D'Olier Street ( ) is a street in the southern city-centre of

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

, the capital of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

. It and Westmoreland Street are two broad streets whose northern ends meet at the southern end of

O'Connell Bridge O'Connell Bridge () is a road bridge spanning the River Liffey in Dublin, Ireland, which joins O'Connell Street to D'Olier Street, Westmoreland Street and the south quays. History The original bridge (named ''Carlisle Bridge'' for the th ...

over the River Liffey. Its southern end meets

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was n ...

, Townsend Street, College Street and Pearse Street.

History

The street is named after Jeremiah D'Olier (1745–1817), a

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

goldsmith and a founder of the

Bank of Ireland Bank of Ireland Group plc ( ga, Banc na hÉireann) is a commercial bank operation in Ireland and one of the traditional Big Four Irish banks. Historically the premier banking organisation in Ireland, the Bank occupies a unique position in Iris ...

. D'Olier was the Sheriff of Dublin City in 1788 and a member of the

Wide Streets Commission The Wide Streets Commission (officially the Commissioners for making Wide and Convenient Ways, Streets and Passages) was established by an Act of Parliament in 1758, at the request of Dublin Corporation, as a body to govern standards on the layou ...

. The street was one of the last major interventions in the Dublin city plan to be executed by the Wide Streets Commissioners.

Notable addresses

From 1895 to 2006, ''

Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'' was based in D'Olier Street, leading the paper to be nicknamed ''The Old Lady of D'Olier Street''. The paper is now based in

Tara Street Tara Street is a major traffic route in Dublin, Ireland, partly due to the current one-way traffic flow in the city centre.

O'Connell Bridge House O'Connell Bridge House is a 12-storey office block in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. History O'Connell Bridge House was built on the site of Carlisle House, which was built in 1779 and demolished in 1962. O'Connell Bridge House was completed in ...

is located at 2 D'Olier Street. This office development was extended in 1968, by the same developer as O'Connell Bridge House, John Byrne. Alongside D'Olier House these modern office blocks surround the former headquarters of the Dublin Gas Company, a rare surviving

art deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

building in Dublin, was also designed by Desmond FitzGerald. D'Olier House has been leased by the Department of Social Welfare since shortly after its completion. In 1830,

Samuel Lover Samuel Lover (24 February 1797 – 6 July 1868), also known as "Ben Trovato" ("well invented"), was an Irish songwriter, composer and novelist, and a portrait painter, chiefly in miniatures. He was the grandfather of Victor Herbert. Life Lov ...

was secretary of the Royal Hibernian Academy and lived at number 9 D'Olier Street. In 1891 James Franklin Fuller designed the D'Olier Chambers building of yellow brick and terracotta for the Gallaher Tobacco Company.

Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

opened a team store on the street in 2000 having signed a 15-year lease at €520,000 per annum. It closed in 2002. The lease expired in August 2015. A number of

nightclub A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gen ...

s have operated on the street, including Club XXI and Redz in the 2000s. Tramline, at number 21, was the only club in operation on the street. The Dublin central

clinic A clinic (or outpatient clinic or ambulatory care clinic) is a health facility that is primarily focused on the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded. They typically cover the primary care needs ...

of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service is based on the 2nd Floor of LaFayette House on the street. As of 2013, the IBTS were renting the second and third floors of the building at a fee of €105,000 per annum. In 2014 the IBTS considered moving to a cheaper city centre location due to high running costs, but remain on D'Olier Street as of May 2022. The Lafayette Building, on the junction of Westmoreland Street and D’Olier Street, is a six-storey over basement block which has been described as a "landmark building which looks straight down

O’Connell Street O'Connell Street () is a street in the centre of Dublin, Ireland, running north from the River Liffey. It connects the O'Connell Bridge to the south with Parnell Street to the north and is roughly split into two sections bisected by Henry St ...

and dominates the city streetscape next to

". Developed in the 1890s for the Liverpool and Lancashire Insurance Company and designed by architect John Joseph O'Callaghan, it was described as a “

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building ...

baronial Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knigh ...

exercise with

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

and Ruskinian leanings.” It was redeveloped in the late 1990s when the three top floors of the building were converted into 14 apartments.

References

Citations Sources * {{Streets in Dublin city, state=autocollapse Streets in Dublin (city)