Survey Data
Reg No
50100385
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Original Use
House
In Use As
Office
Date
1800 - 1915
Coordinates
316888, 233562
Date Recorded
07/06/2016
Date Updated
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Description
Attached two-bay four-storey former house over basement, built c. 1810 possibly as pair with No. 1, but with Late-Victorian frontage to ground floor and now forming west end of unified row (Nos. 59-61), having two-storey gabled return and further single-storey wraparound building to rear shared with No. 60. Now in commercial office use. M-profile roof, hipped to east end, with brick parapet having lead-lined coping over rendered cornice and platband, and with parapet gutters. Flemish bond red brick walling to upper three floors with recent wigging, and having moulded sill course to first floor over painted ruled-and-lined rendered ground floor and basement, latter with granite plinth course above. Painted render to rear elevation. Square-headed window openings, diminishing in height to upper floors, brick floors having rendered reveals, granite sills and brick voussoirs; ground floor having moulded rendered architrave and lintel cornice on fluted scrolled brackets. Replacement timber sliding sash windows, three-over-three pane to top floor, two-over-two pane to basement and six-over-six pane elsewhere to front facade; rear elevation has three-over-three pane windows to top floor and six-over-six pane elsewhere. Basket-handle-headed door opening with three-stage moulded reveals, projecting vermiculated keystone supporting hood-moulding over dentillated and vermiculated segmental-headed voussoirs, plain fanlight, and dentillated cornice over bolection-moulded timber panelled door with beaded muntin. Granite-paved entrance platform with cast-iron boot-scrape and three steps to street level. Basement area enclosed by spear-headed cast-iron railings on painted masonry plinth. Rear of plot has carparking.
Appraisal
No. 59 Mount Street Lower now presents as part of a unified terrace of three, arranged about a carriage-arch. The group was decoratively altered with neo-Classical devices in the late nineteenth / early twentieth century, including the addition of a parapet cornice, decorative treatment to the ground floor, and segmental entrance openings that are unmistakably Victorian in character. Restored in recent years with replacement windows and historic wigged pointing, the group enhances the Georgian streetscape, the overall quality of which has been much diminished by twentieth-century office development. The later decorative additions add a further layer of interest, adding variety to the streetscape and illustrating evolving architectural fashions in nineteenth-century Dublin.