The synagogues of Dublin: 1, Crane Lane, Dame Street

Crane Lane, leading from Dame Street to Wellington Quay … Dublin’s first synagogue was located here from the 1660s until about 1762 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

As I reminisced about the synagogues I have visited in about a dozen countries over the past decade I so, I realised that in this blog I had not paid similar attention to the synagogues and former synagogues in Dublin.

In the coming weeks, leading up to and including the Jewish high holy days (Yamim Noraim) – Rosh HaShana (30 September 2019) and Yom Kippur (9 October 2019) – I hope to look at the synagogues of Dublin.

Over the past 350 years or so, there has been a dozen and a half or more synagogues in Dublin, from small congregations meeting in rented, upstairs rooms, to the elegant synagogue that stood for over a century on Adelaide Road, and the modern synagogue on Rathfarnham Road, Terenure.

I was born only doors away from the synagogue on Rathfarnham Road, and in my childhood and teens knew many of the synagogues off Clanbrassil Street and the South Circular Road, in an area of Dublin that was known as ‘Little Jerusalem.’

In A Short History of the Jews of Ireland (1945), Bernard Shillman traces the first Jews to moved to Ireland back to 1232. However, Jews were expelled from both Ireland and England in 1290.

In the centuries that followed, there are records of individual Jews and a number of Conversos or Marranos who lived in Ireland, including William Annyas, who was Mayor of Youghal, Co Cork, in 1555, and Francis Anes was mayor in 1569, 1576 and 1581.

Tradition says the Spanish and Portuguese Jews formed a small congregation in rooms in Crane Lane in the 1660s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Jews were first free to settle in Ireland under Cromwellian edicts issued in 1656. A Jewish community soon gathered in Dublin. Around 1660, a small group of Conversos or Jews from Spain and Portugal whose families had been forcibly converted to Christianity, arrived in Dublin. They had secretly continued to practice their Judaism.

Three or four families of Spanish or Portuguese descent and two or three of Polish or German origin had settled in Dublin by 1660.

Tradition says the Spanish and Portuguese Jews formed a small congregation in rooms in Crane Lane, leading from Dame Street down to Wellington Quay. Some historians describe this as one of the oldest Jewish communities formally formed on these islands.

Initially, the congregation followed Sephardi rituals and practices. But the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim worshipped together. Later, the congregation became increasingly Ashkenazi, although it retained certain Sephardi customs.

The first rabbi attracted to this small community in Dublin, Aaron be Moses (ca 1635-ca 1715), was born at Novogrodek in Poland around 1635. He had worked in Lemna and in Vilna, and was living to London by 1695. He moved to Dublin in the first decades of the 18th century, and there he combined the roles of rabbi, teacher, marriage-broker and scribe, before returning to England.

This community maintained close links with the Bevis Marks Synagogue or Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London, and founded the first Jewish cemetery in Dublin, at Ballybough.

The community split in 1753, and a rival congregation was formed. But peace was restored and the small congregation continued to worship in the Crane Lane premises until it moved to new premises in a former glassworks in Marlborough Green, off Marlborough Street, close to the present Abbey Theatre and on the other side of the River Liffey.

Various dates have been given for this move, between 1746 and 1762, but Louis Hyams, in his The Jews of Ireland (1972), prefers the latter date.

In his introduction to Jewish Dublin, the late Asher Benson pointed out that until recently the precise location of the upstairs synagogue in Crane Lane was a matter of pure conjecture.

However, when Stan Mason and Mason Technology bought the former synagogue at Greenville Hall on the South Circular Road, he helped, in an amazing coincidence, to pinpoint the location of the Crane Lane Synagogue.

He realised this was the second time Mason Technology had moved into a former synagogue in Dublin. The company had previously worked from premises on Crane Lane, which retained the women’s gallery from the former synagogue.

Sadly, what remained of the Crane Lane Synagogue was later destroyed in a fire in the building.

The synagogue in Crane Lane closed its doors around 1762 and moved to Marlborough Green (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Tomorrow: Ballybough Cemetery.

