In 1859, Dubliners strolling along country roads witnessed something new emerging from the green fields. The Victorian house had arrived: wide red brick structures stood back behind manicured front lawns. Over the next forty years, an estimated 35,000 of these homes were constructed in the fields surrounding the city. The most elaborate were built for Dublin’s upper middle classes, distinguished by their granite staircases and decorative entrances. Today, they are some of the Irish capital’s most highly valued structures, and are protected under strict conservation laws. Dublin’s Bourgeois Homes is the first in-depth analysis of the city’s upper middle-class houses. Focusing on the work of three entrepreneurial developers, Susan Galavan follows in their footsteps as they speculated in house building: signing leases, acquiring plots and sourcing bricks and mortar. She analyses a select range of homes in three different districts: Ballsbridge, Rathgar and Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), exploring their architectural characteristics: from external form to plan type, and detailing of materials. Using measured surveys, photographs, and contemporary drawings and maps, she shows how house design evolved over time, as bay windows pushed through façades and new lines of coloured brick were introduced. Taking the reader behind the façades into the interiors, she shows how domestic space reflected the lifestyle and aspirations of the Victorian middle classes. This analysis of the planning, design and execution of Dublin’s bourgeois homes is an original contribution to the history of an important city in the British Empire.

This book presents an architectural overview of Dublin’s mass-housing building boom from the 1930s to the 1970s. During this period, Dublin Corporation built tens of thousands of two-storey houses, developing whole communities from virgin sites and green fields at the city’s edge, while tentatively building four-storey flat blocks in the city centre. Author Ellen Rowley examines how and why this endeavour occurred. Asking questions around architectural and urban obsolescence, she draws on national political and social histories, as well as looking at international architectural histories and the influence of post-war reconstruction programmes in Britain or the symbolisation of the modern dwelling within the formation of the modern nation. Critically, the book tackles this housing history as an architectural and design narrative. It explores the role of the architectural community in this frenzied provision of housing for the populace. Richly illustrated with architectural drawings and photographs from contemporary journals and the private archives of Dublin-based architectural practices, this book will appeal to academics and researchers interested in the conditions surrounding Dublin’s housing history.

Comfort, both physical and affective, is a key aspect in our conceptualization of the home as a place of emotional attachment, yet its study remains under-developed in the context of the European house. In this volume, Jon Stobart has assembled an international cast of contributors to discuss the ways in which architectural and spatial innovations coupled with the emotional assemblage of objects to create comfortable homes in early modern Europe. The book features a two-section structure focusing on the historiography of architectural and spatial innovations and material culture in the early modern home. It also includes 10 case studies which draw on specific examples, from water closets in Georgian Dublin to wallpapers in 19th-century Cambridge, to illustrate how people made use of and responded to the technological improvements and the emotional assemblage of objects which made the home comfortable. In addition, it explores the role of memory and memorialisation in the domestic space, and the extent to which home comforts could be carried about by travellers or reproduced in places far removed from the home. The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 offers a fresh contribution to the study of comfort in the early modern home and will be vital reading for academics and students interested in early modern history, material culture and the history of interior architecture.

This book examines the architectural design of housing projects in Ireland from the mid-twentieth century. This period represented a high point in the construction of the Welfare State project where the idea that architecture could and should shape and define community and social life was not yet considered problematic. Exploring a period when Ireland embraced the free market and the end of economic protectionism, the book is a series of case studies supported by critical narratives. Little known but of high quality, the schemes presented in this volume are by architects whose designs helped determine future architectural thinking in Ireland and elsewhere. Aimed at academics, students and researchers, the book is accompanied by new drawings and over 100 full colour images, with the example studies demonstrating rich architectural responses to a shifting landscape.

