Survey Data

Reg No

50920156


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic


Original Use

House


In Use As

Office


Date

1730 - 1750


Coordinates

315829, 233269


Date Recorded

08/09/2015


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Terraced three-bay four-storey former townhouse over basement, built c. 1740, as a pair with No. 97 (50920157). Additional storey added in nineteenth-century. Now in commercial office use. Flat roof with shared chimneystack to west party wall, concealed behind rendered parapet with masonry coping, concealed gutters and cast-iron downpipes breaking through. Ruled-and-lined rendered walls with stringcourse over basement level, smooth rendered to rear (south). Square-headed window openings with projecting masonry sills, painted reveals, diminished on upper floors, sills to basement openings form projecting plinth. Six-over-six replacement timber sliding sash windows, three-over-six to basement. Multi-paned timber sashes to rear, some uPVC replacements, two tripartite eight-paned timber casements to upper floor and multi-paned round-headed stair-hall window with cobwebbed upper panes. Round-headed door opening to eastern bay of north elevation, with Gibbsian-style doorcase having moulded cornice intersecting archivolt with plain glass fanlight and replacement timber-panelled door with brass furniture. Granite entrance platform accessed via two granite steps, with cast-iron boot scraper retained. Plainly detailed recent four-panelled timber door to basement located under entrance platform, accessed by recent steel staircase. Basement-well to west enclosed by cast-iron railings with decorative corner posts topped with decorative finials, over granite plinth.

Appraisal

Dublin Civic Trust's "Survey of Gable-Fronted Houses and Other Early Buildings of Dublin" (2012) states "An iconic modified "Dutch Billy" with "stranded" gable windows at second floor level, this early townhouse forms part of a stretch of similarly dated houses on the south side of Saint Stephen's Green, all of which are likely to have been gable-fronted originally, conforming to the high point of gabled building around the square during its second wave of development in the early eighteenth-century. They are characteristic of the later style of gable-fronted house, with good proportions, modest scale and reticent, unadorned facades. Although the roof has been removed from No. 98 and an additional attic storey added above, the pinched fenestration, early rainwater goods and general proportions retain the ghost of the typology. The various alterations to the house are typical of the modification of gabled houses in the first half of the nineteenth century and serve as an important part of the city's building record regarding changing tastes in architecture and building tradition". Casey (2005) states that this building has raised and fielded panelling on the first floor.