The line of the street, as it existed in 1916, curved around the Custom House from Butt Bridge as far as Beresford Place where it turned left down Store Street around the old dock and bonding warehouse to Amiens Street. The bonding warehouses were built in brick and curved on the same radius as Beresford Place. These warehouses ended on the edge of the old Custom House dock.
In 1916 the Civics Institute of Ireland held a competition for suggestions and designs for the city planning of Dublin of which the judges were Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), the Dublin City Architect C.J. McCarthy (1858-1947), and John Nolen. The winner was Patrick Abercrombie of Liverpool University. This competitive design formed the basis of the Abercrombie Report published in 1922 which, apart from recommending a site at Aston Quay for a Central Bus Station, also suggested the removal of Butt Bridge (which was then in a dangerous state) and the completion of the crescent around the Custom House by filling in the redundant dock. Since the dock's construction, the docks had expanded and moved further down river. In addition a new bridge positioned centrally in front of the Custom House was to be constructed and Amiens Street Railway Station extended down to the quayside. All the buildings surrounding the Custom House were to be rebuilt in a Beaux Arts style with the station closing off the Abbey Street vista with a huge colonnade. Abercrombie was influenced personally as an architect by the ƒcole des Beaux Arts in Paris and particularly by Baron Georges-Eugéne Haussmann (1809-1891) whose city planning of Paris he admired. It was reported in The Irish Times that Abercrombie felt that it was necessary: ... to complete a crescent surrounding the Custom House with buildings for offices of similar purposes which would form a regular setting for the central building, The design of these buildings as shown in his Dublin report of 1922, was of a Renaissance character but they might quite equally well have been carried out in a more modern idiom. In any case he thought it would have been necessary for the surrounding buildings to be considerably higher than the Custom House.(Anon, 8 October 1946, p. 7)
Nothing ever came of this report and Abercrombie's recommendations were largely ignored. In December 1922 the Greater Dublin Reconstruction Movement published their proposals for the city. This report, like Abercrombie's, advocated extending Amiens Street Station to the quayside and new docks constructed alongside it for passenger services across the Irish Sea. It also suggested the removal of the Loop Line railway bridge and its replacement east of the Custom House which would become the new General Post Office. Again, nothing ever came of this.
Throughout the late 1930s the general public had been agitating through the newspapers for better transport facilities specifically the provision of bus shelters along the quays where long distance bus passengers caught their buses. In 1937 The Irish Builder and Engineer suggested that a Central Bus Station be constructed on the bonding warehouse site next to the disused and abandoned Custom House Dock. It was not the first time that the dock was suggested for use in civic improvements. In 1927 the same journal had reported a far sighted plan to fill the dock with an underground car park for two hundred cars and placing a new road over it to the quayside.
The 1939 Sketch Development Plan for County Borough of Dublin and Neighbourhood by Professor Abercrombie, who was now Professor of Civic Design at Liverpool University, Sydney Kelly, a Liverpool architect, and Manning Robertson (1888-1945) a Dublin based town planner, also proposed a Central Bus Station which was to be sited at Aston Quay on the McBirneys Department Store site keeping the original building frontages: It is proposed that the central omnibus station should be situated behind the frontage of Astons Quay between Bedford Row and Aston Place. The continuity of building along the Quay frontage would be preserved. (Abercrombie, 1939, p. 21)
This plan also recommended that a site be put aside at Wood Quay for a future station as needs may change. In early 1944 it was decided to follow his proposals and improve the facilities and services offered to long distance bus travellers by building a Central Bus Station in Dublin at a site to be decided.
The site was required to be central, and convenient to rail, sea and road arteries and near the Liffey which it was felt would always be the centre of the city. Four sites were considered: Store Street, Aston Quay, north of Christchurch Cathedral at Wood Quay and a portion of the Haymarket at Smithfield. The site eventually selected by the Irish Omnibus Company (a subsidiary of the Great Southern Railway Company) was the one at Store Street, which was the cheapest and easiest to acquire and was bounded on two sides by roads. By opening up a new road and bridge to the east of the Custom House, the site was to be made into an island, making traffic circulation easier. The site was also close to Amiens Street Railway Station (since renamed Connolly Station) which was to be the new central railway station as proposed by Abercrombie, and the B&I Ferry terminal to Britain on the North Wall, as well as the local bus routes. The area was, and still is, the focus of most of the traffic coming into the city from the north of Ireland. This was not, however, the site favoured by Dublin Corporation. They preferred the site at Aston Quay with a separate bus depot at Winetavern and Fishamble streets (Wood Quay), while the Government preferred the Smithfield market site. In later years, while attempting to justify its decision, the Board of CIE strongly disagreed with the Government and declared that: The area is in the opinion of the company entirely unsuitable. Long distance passengers must be brought in to the centre of the city. A station at Smithfield or elsewhere in that area would cause considerable inconvenience and besides the approaches are narrow and unsafe from an operating point of view.(Anon, 2 September 1949, p. 3)