Delving into a hitherto unexplored aspect of Irish art history, Painting Dublin, 1886–1949 examines the depiction of Dublin by artists from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Artists’ representations of the city have long been markers of civic pride and identity, yet in Ireland such artworks have been overlooked in favour of the rural and pastoral. Framed by the shift from city of empire to capital of an independent republic, this book examines artworks by Walter Osborne, Rose Barton, Jack B. Yeats, Harry Kernoff, Estella Solomons and Flora Mitchell, encompassing a variety of urban views and artistic themes. While Dublin is already renowned for its representation in literature, this book will demonstrate the many attractions it held for Ireland’s artists, offering a vivid visualisation of the city’s streets and inhabitants at a crucial time in its history.

Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories brings together the papers presented at the Sixth International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH, Brussels, Belgium, 9-13 July 2018). The contributions present the latest research in the field of construction history, covering themes such as: - Building actors - Building materials - The process of building - Structural theory and analysis - Building services and techniques - Socio-cultural aspects - Knowledge transfer - The discipline of Construction History The papers cover various types of buildings and structures, from ancient times to the 21st century, from all over the world. In addition, thematic papers address specific themes and highlight new directions in construction history research, fostering transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration. Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories is a must-have for academics, scientists, building conservators, architects, historians, engineers, designers, contractors and other professionals involved or interested in the field of construction history.

Civilised by beasts tells the story of nineteenth-century Dublin through human-animal relationships. It offers a unique perspective on ordinary life in the Irish metropolis during a century of significant change and reform. At its heart is the argument that the exploitation of animals formed a key component of urban change, from municipal reform to class formation to the expansion of public health and policing. It uses a social history approach but draws on a range of new and underused sources, including archives of the humane society and the zoological society, popular songs, visual ephemera and diaries. The book moves chronologically from 1830 to 1900, with each chapter focusing on specific animals and their relationship to urban changes. It will appeal to anyone fascinated by the history of cities, the history of Dublin or the history of Ireland.

This collection of critical essays explores the literary and visual cultures of modern Irish suburbia, and the historical, social and aesthetic contexts in which these cultures have emerged. The lived experience and the artistic representation of Irish suburbia have received relatively little scholarly consideration and this multidisciplinary volume redresses this critical deficit. It significantly advances the nascent socio-historical field of Irish suburban studies, while simultaneously disclosing and establishing a history of suburban Irish literary and visual culture. The essays also challenge conventional conceptions of what constitutes the proper domain of Irish writing and art and reveal that, though Irish suburban experience is often conceived of pejoratively by writers and artists, there are also many who register and valorise the imaginative possibilities of Irish suburbia and the meanings of its social and cultural life.

Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories brings together the papers presented at the Sixth International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH, Brussels, Belgium, 9-13 July 2018). The contributions present the latest research in the field of construction history, covering themes such as: - Building actors - Building materials - The process of building - Structural theory and analysis - Building services and techniques - Socio-cultural aspects - Knowledge transfer - The discipline of Construction History The papers cover various types of buildings and structures, from ancient times to the 21st century, from all over the world. In addition, thematic papers address specific themes and highlight new directions in construction history research, fostering transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration. Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories is a must-have for academics, scientists, building conservators, architects, historians, engineers, designers, contractors and other professionals involved or interested in the field of construction history. This is volume 1 of the book set.

Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class focuses on the evolution of the Dublin City Coroner's Court and on Dr Louis A. Bryne's first two years in office. Wrapping itself around the 1901 census, the study uses gender, power, and blame as analytical frameworks to examine what inquests can tell us about the impact of urban living from lifecycle and class perspectives. Coroners' inquests are a combination of eyewitness testimony, expert medico-legal language, detailed minutiae of people, places, and occupational identities pinned to a moment in time. Thus they have a simultaneous capacity to reveal histories from both above and below. Rich in geographical, socio-economic, cultural, class, and medical detail, these records collated in a liminal setting about the hour of death bear incredible witness to what has often been termed 'ordinary lives'. The subjects of Dr Byrne's court were among the poorest in Ireland and, apart from common medical causes problems linked to lower socio-economic groups, this volume covers preventable cases of workplace accidents, neglect, domestic abuse, and homicide.