An elegant Victorian building on Dame Street in search of a new life

No 68-70 Dame Street … a large Victorian stuccoed block and an eye-catching building (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

During my brief visit to Dublin at the end of last week, I was hoping to have lunch in one of my favourite Greek restaurants in the city centre.

But when I arrived at Kostas on Dame Street, I found out, sadly, that Kostas has closed and the whole building has been vacated and refurbished, so that this block is now on the market to rent as a ready-made hotel.

Yet, the whole building at No 68-70 Dame Street is one of the more eye-catching buildings on this street.

Dame Street became one of the principal streets in the centre of Dublin in the 18th century. It leads from Trinity College Dublin and the former Parliament House, now the Bank of Ireland, on College Green, to City Hall and Dublin Castle, and became the ceremonial route for parades between Parliament and the Castle.

Dame Street was widened and remodelled by Samuel Sproule and Charles Tarrant for the Wide Street Commissioners in the late 18th century, and the street now continues through Lord Edward Street to the east end of Christ Church Cathedral and the Chapter House.

No 68-70 Dame Street is a large Victorian stuccoed block with lion-head-and-paw console brackets. It presents a cohesive and balanced composition that typifies the best of early-Victorian architectural design.

Although I have not yet identified the architect, the high-calibre artistry and the execution of the classical details on the building can be seen in the stuccowork, the render detailing, the shopfronts and well-composed doorcases.

These all add to the prominent location of this building on the north side of Dame Street, on the corner of Dame Street and Sycamore Street, right beside the Olympia Theatre and opposite one of the entrances to Dublin Castle.

The paired front doors at 68 and 69 Dame Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Although visibly one building, this is a corner-sited pair of three-bay and four-bay five-storey over basement commercial buildings, built on this corner site, with two shopfronts on the front (south) side, a shopfront on the west side, facing Sycamore Street and the Olympia Theatre, and a bow to the rear or north elevation.

On the ground floor, the masonry and timber shopfronts have Doric pilasters supporting fluted console brackets that have lions’ head detail and flanking timber fascia with egg-and-dart moulding and moulded cornices.

The square-headed shopfront windows have timber mullions, raised carved timber stall risers and matching timber panelled doors.

The paired round-headed door openings have carved timber panelled doors flanked by timber Doric pilasters supporting egg-and-dart mouldings to the arch and with a carved keystone over the original fanlight with rounded glazing panels, floral motifs to the spandrels and frieze, and all surmounted with a carved timber cornice that has lions’ heads on the scrolled finial.

Also on the ground floor, the square-headed and round-headed windows have granite sills at the side (or west), with three-over-three pane, six-over-six pane and one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows. There is also a timber-panelled door in the west side. There are cubed glass basement lights with bronze glazing bars inset on the granite paving on the Sycamore Street side of the building.

The lined-and-ruled rendered wall at the front of the building has circular medallions at the rendered eaves course. On the first floor there are paired fluted Corinthian pilasters, surmounted by a decorative panel with a floral motif, and there rendered quoins on the second and third floors.

The segmental-headed window openings on the first floor are paired on the east bays and are tripartite on the west bays. They have fluted mullions, set within segmental-headed moulded window surrounds. They are flanked by fluted Corinthian pilasters supporting square-headed hood moulding with acanthus leaf keystones and lions head medallions to the spandrels.

There are square-headed window openings with moulded architraves on the upper floors, and these have moulded render entablatures on the second and third floors. There they have pediment details and geometric medallions, and string courses form continuous sill courses. There are console brackets on the second floor, with infills of circular medallions. There are three-over-three pane and one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows.

There are lined-and-ruled rendered walls at the east and west side, and smooth rendered walls at the rear.

There is an L-plan hipped slate roof, and a pitched roof to the rear, with rendered chimneystacks, hidden behind the rendered parapet with cut granite coping.

Inside the building when it was Kostas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

For many years, the corner restaurant on the ground was Beirut Express, before it became Kostas.

I was to find Kostas has closed. It served authentic Greek food, organic Cretan produce, real Greek raki and homemade baklava. Hopefully, the former owners open a new restaurant in Dublin soon.

