In the 1990s my late aunt and uncle were members of the United Arts Club, on Fitzwilliam Street Upper in Dublin. My uncle, a visual artist, was a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, and exhibited in its annual show. By that time they had retired from the capital to the west of Ireland and so, as members, availed of the accommodation on the club’s upper floors on return trips to the city. There were seven bedrooms, none en suite.
The club had a diningroom where my aunt invited me for dinner whenever she was visiting from the west. The Georgian room overlooking Fitzwilliam Street was faded but had beautiful proportions; the food was always terrible, tasting like a kind of pureed carvery; the service was always lovely.
One evening when I arrived to eat a routinely awful meal with my beloved aunt, I discovered her the centre of attention in the diningroom. This was unsurprising. With her long silver hair and ability to talk to anyone, she invariably attracted attention.
“You mustn’t tell anyone,” she said when I sat down, “but I had an adventure this morning.”
It wasn’t until after she died that I did tell anyone. In those days members staying overnight were obliged to vacate the building the next morning. My aunt had overslept, and by the time she got up everyone was gone. She was locked in the building – and her bedroom door had jammed, so she was also stuck inside the room. It was before the mobile phone, a gadget my aunt was never to master.
I am not sure what other people would have done in that situation, but my eccentric aunt was an optimist who believed other people would always assist her. Still in her nightdress, she threw open the bedroom window and called to passersby below for help. The fire brigade arrived – I think it assumed the building was on fire – and my aunt was taken safely down to street level by ladder.
I don’t know what membership fees were when my aunt was rescued from an upper floor of the United Arts Club, but the equivalent now for a “county household senior” is €355 a year. Members can then rent a single-occupancy room for €60 a night, or a double for €90, which has to be the best-value accommodation in central Dublin.
Philip Monaghan has been the club’s administrator – essentially its manager – since 2023. His predecessor was Bríd Tunney, honorary secretary. Its current president is the film director Lenny Abrahamson. When Monaghan was appointed the club had fewer than 200 members. It had been hit hard by Covid, and lost a lot of members. It now has more than 500.
Monaghan admits that he hadn’t heard of the United Arts Club before he applied for the job. “I probably walked by this building hundreds of times without knowing what it was,” he says.
We are sitting in a formal downstairs room with armchairs that is known as the Dante room. Monaghan doesn’t know where the name came from, other than that you might be going to hell or to paradise, depending on the company you’d find in there – “or maybe a play on ‘anteroom’”. This room is for members only.
The building at 3 Fitzwilliam Street Upper dates from about 1820. The club, which was founded in 1907, has been located here since 1920. “We assume the name ‘United’ came from the fact it was a tumultuous time in Ireland, and the club wanted to be apolitical and nonreligious.”
What’s the ethos of the club?
“It’s to support and promote the arts. At some point the entire of the arts community in Ireland passed through these doors, until at least about the 1990s,” he says. “The building is owned by the members. It is not for sale, and there are very good clauses in place so that, if it was ever sold, nobody could profit from it – the money would have to be used to buy a building for a similiar purpose. I can’t imagine that ever happening.”
That the building is owned outright is a huge advantage to those who use it. There are fewer and fewer places left in central Dublin where creative people (or those interested in the arts) can gather, or rent event spaces, for a reasonable price, let alone have somewhere to stay overnight at a modest price. To apply for membership, you don’t have to be a working artist but must be proposed by a current member. About one-fifth of current members are not artists. At present there is no cap on numbers, but that might change in the future, should applications keep increasing at the current rate.
“Our age profile of members is changing dramatically at the moment,” Monaghan says. “It was an older one. We have a quite a few students now, and a lot from the Gaiety School of Acting and the Lir Academy. We also have a lot of musicians, including jazz musicians. We are probably most represented by visual artists.” The magazine the Stinging Fly has also joined, and now holds some of its lunches on the premises.
Monaghan doesn’t know much about the history of the building before it became the club. He needs first to focus on the now. As he puts it, “I’m trying to get certain things done here first, and will then look at rebuilding the past.”
