Survey Data
Reg No
21517273
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Previous Name
Árus Fhianna Fáil originally Lansdowne Soldiers' Home
Original Use
Unknown
In Use As
Office
Date
1890 - 1910
Coordinates
157438, 156548
Date Recorded
08/08/2005
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Corner-sited detached three-bay two-storey building, built c. 1900, distinguished by a symmetrical composition of three-sided bay windows and large gabled dormers above flanking a centrally-placed door opening. Rendered return to rear. Elevation prolonged to west terminating with a gabled west-facing elevation. Hipped artificial slate roof with intersecting gabled roof structures; replacement combed ridge tiles with terracotta finials to junctions of roof structure; turned timber finials to apex of dormers. Limestone chimneystack to principal ridge. Squared and snecked limestone ground floor elevation and rendered first floor elevation and dormers with applied timber strut work rising from flashed bressumer beam. Three-sided bay windows with rendered aprons, continuous limestone sills, stop-chamfered and notched mullions and timber casement windows. Paired square-headed windows to gabled dormers with timber surround and divided by a mullion with plain timber casement windows. Bay window to west elevation incorporating slightly projecting first floor window with stop-chamfered notched corner posts. Pointed-arched lancet window openings to side elevation with top-hung casement windows. Pointed-arched door opening with smooth flush limestone surround having stop-chamfered reveals, stepped soffit, limestone threshold step and glazed panelled timber door leaf following angle of arch. Opening onto encaustic tiled entrance platform flanked by rounded plinth walls supporting replacement wrought-iron railings.
Appraisal
This fine Victorian Elizabethan style structure provides a stylistic contrast to the surrounding Georgian architecture. Along with Leamy's Free School building on the other side of Hartstonge Street, which is another essay in the exuberant Victorian style, they add to the architectural variety of the area.