The Irish Times

Undoubtedly, one of the most familiar buildings in central Dublin has to be the National Library of Ireland on Kildare Street. Built in the late 1880s to the designs of Sir Thomas Newenham Deane, assisted by his son Thomas Manley Deane, the structure is one of a pair, matched on the other side of Leinster House by the National Museum. Both share an elaborate Italianate style, based around projecting rotundas facing one another across a courtyard. But while the museum still has its original, and recently restored, façade of soft Mountcharles sandstone, that of the library was replaced during the last century by more durable limestone.