Kostas once offered authentic food produce from Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Visiting four favourite buildings in Dublin by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (4)

The former Munster and Leinster Bank on Dame Street was designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

During this week, I am visiting some of my favourite buildings in Dublin designed by the architect Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-1899), who worked in a Dublin-based partnership with Benjamin Woodward (1816-1861).

In October 1853, Woodward and Deane set up an office at No 3 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin. They developed a Gothic style based on the naturalistic principles laid down by John Ruskin, and their practice also played an important role in the Gothic revival in England. Their two most important buildings are the Museum in Trinity College Dublin (1854-1857) and the Oxford Museum (1854-1860).

When Deane died in 1899, his practice was continued by his son, Thomas Manly Deane.

Deane’s best known works in Dublin include the National Library and the National Museum in Kildare Street, bookending Leinster House. However, this week I am looking at four of his buildings that are among my favourite works of architecture in Dublin:

1, The Museum Building in Trinity College, Dublin;

2, No 46-47 Dame Street, which was built in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co;

3, The Allied Irish Bank, formerly the Munster and Leinster Bank, at 7-10 Dame Street Dublin;

4, the former Kildare Street Club on Kildare Street.

Join me this week as I visit these four buildings, all within walking distance of each other.

Allied Irish Bank, Dame Street, Dublin

Deane’s design of the former Munster and Leinster Bank on Dame Street was influenced by his design of the Museum Building in Trinity College Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

This morning, I am visiting the Allied Irish Bank building on the south side of Dame Street, on the corner of Palace Street, opposite the Olympia Theatre and close to the east entrance to Dublin Castle.

The former Munster and Leinster Bank on Dame Street was designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane in 1870-1874. The shape of this site was irregular and challenging. Work began in 1870, and was the building was completed in 1877.

Deane based his design on the Museum Building in Trinity College Dublin, which he designed two decades earlier and which we looked at on Wednesday [28 December 2016].

Like the Museum Building, the bank is designed like a Venetian palazzo, and built in the Lombardo-Romanesque style. It too shows the influences of John Ruskin’s ideas on Deane’s work, and although it is less elaborate than it is similar in many ways to the Crown Life Office at 46-47 Dame Street, which we looked at on Thursday [29 December 2016].

For this bank, Deane designed a handsome, two-storey building with a canted entrance, rows of three and four large round-headed windows and polychromic stone surrounds, and a deep-bracketed eaves cornice.

The building materials include Ballinasloe limestone for the walls, Portland stone for the carved capitals, the medallions are of Portland stone with polished green bosses, the colonettes are of polished limestone and ink granite. Deane’s initials can be seen on a roundel on the Palace Street façade.

The clerk of works was Thomas Butler, and the building contractors were John Nolan and his son, Francis Nolan.

The carvings are the work of the architectural sculptor, Charles William Harrison (1834-1903), from Cottingham, Yorkshire. There is great variety and imagination in the carving of the capitals, with fantastical foliage and beasts.

Harrison may have come to Ireland around 1859 to work on the carvings on Deane and Woodward’s Kildare Street Club, which I am looking at tomorrow.

In the early 1860s, Harrison was in partnership with Charles Abbey, working from 27 Great Brunswick Street. Later, he worked from 126 Great Brunswick Street, by 1871 he had moved to 178 Great Brunswick Street, and in 1874 his business was at 177 and 178 Great Brunswick Street.

Among those who worked for Harrison was James Pearse, the father of the Pearse brothers of the 1916 Easter Rising. Four of Harrison’s sons were sculptors too.

Harrison died in 1903 at his home at 8 Herbert Road, Sandymount, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. He was an active member of Saint Mark’s Church of Ireland Church in Mark Street, where he was a churchwarden for 14 years. The business which he founded continued until the 1970s.

The former Munster and Leinster Bank is designed like a Venetian palazzo and was built in the Lombardo-Romanesque style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Inside, the banking hall is magnificent and is one of the most impressive in Dublin, with a vast soaring vaulted ceiling dwarfing customers and bank staff. This is a tall, double-height space with a deep coved and coffered ceiling. In the cornice, there are gilded shields showing the coats-of-arms of the principal cities and towns of Munster.

