Patrick Comerford
It seems I have known Dawson Street throughout all my adult life. I first worked there for two or three years after leaving school, while I was training to be a chartered surveyor with the College of Estate Management at Reading University through Jones Lang Wootton, then on the third floor of the Norwich Union Building.
I left there over 50 years ago as I set out on a career in journalism. But when I returned to Dublin to work with The Irish Times, I regularly attended the mid-day, week-day Eucharists in Saint Ann’s Church.
Next door, at the Royal Irish Academy, I enrolled in a course in classical Greek, lectured on the Middle East and genealogical research, and attended launches of books to which I have contributed papers and chapters.
I spent six years on the board of the National Bible Society of Ireland when it owned the ‘Bestseller’ bookshop on Dawson Street, and academic life in Trinity College Dublin gave me a new perspective on the street and a new familiarity with its cafés and bookshops.
In addition, there were meetings, conferences and similar events in the Mansion House, including the annual meetings of Irish CND and Holocaust Memorial Day, and the inevitable working lunches in the restaurants and cafés along Dawson Street.
Some parts of Dawson Street are landmarks that never seem to change: Saint Ann’s, the Royal Irish Academy and the Mansion House; some have vanished and been replaced, including the former Norwich Union building; some have come and gone, such as Waterstones, while others are new fixtures, like the Ivy.
Who remembers the Royal Hibernian Hotel that gave its name to Royal Hibernian Way in 1988?
And, in recent years, the LUAS has transformed the commercial and social life of Dawson Street.
Dawson Street was laid out as part of a new suburb by Joshua Dawson in the early 18th century, linking Saint Stephen’s Green with College Park and Trinity College Dublin. By the 20th century, the street was filled with insurance companies, including – at different times – the North British, Irish National, New Ireland, Sun Alliance, Atlas Insurance, Standard Life and Norwich Union.
From the third floor of the Lardner-designed former Norwich Union House in the early 1970s, I could see the New Ireland building across the street, with its unusual combination of decorative details.
As I reclaimed this new Dawson Street last Saturday morning, I was glad to see the hoardings had come down from around the New Ireland building, an impressive example of the best of modern Irish architecture, decorated with Gaelic and Celtic motifs and symbolism in an interesting attempt to present the old as new.
The New Ireland Assurance Company was the first Irish-owned life insurance company in Ireland. Today, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of Ireland. But the company was formed as the New Ireland Assurance Collecting Society in January 1918, and from the beginning it was closely linked to the nationalist movement. Its first meeting was attended by Éamon de Valera, Michael Staines, Liam Tobin and Frank Thornton, who were leading figures in the 1916 rising.
The New Ireland Assurance building on Dawson Street reflects the evolution of modern office buildings in Ireland. The oldest structure, designed by Vincent Kelly and built in 1934, was one of the first purpose-built office buildings in Ireland and its modernist design became an emblem of a progressive forward-looking nation.
New Ireland Assurance continued to develop the site over the following decades to accommodate growing staff numbers and in response to changing work environments driven by advances in technology and workplace standards.
The 1964 building, designed by O’Brien, Morris and McCullough Architects is the most distinctive phase of development, with Its dramatically embellished Celtic patterning unashamedly proclaiming the nationalist sentiments of New Ireland and its founders.
The building has been described by the architectural historian Christine Casey as ‘Modernism tempered by a classical sensibility’ and ‘an odd jumpy effect’. It is an impressive piece of architecture, decorated throughout with Gaelic symbolism.
The architectural website Archiseek describes it as ‘one of the better office buildings of the 1960s in Dublin.’ It says, ‘With its strong modern lines, gold coloured window frames, and Celtic-inspired decoration, New Ireland Assurance was attempting to demonstrate a new Ireland, looking forward, the results of Taoiseach Seán Lemass’s push for modernity in the country.’
This building was opened by Lemass in 1964 and it captures a particular moment in time, when the state was still clinging to the idea of a Gaelic Ireland at a time when the Irish economy and Irish society evolving, changing and growing.
