Survey Data
Reg No
50910117
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Original Use
Shop/retail outlet
In Use As
Shop/retail outlet
Date
1890 - 1910
Coordinates
315949, 233890
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. 3 Wicklow Street and No. 96 Grafton Street. Pitched roof, with rendered chimneystack to west party wall, concealed behind red brick parapet with cogged brick eaves course and granite coping. Concealed guttering with replacement cast-iron hopper and downpipe breaking through to west. Machine-made red brick walling laid in Flemish bond, with header courses to sill level and toothed stringcourses to imposts. Square-headed window openings with granite sills, brick voussoirs and continuous cavetto hood-moulding over first floor openings. Windows are one-over-one pane timber sliding sashes with ogee horns. Projecting square-headed tripartite timber display window spanning first floor and extending west into No. 3 Wicklow Street, with panelled mullions, flanking twin-pane sidelights and having lead-lined cornice over simplified entablature. Wraparound shopfront to ground floor, extending across neighbouring buildings, having continuous moulded and painted timber fascia with raised lettering spanning Nos. 2-3, surmounted by modillioned lead-lined cornice. Timber display windows with overlights and curved corners, subdivided by timber colonnettes (some faced with awning support pieces) over polished granite stall-risers. Early to mid-twentieth-century awning arms retained, extending over fascia. Pair of recessed entrance porches flanking central display window, with tiled paving and mosaic lettering 'Weir & Sons'. Square-headed door openings with timber and bevelled glass doors, having brass handles and decorative frosted glass with foliate detailing and lettering 'Weir & Sons Manufacturing Silversmiths Jewellery/Showroom Grafton St'. Doors set within moulded timber frames with carved timber swan's-neck pediment rising to multiple-pane timber overlight, with keyed oculus to centre set in shouldered timber architrave. 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 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 is not known, the appearance suggests that No. 2 was built during the early twentieth century, likely as part of the alterations carried out when Weir & Sons took over the building. Well maintained with a good ground floor shopfront unifying the retail complex, the building contributes to the historic streetscape of the city's commercial core.