The plasterwork is by James Hogan and Sons, ornamental plaster-workers, who worked from 168 Great Brunswick Street from the 1850s until the 1880s.

The bank was enlarged in 1927-1928, when the architect was William Albert Dixon (1892-1978), and the stone carvings and marble work were executed by CW Harrison & Sons.

Originally, the facades on Palace Street and Dame Street were of equal length. In 1958-1959, the Dame Street façade was extended by McDonnell & Dixon, the architectural partnership formed by WA Dixon, and the contractors were John Sisk and Son. The main façade was sympathetically extended along Dame Street, using a more grey Ardbraccan limestone. However, the extension of the interior was less successful.

The shape of the site on the corner of Dame Street and Palace Street was irregular and challenging (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Tomorrow: The former Kildare Street Club, Kildare Street, Dublin.

Visiting four favourite buildings in Dublin by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (3)

No 46-47 Dame Street was designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

During this week, I am visiting some of my favourite buildings in Dublin designed by the architect Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-1899), who worked in a Dublin-based partnership with Benjamin Woodward (1816-1861).

In October 1853, Woodward and Deane set up an office at No 3 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin. They developed a Gothic style based on the naturalistic principles laid down by John Ruskin, and their practice also played an important role in the Gothic revival in England. Their two most important buildings are the Museum in Trinity College Dublin (1854-1857) and the Oxford Museum (1854-1860).

When Deane died in 1899, his practice was continued by his son, Thomas Manly Deane.

Deane’s best known works in Dublin include the National Library and the National Museum in Kildare Street, bookending Leinster House. However, this week I am looking at four of his buildings that are among my favourite works of architecture in Dublin:

1, The Museum Building in Trinity College, Dublin;

2, No 46-47 Dame Street, which was built in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co;

3, The Allied Irish Bank, formerly the Munster and Leinster Bank, at 7-10 Dame Street Dublin;

4, the former Kildare Street Club on Kildare Street.

Join me this week as I visit the four buildings I have selected, all within walking distance of each other.

No 46-47 Dame Street, Dublin (Crown Life Assurance Co):

Sir Thomas Newenham Deane designed No 46-47 Dame Street in the Lombardo-Romanesque style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

On the corner of Fownes Street and Dame Street, No 46-47 Dame Street was built in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co. The building was designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane in 1868 and was modelled on the London head office of Crown Life, which was designed in 1858 by his former partner, Benjamin Woodward.

This part of Dame Street is along a busy traffic route and on the edges of the Temple Bar area. For tourists it is a pedestrian thoroughfare, linking Christ Church Cathedral with the Bank of Ireland Trinity College Dublin or leading into the Temple Bar area.

These factors mean it is generally difficult to catch a view that offers opportunities to appreciate the Dame Street façade of this building. It is often easier to appreciate the building around the corner, beside the ‘Foggy Dew’ pub, where the Fownes Street façade faces the Central Bank Plaza.

Venetian-style arched windows and balconies on the Dame Street side of the building (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Like the Museum Building in Trinity College Dublin, Deane designed this building was built in Portland stone in the style of a Lombardo-Romanesque palazzo, drawing on the principals set out a decade earlier by John Ruskin in The Stones of Venice.

The builder was Gilbert Cockburn was the builder, who also built the Museum Building in TCD, and the total cost was £4,000.

On the Dame Street façade, there are Venetian-style arched windows and balconies. On the ground floor, we can see stilted segment-headed openings to the former public offices on the ground floor. The main entrance originally stood at the east end of this façade, on the viewer’s right.

The romantic features on the Fownes Street façade include stepped, round-headed windows (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The romantic features on pretty side elevation on the east or Fownes Street façade include five Ruskin-influenced stepped, round-headed windows, three grouped together in an ascending arcade, on the staircase.

Slender colonnettes frame the angle of the building, and deep bracketed cornices create strong horizontals at the piano nobile and eaves levels.

The Portland stone used by Deane is offset by a granite plinth, a frieze, still and impost courses of red sandstone, polished pink granite colonnettes to the windows, and capitals of grey and white limestone.