Like any period building, 3 Fitzwilliam Street Upper faces maintenance challenges. Monaghan takes me on a tour. There’s the former diningroom, where I used to eat with my aunt, which closed after Covid. It is now multifunctional, serving both as an event space and as a place where an a la carte dinner is served on Friday, with brunch on Saturday and Sunday, plus the occasional special-event dinner. I have no doubt the food has improved in the intervening decades.
The rustic, atmospheric bar at the back of the building makes you feel as if you are in a rural Ireland of several years ago, once your eyes adjust to the injury perpetrated by the salmon-pink banquettes. They will soon be replaced. “The pink is on the chopping board,” Monaghan says. “We haven’t decided on the new colour, but it won’t be pink or grey.”
Various areas, such as the stairwell, have been repainted, and members have donated art that has just been hung on this new gallery wall. There is artwork everywhere in the building, notably one piece by Jack B Yeats (who was also a member) and a large, striking portrait of the late artist Camille Souter by Neil Shawcross. A lot more art is in storage in the basement. “We don’t actually have a catalogue of what we have,” Monaghan says. It’s another job for his long to-do list.
In the basement’s former kitchen, the huge fireplace still has its original swivelling metal bar from which pots and kettles would have hung. I am transfixed by this unexpected time travel back to Georgian Dublin, and by the arched tunnels and cellars that run off the kitchen. The original floor tiles are also still in place. The former kitchen is now called the art room; art classes take place here regularly. Wooden easels hang on the walls where pots and pans would once have hung.
It is a late December morning when I visit, and the building feels cold. The heating bills must be steep in a building of this size and age. It’s clear that many of the rooms could do with repainting, and with some kind of restoration. “We can’t say ‘renovation’ to members, because they think we are going to change the place, and that isn’t what we want to do. We want to improve without changing; to restore,” Monaghan says.
He’s right to identify the very individual charm and atmosphere of the United Arts Club building as things worth preserving and treasuring. The club is not a fancy place, but it wears its history well, and has the Georgian bones that are such an important part of Dublin’s historical architecture.
The jewel of the club is the large reception room that members can rent for arts events, such as concerts. They pay a small fee, then get to keep the proceeds from the door. They can also rent it to hold their own events: that night the Island Photographers group will be displaying and discussing images from their work.
The club is redeveloping its website, which will have a lot more information on it soon, and posts on Facebook and Instagram. It has a bar manager and two part-time bar staff, a number of cleaning staff and a part-time chef. It also has a committee of 11, all Volunteers. (The presidency is an honorary role.)
The club opens each morning, and the bar is open from 5pm to 11pm every day except Monday. Monaghan won’t be drawn on fights that have broken out in the past in the bar between artists with offended egos, other than to say, diplomatically, “In the old days this was a night-time spot, and the bar operated well into the night.” Nick Cave once came in with Shane MacGowan. One or both fell asleep in the bar. He won’t be more specific than that. Monaghan also says that, “in the old days”, various journalists would come in after their papers had gone to print and tell everyone in the bar the next day’s news.
The United Arts Club runs on membership fees and whatever profit the bar generates. The rental income from its bedrooms and two function rooms just covers the cost of heat, light and laundry. Occasionally the club receives donations or legacies. “Not many and not often.”
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The building’s seven bedrooms are on the upper floors. The four bathrooms they share have been updated since I visited my aunt here. I recognise the room with twin beds that she used to stay in, and from which she was rescued by the fire brigade.
The basic bedrooms have changed little since last I saw them, and would benefit from being refreshed with new paint, new furniture and some of the art from the basement store. Most have beautiful views over Fitzwilliam Street Upper. Occupants make their own arrangements for breakfast.
“The fact we can offer accommodation and have these bedrooms is our biggest asset,” Monaghan says. “There are many much more expensive clubs in London that don’t have any accommodation.” The seven rooms are running at 80 per cent occupancy. The plan is to “improve the rooms without increasing the price”, which will likely be astonishing, but happy, news to members.
It’s rare to hear of such a business model in the capital. There is still room, it seems, for some storied eccentric spaces to flourish among all the cranes and redevelopment so visible throughout central Dublin.
