Patrick Comerford
One of the landmark buildings I have long admired in Rathmines is the former National Bank and Bank of Ireland branch on Lower Rathmines Road, near the former Rathmines Town Hall.
I remember how in my teenage years I admired the heraldic display above the entrance displaying the former coat of arms of the National Bank of Ireland, despite changes of name in the bank, and the change of use in the premises.
The building faces the Swan shopping centre and almost faces the former Rathmines Town Hall. This section of Lower Rathmines Road is between Swanville Place, where my father was born in 1918, and Leinster Square, which was developed by the architect John de Courcy Butler and his neighbour Arthur Williamson.
An Edwardian pillar box on the footpath is a reminder of the Edward elegance of Rathmines in the decades immediately before Irish independence, while street art on the corner with Leinster Road depicts Francis Sheehy Skeffington (1878-1916), the pacifist and socialist murdered during the 1916 Rising, is a taste of the radical political scene that emerged in Rathmines in the early 20th century.
When I was staying in Rathmines two weeks ago, I went back to look again at the Bank of Ireland branch at Lower Rathmines Road. It was put up for sale in 2015 and is now on the ‘To Let’ market through Savills of Molesworth Street, who describe it as a ‘landmark period building in the centre of Rathmines’ that ‘would suit a wide variety of uses subject to planning consent’.
The National Bank was founded by Daniel O'Connell in 1835, and had branches throughout Ireland and Britain. The Irish branches were acquired by Bank of Ireland and it was rebranded temporarily as National Bank of Ireland. It was fully incorporated into Bank of Ireland in 1969, when Bank of Ireland, Hibernian Bank and the National Bank of Ireland merged to form the Bank of Ireland Group. The British branches were acquired by Williams & Glyn’s Bank, later absorbed into the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The branch bank in Rathmines has a feature redbrick façade and internally it is laid out to provide for the main banking hall at ground floor level with office accommodation on the first floor.
The building was designed for the National Bank of Ireland in 1887-1889 by the Dublin architect and surveyor William Butler (1849-1910) of Mountjoy Square, or by Frederick Augustus Butler (1839-1903) in 1899 – although it is difficult to know which of them completed the work.
William Butler was born ca 1849, a son of John Butler, of Tower Lodge, Sandymount, Dublin. From about 1874 until 1896 he was in partnership with Edward Gribbon as Gribbon & Butler, quantity surveyors.
Butler was the author of a series of articles on the proposed restoration of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, by George Edmund Street. These appeared in the Irish Builder in 1871 and were published as a book later that year. He submitted drawings and a description of Christ Church Cathedral in the Fitzgerald Memorial Prize competition in 1871, and published a folio volume of the drawings in 1874.
He is probably the ‘Mr Butler of Dublin’ who was appointed surveyor to take measurements for the building of the towers and spires of Saint Finn Barre’s Cathedral, Cork, in 1876.
Butler published an illustrated history and description of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in 1901, in which he expresses clear hostility to Street’s work. This was followed in 1905 by a pamphlet criticising Street’s choice of Caen stone for the external details of the cathedral, which he said were 'now virtually falling to pieces owing to climatic influences’.
Professionally he was a member of the Architects Association of Ireland and a member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, but his membership of the RIAI was cancelled because he did not pay his subscriptions.
He worked from 179 Brunswick Street (1872-1873), where he may have been working in the office of either JE Rogers, William Stirling, or JF Fuller, 64 Sackville Street Upper (1874), 37 Dawson Street (1875-1882), 54 Harcourt Street (1887-1896) and 58 Mountjoy Square (1897-1900). He lived at Strand Road, Sandymount from 1870 to 1893, and later on Palmerston Road, Rathmines (1894-1896), but was living back in Sandymount when he died at home at the age of 61 on 27 August 1910.
However, the Dublin architect Frederick Augustus Butler (1839-1903) seems more likely to have designed the National Bank branch in Rathmines. He was a son of the architect John de Courcy Butler, who developed Leinster Square and Prince Arthur Terrace, immediately behind the former bank, with his neighbour Arthur Williamson.
Frederick Augustus Butler obtained the Licence in Civil Engineering from Trinity College Dublin in 1866 and was in private practice in Dublin by 1874. The architect Frederick George Hicks appears to have been his assistant around 1898 and to have shared various office premises with him until his death.
Butler, like his father, was a Rathmines Township Commissioner and was one of the Township’s School Attendance Officers. He was also architect to Saint Peter’s Parish (Church of Ireland) from 1874.
He was a member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (1883), and worked from 61 Dawson Street (1874-1885), 5 Saint Stephen’s Green (1885-1898), 28 South Frederick Street (1900-1901) and 35b Kildare Street (1902-1903). He lived at Ulster Lodge, 20 Leinster Square, Rathmines (1882-1900), once his father’s home from 1853 to1880. But he was living at 16 Lower Mount Street at the time of his death.
Butler never married and died at 16 Lower Mount Street, Dublin, the house of Mrs Jane Clarke, on 26 March 1903. He was said to have an ‘unimpeachable professional record and his kindly unassuming manner brought honour and respect to the calling he faithfully followed.’
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