Pearce's Design Copied in The US Capitol and British Museum
Pearce's revolutionary designs came to be studied and copied both at home and abroad. The Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle imitated his top-lit corridors, although with minor alterations that undermined the effect somewhat. The British Museum in Bloomsbury in London copied his colonnaded main entrance for its own facade. The impact of his designs stretched as far as Washington, DC, where Pearce's building, and in particular his octagonal House of Commons chamber, was studied as plans were made for the new United States Capitol building. While the shape of the chamber was not replicated, some of its decorative motifs were, with the ceiling structure in the Old Senate Chamber and old House of Representatives chamber (now the Statuary Hall) holding a striking resemblance to the original Pearce-designed ceiling in the original Irish House of Commons. Coincidentally, while the Capitol was copying aspects of the design of Dublin's Parliament House, the White House was being modelled on the ground and first floors of Leinster House, then the residence of the Duke of Leinster, one of the leading peers in the Irish House of Lords, and now the seat of the modern independent Irish parliament, Oireachtas Éireann.
The uniqueness of the building, the quality of its workmanship and its central location in College Green, across from Trinity College, Dublin, made it one of Dublin's most highly regarded buildings.
Read more about this topic: Irish Houses Of Parliament
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