Patrick Comerford
When I was staying in Rathmines last week during a very brief family visit to Dublin, I took another look at some interesting late 19th and early 20th century buildings in Rathmines, including the former YMCA building on Rathmines Road, Kensington Lodge around the corner from it on Grove Park, the former Belfast Bank on a prominent corner with Rathgar Road, and the former Kodak building, a listed Art Deco building.
For almost a century, the Kodak Building or Kodak House has been a landmark building on the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and Blackberry Lane and when it was built its design marked an important ‘modern’ moment in Irish architecture. It was designed by the architects Donnelly, Moore and Keatinge in 1930 and built in 1932 and was originally the factory and warehouse for Kodak Ireland.
Art Deco emerged as a design aesthetic in France in the early 20th century and was widely popularised in the 1920s and 1930s. It informed the design of many iconic 20th century iconic buildings, including the Empire State Building in New York.
Many examples of art deco architecture Dublin have been lost, including the Theatre Royal. But others have survived, including the Kodak Building and two other significant Art Deco buildings in Rathmines: the Stella Cinema, designed by Higginbotham and Stafford in 1923; and the Post Office on Upper Rathmines Road, designed by William Henry Howard Cooke (1881-1977), built in 1932-1934, and opened in 1935.
The founder of Kodak, George Eastman, ran ‘an image-conscious company’ and wanted the company’s building in Dublin to disguise the ‘raw factory’ within. Kodak hired Donnelly Moore and Keatinge, a partnership formed by Robert Donnelly, James Moore and William Sedgwick Keatinge in 1925. The new building was built by McLaughlin & Harvey.
One critical commentator said the building looks like ‘a stray project from Miami Beach that found itself cast adrift in Dublin’. On the other hand, when the Twentieth Century Society named the Kodak Building as its ‘building of the month’ in August 2019, it said that ‘the building itself, despite having its once-cream render painted white, still stands out against Dublin’s traditional red brick streets’.
Donnelly Moore and Keatinge designed a building that is made of concrete and supported by a steel structural grid, with horizontal steel windows that were embedded in the concrete walls, and with ‘a squat but imposing tower with vertical slit windows as its central feature’. It was said to ‘conjur[e up] a sense of defensive space as well as abiding by the symmetrical classical language of pediment, pilaster and entablature.’
Some of the machine-age ornamentation of Kodak House remains intact, including the vertical lines on the tower, the zig-zags facing the street, the strong lines leading to the parapet and the ziggurat-type finial. Other art deco touches include the vertical lines on the tower, the stacked antenna-like rectangles, the small areas of fluting around the parapet and the pilasters or projecting columns, and the minimal ornament.
On each street façade, the tower recedes behind the screen, symmetrical with multi-pane windows set deep between the thick, plain pilasters. The zigzag textures and plain bands framing the windows add further texture, and the windows are an indication of its past as a factory.
The partnership of Donnelly Moore and Keatinge lasted until 1937, when the three architects went their separate ways, forming their own practices. One of the original architects, William Sedgewick Keatinge (1887-1964), made alterations modifications to the building in 1949-1951.
The building remained the Kodak headquarters in Ireland for 50 years before they moved to Dun Laoghaire in 1982. Kodak sold the building to Quirke Lynch Ltd that continued the photographic processing business for almost two more decades.
Quirke Lynch decided to concentrate their photographic processing operation to the ground floor only in 1997 and major renovations were undertaken to restore the upper floor and the roof of the building.
Paul Keogh Architects carried out a complete refurbishment of the building in 1999. While the exterior is faithful to the original design, there have been some interventions in the interior, such as a new roof with a curved northlight that allowed a mezzanine level to be added inside. The renovation was recognised with an RIAI award and a Glen Dimplex Design award in 2002.
Kodak House now houses an advertising agency and other businesses. It is an outstanding example of Art Deco architecture in Dublin and is a List 2 building in the Dublin City development plan. Despite having its once-cream render painted white, it still stands out against Dublin’s traditional red brick streets. It remains one of the brightest, most unusual 20th century buildings in Dublin.
Art Deco did not have a huge impact in Ireland, although the style had its moments, and the Carlton and Savoy cinemas on O’Connell Street and the Tivoli Cinema in Francis Street used Art Deco.
Other buildings in the Art Deco style in Dublin include the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation at 23 Kildare Street, designed by James Rupert Boyd Barrett; the Gas Building on D’Olier Street, now home to School of Nursing and Midwifery of Trinity College Dublin; the DIT building on Cathal Brugha Street; the former Deluxe Cinema on Camden Street; and the bathing shelters along the Bull Wall in Dollymount, designed by Herbert Simms.
Art Deco housing designs included: Chancery House, a housing development near the Four Courts designed by Herbert Simms; the houses built in 1938 on Wasdale Park, between Terenure and Rathgar; and an Art Deco house on the Templeogue Road once known as Konstanz and built in 1939 for Stephen Carroll Held – it is known in Templeogue and Terenure as the ‘German house’ because Hermann Gortz, a Nazi spy, used it as a safe house during World War II.
But more about these Art Deco houses and buildings, hopefully, after another visit to Dublin.
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