Henrietta Street

The Henrietta Street Conservation Plan will be launched today by Lord Mayor Councillor Vincent Jackson and the Dublin City Manager, John Tierney at the King's Inns, Henrietta Street at 6pm. The Conservation plan re-affirms Henrietta Street as one of the principal architectural and urban ensembles of this country. "This conservation plan is essential in highlighting the architectural vulnerabilities on Henrietta Street and will help to re-affirm its significance through the implementation of appropriate policies", said the Lord Mayor.

Henrietta Street was built in 1721 by Luke Gardiner (MP). It took a further thirty four years for all the houses on the Street to be fully completed. Henrietta Street is now home to a number of residents and institutions, all of whom recognise the importance of the Street and who have taken on the difficult task of restoring the houses and reinstating the fine interiors.

City Manager, John Tierney said "Henrietta Street is the single most intact and important architectural collection of individual houses, as a street, in Dublin. Internationally, the street is of unique European significance, being the only intact example of an early 18th century street of houses, which influenced what was to become the Georgian style".

The Henrietta Street Conservation Plan was commissioned by Dublin City Council in 2005 as an Action of the Dublin City Heritage Plan and was co-funded by the Heritage Council. Henrietta Street was laid out in 1721 by Luke Gardiner (MP) on lands that once formed part of Saint Mary's Abbey, called Ancaster Park and it took a further thirty-four years for all the houses on Henrietta Street to be fully completed. Gardiner expanded on the practice of laying out generously large plots, which occurred at Saint Stephen's Green in the 1660s.

Gardiner was also responsible in the succeeding decades for the laying out of Sackville Mall (O'Connell Street) and Rutland Square (Parnell Square). The architecture of Henrietta Street marked a decisive move away from the tradition of gable-fronted terraced houses, usually built as pairs and sharing a large angled chimneybreast. In this new order for domestic architecture, gables were replaced by parapets that concealed the roof structure, while proportion and massing expressed the influence of Palladian architecture, as practiced in areas of London such as Saint James's Square or Grosvenor Square.

This form of urban architecture that we today call 'Georgian', was quickly adopted by most subsequent speculators of the 18th and early 19th century to give Dublin its unique architectural character.

Henrietta Street is also of great social significance. During the 18th century the street was home to 'four All-Ireland Primates, which no doubt inspired the informal name for the street 'Primates Hill'.

The street was also home to the Deputy Vice Treasurer, Nathanial Clements (who succeeded Gardiner who laid out the street) who was responsible for much of the building on the street. Two Speakers of the House of Commons, namely, Henry Boyle, who was also Lord Justice and Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer and John Ponsonby, were also important residents on the street.

By contrast to these salubrious 18th century residents, the street, along with much of the north inner city, became tenements at the end of the 19th century and for much of the 20th century. This later development may well have preserved the high degree of intactness of the early to mid 18th century architecture.