The entrance features a bronze-finished double door with Celtic engravings that were intended to symbolise the four provinces of Ireland. The bronze panels were intended to display the four provincial coats of arms, on two ‘Celtic-style’ logos similar to the logo of the Gaelic Athletic Association, and four separate panels, two each above and below, with supposed heraldic representations of the four provinces of Ireland.
Today, the quartered arms of the four provinces are usually shown in the order: 1 Leinster, 2 Connacht, 3 Ulster, 4 Munster. But on these doors the sequence is: 1 Connacht, 2 Ulster, 3 Munster, 4, Leinster.
For some inexplicable reason, though, these representations of provincial coat of arms are accurate in only one instance: the three crowns of Munster in the lower part of the two ‘Celtic-style’ logos and in the lower panel of the door to the left.
In each instance, Ulster is represented by a hand inspired by the red hand of Ulster, but without the cross and shield or inescutcheon that are part of the arms of Ulster. Perhaps the artist thought the actual heraldic arms of Ulster might be confused with those of Northern Ireland.
The arms of Leinster were replaced by the arms of Dublin, but while the three castles on the two ‘Celtic-style’ logos are in flames, in the lower right panel of the doors the three castles have no flames.
In a further curiosity, the provincial arms of Connacht have been substituted with an eccentric interpretation of a seldom-seen and anachronistic version of the city coat of arms of Galway.
Since the 17th century, the arms of Connacht have been described as: party per pale argent and azure, in the first an eagle dimidiated and displayed sable, in the second issuant from the partition an arm embowed and vested, the hand holding a sword erect, all argent. They are complicated arms, and may have been the mediaeval arms of the Irish Benedictine community at Regensburg in Germany, which was founded in the 11th century and remained in Irish hands until the Reformation in the 16th century.
The Dawson Street doors replace the arms of Connacht with a rarified version of the arms of Galway. The design shows a galley on the waves, with stars and a mast with a hanging shield. In most versions of Galway’s heraldic arms, the shield on the ship has a golden rampant lion. But at the New Ireland building – designed as a statement of confident of Irish nationalism – the shield is shown not with a golden lion, but with a version of the Plantagenet royal arms of England, with the quartered arms of France and England as they were used for centuries by English monarchs.
However, a quirky dimension of this depiction of the royal arms is the replacement of the three fleurs-de-lis of France with five six-pointed stars.
The motto in Irish on the logos translates: ‘My God, Your God, My Land, Your Land.’ The company is named in English as ‘New Ireland Assurance Society.’ At the side of the building, in Dawson Lane, the Celtic themes continue with a modern depiction of Cú Chulainn.
The provincial coats of arms, the Celtic designs and the Irish language unveiling marker combine to make this a building of the 1960s, both strikingly modern and harkening back to real and imagined mythological Celtic past seen through narrow nationalist eyes.
When the New Ireland building came on the market in 2018, there was speculation that it could become an hotel, or be rebuilt, and fears that its 1960s decorative art work would be lost. But in May 2024, about 900 staff from AIB and professional services group Goodbody moved into new office accommodation at 9-12 Dawson Street from offices in Ballsbridge.
The new offices, which are an amalgamation of three separate buildings dating from the 1930s, 1960s and 1970s, have been restored, extended and upgraded, and the centrepiece of the new office is the restored 1964 New Ireland building at 11-12 Dawson Street. Combined, they include 5,600 sq m over six floors, and Goodbody occupies three of the six floors.
The new development or redevelopment of the buildings embraces their Protected Structure status and returns key aspects of the buildings to their original condition. The entrance of the 1964 building has been re-established, the original double height entrance lobby has been reinstated, and there is an open plan relationship between the lobby and the original terrazzo staircase. The interior of the entrance space reintroduces the materials used in the original foyer including Connemara marble wall panelling and Terrazzo flooring.
The restored interiors have been built using mainly Irish materials including protected green Connemara and black Kilkenny marble. Stained glass windows by Abbey Stained Glass Studios bridge the floors, including a window featuring Cú Chulainn.
Colin Hunt, chief executive of AIB, told The Irish Times: ‘We are very proud to act as custodian of this magnificently restored building with such a wonderful historical and architectural pedigree in the heart of Dublin city and to make it once again a home for Irish enterprise.’
