Development and Preservation in Dublin - Temple Bar

Temple Bar

The new awareness was also reflected in the development of Temple Bar, the last surviving part of Dublin that contained its original medieval street plan. As late as the mid 1980s, Temple Bar was seen as a poor, run down segment of the city, stretching in terms of length from the Old Houses of Parliament in College Green to Parliament Street, which faced City Hall, and which in terms of width stretched from Dame Street to the city quays. In the 1970s, Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ), the state transport company, bought up many of the buildings in this area, with a view to building a large modern central bus station on the site, in the process replacing the medieval streets and buildings (while the street pattern was medieval, most of the buildings were not, dating from the eighteenth or nineteenth century) by one large bus station with a shopping centre attached. However, delays in providing the financing led CIÉ to rent out the buildings at nominal rents. Most of the buildings were rented by artists, producing a sudden and unexpected appearance of a 'cultural quarter' that earned comparisons with Paris's Left Bank. Though CIÉ remained nominally committed to its planned redevelopment, the vibrancy of the Temple Bar area led to demands for its preservation. By the late 1980s, the bus station plans were abandoned and a master plan put in place to maintain the Temple Bar's position as Dublin's cultural heartland.

That process has been a mixed success. While the medieval street plan has survived, rents rocketed, forcing the artists elsewhere. They have been replaced by restaurants and a proliferation of bars which draw thousands of tourists but which has been criticised for over commercialisation and excessive alcohol consumption. Some of the more historic buildings in the area have been destroyed in this process, notably St. Michael and John's Roman Catholic Church, one of the city's finest and oldest Catholic church, which predated the repeal of the Penal Laws and Catholic Emancipation. Its interior was gutted to be replaced by a tourist-orientated "Viking adventure centre" which ran into financial problems. While the development of Temple Bar was far preferable to its obliteration under a 1980s multi-story bus station, many people have criticised some aspects of its development, arguing that the new Temple Bar tourist area has failed to show sufficient sensitivity to the potential that had existed. Temple Bar was used as a set for some of the exterior scenes in the film Far and Away.

Between December 2002 and January 2003, the Spire of Dublin was erected on O'Connell Street. A 120 m tall tapered metal pole, it is the tallest structure of Dublin city centre, visible for miles. It was assembled from seven pieces with the largest crane available in Ireland. It replaced Nelson's Pillar which was blown up in 1966.