The Green Stuff
Everyone knows St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. But not so many people are aware that its southside buildings back onto Iveagh Gardens, a lower profile yet equally fine park. The brick rear elevations of Newman University Church (a windowless apse), Museum of Literature Ireland (a bow window and a chamfered bay with Gothick windows) and Stauntons on the Green Hotel (a pair of shallow chamfered bays) all rise above the archery grounds.
Iveagh Gardens are entered from the opposite side, off Upper Hatch Street. A new addition to the encircling cityscape, this time facing the park, is the IDA Ireland global headquarters, completed in 2019. Designed by Dublin practice MOLA, the transparent façade is a glacial foil to the verdancy of the gardens. IDA Chief Executive Martin Shanahan says, “The new location at Three Park Place provides IDA Ireland with an excellent location from which to market to global investors.” The IDA was previously located for 35 years at Wilton Place opposite the canal. Wilton Place is being redeveloped to the design of architects Henry John Lyons.
The Anglo Irish Guinness family have done so much for Ireland including Desmond and Mariga Guinness establishing the Irish Georgian Society in 1958. “Without a doubt,” writes Carola Peck in Mariga and Her Friends (1997), “both Desmond and Mariga worked unremittingly and unstintingly to save Dublin’s architectural heritage.” A century earlier, Benjamin Guinness leased Iveagh Gardens to the Dublin Exhibition Palace. The gardens were designed by landscape architect Ninian Niven, merging French Formal and English Landscape styles. His descendent Rupert Guinness 2nd Earl of Iveagh donated the gardens to the nation in 1939. The public – and IDA employees on their lunch break – can still enjoy the one metre high maze, sunken gardens with fountains, archery grounds, rustic grotto and cascade.
