The Irish Times

Hard to believe nowadays, but the St Stephen's Green shopping centre - that tawdry Mississippi riverboat stranded at the top of Grafton Street - was the flagship of the Dublin Millennium in 1988. It opened its doors just before the end of what Dubliners dubbed "the aluminium". Harder still to credit that its entire South King Street frontage was set back by civic decree with the aim of widening the street so that it could more easily accommodate two moving lanes of traffic plus a line of parked cars. Now that same street has been closed altogether, probably for ever, to through traffic.