Appraisal
An eclectic commercial building, dated 1911, built to designs by Orpen & Dickinson for the Scottish Temperance Life Assurance Co. The builder was H.& J. Martin. The design is rather restrained, redolent of Flemish styles combined with Arts & Crafts influences and typical of the free styles of the period. It was possibly inspired by the early building typologies in the area with their origins in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The façade is much enlivened by the use of contrasting pale grey stone with vibrant orange brick. The building makes a strong and assured contribution to the architectural vitality and eclecticism of Grafton Street, a thoroughfare that was largely developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is celebrated as Dublin's premier retail street.