Survey Data
Reg No
50100620
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Original Use
House
In Use As
Office
Date
1800 - 1860
Coordinates
316931, 233294
Date Recorded
17/05/2016
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached two-bay four-storey former house over basement, built c. 1830 as one of pair with No. 42, with two-storey return to west end of rear. Now in commercial office use. Pitched roof to front and shared M-profile roof to rear span, having brick parapet with moulded projecting masonry coping with parapet gutters and platband to front. Rendered chimneystacks to east with mixed terracotta pots. Flemish bond red brick walling to upper floors, rusticated ashlar granite to ground floor with projecting granite course above and below, over painted rendered basement walling; brick to rear. Square-headed window openings, diminishing in height to upper floors, with patent reveals, painted masonry sills and brick voussoirs. Timber sliding sash windows with profiled horns, ten-over-ten pane to basement and one-over-one pane elsewhere, having ornate cast-iron balconettes to first floor and wrought-iron window-guards to floors above. Apparently timber sash windows to rear, eight-over-eight pane to middle floors of east bay. Round-headed doorcase with moulded rendered surround, pro-style fluted Doric columns, plain entablature, plain fanlight and eleven-panel timber door with recent chrome furniture. Stone-paved entrance platform with five bull-nosed steps to street and ornate cast-iron boot-scrape. Decorative spear-headed cast-iron railings on moulded granite plinth enclosing basement area, with cast-iron gate. Plain square-headed door and window openings beneath entrance platform. Yard to rear, single-storey building further back in plot and straddling Nos. 38-41 and further two-storey twentieth-century office block to rearmost part of plot straddling Nos. 38-42.
Appraisal
A well retained late Georgian house forming part of a largely unified row lining the south side of Mount Street Upper. It has the rusticated stone ground floor of houses on this stretch of the street, a fine Doric doorcase with a good fanlight, and ornate metalwork to its balconettes, boot-scrape and railings. The intact setting enhances the building and contributes to the intactness of the streetscape. Laid out in the 1780s and principally developed by a Mr Osburne and David Courtney, the street was built to link the newly constructed Grand Canal to the upper-class residential developments radiating from Leinster House. Built in pairs and rows over a period of thirty years, the fifty-four houses on the street were completed by 1834. Variations within the street, such as differences in parapet heights, are a telling feature of its piecemeal development, the south side notably grander than the north, boasting granite rustication across much of the ground floor. Mount Street Upper is terminated at its east end by St. Stephen's Church, transforming what is a typical and relatively modest late-Georgian street into an urban set-piece, a key vista of Georgian Dublin.