Ely Place (Dublin) - Developments

Developments

Around 1970 the property developer Matt Gallagher intended to build a grand new gallery, to be called the "Gallagher Gallery", for the Royal Hibernian Academy. His offer was accepted with gratitude by the RHA, and work started in 1972. The academy's old headquarters, a Victorian house which had once been the property of Oliver St. John Gogarty was demolished and it was expected that the modern building, designed by Raymond McGrath, formerly Principal Architect with the OPW, would be ready for its first exhibition in 1975.

Matt Gallagher died unexpectedly in January 1974. His son Patrick Gallagher inherited the business, and within a few months all work on the site stopped. For many years the building site was used as a storage yard for various Gallagher projects around the city centre. Around 2002 the old building was renovated and assumed its present shape.

Many of the buildings on the street are used for offices and the Irish National Parks and Wildlife Service department have their office in this street.

Read more about this topic:  Ely Place (Dublin)

Famous quotes containing the word developments:

    The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.
    C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)

    I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
    Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)