This building was rebuilt by James Franklin Fuller in 1917, and the builders for this renovation were Farmer Brothers of Nottingham Street, Dublin.

Venetian-style balconies on the Dame Street side of the building (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

I first got to appreciate the exterior of this building and to know the interior when I was training as a Chartered Surveyor, because at the time the building housed the Dublin Corporation Planning Office.

This was an ironic use of the building in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for the planners almost allowed it to be lost to Dublin. It was saved from demolition because Skidmore Owings Merrill, in the masterplan for the area they submitted to CIE in the 1970s, identified it as one of two buildings worth saving in the Temple Bar area.

Since then, this building has been renovated, the interior has been greatly remodelled, and this is now part of a larger hotel.

The Crown Life Building was almost lost to Dublin due to planners’ decisions in the 1970s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Tomorrow: The Allied Irish Bank, 7-10 Dame Street Dublin.

Visiting four favourite buildings in Dublin by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1)

The Lombardo-Romanesque frontfaçade of Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin … designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The architect Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-1899) was born on 15 June 1828 at Dundanion, Co Cork, the eldest son of Thomas Deane and his second wife, Eliza Newenham. He was educated at Rugby and Trinity College Dublin (BA, 1849). After graduation, he became a pupil in his father’s office in Cork.

In 1851 Deane and his father’s assistant, Benjamin Woodward (1816-1861), became partners in the practice of Deane and Woodward. Woodward, who was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly, trained as an engineer but developed an early interest in mediaeval architecture.

In October 1853, Woodward and Deane set up an office at No. 3 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin. Deane and Woodward developed a Gothic style based on the naturalistic principles laid down by John Ruskin, and their practice played an important role in the Gothic revival in England. Their two most important buildings are the Museum in Trinity College Dublin (1854-1857) and the Oxford Museum (1854-1860).

As an artist, Deane was also a regular exhibitor at the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1863 to 1898.

Woodward died in Lyons in France in 1862. In 1878 Sir Thomas Newenham Deane’s eldest son, Thomas Manly Deane, joined the partnership. Deane was one of four Irish architects who attended the Architects’ Conference in London in 1871. He believed that architects should have a broad education that included fine art and the study of the antique.

In 1875, Deane was appointed the first Superintendent of National Monuments. In 1890, Deane was knighted at the opening of the National Library and National Museum in Kildare Street.

Despite his fame and public acclamation, Deane was a shy person and suffered from a speech impediment and shyness. He was an associate and later a Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI), a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (FRSAI).

He died suddenly in his office at 37 Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on 8 November 1899 and was buried in Deansgrange Cemetery, Co Dublin. His practice was continued by his son, Thomas Manly Deane.

Deane’s best known works in Dublin include the National Library and the National Museum in Kildare Street, bookending Leinster House. However, this week I want to look at four of his buildings that are among my favourite works of architecture in Dublin:

1, The Museum Building in Trinity College, Dublin;

2, No 46-47 Dame Street, which was built in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co;

3, The Allied Irish Bank, formerly the Munster and Leinster Bank, at 7-10 Dame Street Dublin;

4, the former Kildare Street Club on Kildare Street.

Deane’s other works also include the former Stopford House Hotel, or Invermore, in Courtown, Co Wexford, which was designed around 1860 for the Earl Courtown’s land agent, and at one time was the home of Eva Mary Comerford (née Esmond) and her daughter Maire Comerford (1893-1982); Rathmichael Parish Church (1863), Co Dublin; Turlough House, Co Mayo, built for Charles Lionel Fitzgerald; the New Lombardo-Romanesque front for Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin (1866-1869), inspired by two churches in Rome – the baroque façade of San Giacomo in Augusta (degli Incurabili) in central Rome and Francesco Borromini’s tower at Sant’Agnese in Agone in the Piazza Navona; and the Graduates’ Memorial Building (GMB) in Trinity College Dublin (1899).

Join me this week as I visit the four buildings I have selected, all within walking distance of each other.

Tomorrow: The Museum Building in Trinity College, Dublin.

The Museum Building in Oxford was also designed by Woodward and Deane and decorated by O’Shea and Whelan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)