Survey Data

Reg No

50910118


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic


Original Use

Shop/retail outlet


In Use As

Shop/retail outlet


Date

1890 - 1910


Coordinates

315944, 233892


Date Recorded

01/10/2015


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Attached two-bay four-storey commercial building, built c. 1900, forming part of retail complex with adjoining buildings, No. 2 Wicklow Street and No. 96-99 Grafton Street. Hipped roof with rendered chimneystack to east party wall, concealed behind red brick parapet with cogged brick eaves course and granite coping. Concealed guttering with replacement hopper and downpipe breaking through to east end. Machine-made red brick walling, laid in Flemish bond, with stepped eaves course. Square-headed window openings, diminishing to upper floors, with granite sills, brick voussoirs and timber sliding sash windows with convex horns, two-over-two pane to second and third floors and three-over-three to top floor. Projecting square-headed tripartite timber display window spanning first floor and extending east into No. 2, with panelled mullions, flanking twin-pane sidelights and having lead-lined cornice over simplified entablature. Wrap-around timber shopfront to ground floor, extending across neighbouring buildings to east, having continuous moulded and painted timber fascia with raised lettering spanning Nos. 2-3, surmounted by modillioned lead-lined cornice. Display window has overlights and curved corner to east end, having timber colonnettes, one faced with awning support pieces, over polished granite stall-riser, terminated to west end by foliate panelled pilaster with foliate and scrolled capital, surmounted by ornate console brackets supporting fascia and cornice. Early to mid-twentieth-century awning arms retained, extending over fascia. Well-preserved interior, including plasterwork ceilings, frosted mirrors and freestanding oval display cabinets of c. 1935.

Appraisal

A late nineteenth or early twentieth-century commercial block, that forms part of a fairly cohesive retail complex occupying Nos. 96-100 Grafton Street and No. 2-3 Wicklow Street. The stretch of Grafton Street between Wicklow and Suffolk streets was almost entirely rebuilt about 1881 to the designs of W.M. Mitchell, forming a unified commercial block encompassing Nos. 96-100 and 105-6. Weir & Sons, jewellers, moved into the premises (No. 96) about 1905, with alteration work during this time carried out by Batchelor & Hicks. Although the date of construction of No. 3 is not known, the Georgian domestic plot size and façade proportions are retained, indicating that a previous building may have been refaced around the turn of the twentieth century, likely as part of the alterations carried out when Weir & Sons took over the building. Fairly well maintained with a good ground floor shopfront unifying the retail complex, the building is part of the historic fabric of the city’s commercial core.