From Georgian houses on Fitzwilliam Street to the eradication of ghost estates throughout the country, demolition remains a far more emotive issue than construction
WHEN THE suggestion emanated from the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) that some of our ghost estates may be demolished, a good deal of the response was surprisingly negative. I’m inclined to think that the best thing for a half-built housing development on a flood plain would be to return it to a field, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised; it is usually only when a building is about to be knocked down that we realise any regard for it – Liberty Hall being a case in point. Demolition seems far more emotive than construction.
Architecture is not only a collection of buildings, some of them iconic, it also tells the story of a society: townhouses and tenements, great houses and castles, churches, shopping malls, concert halls, factories, suburbs and commuter towns; all these show us who we thought, and think, we are.
You can see from their state of upkeep and disrepair the regard in which their owners or occupiers are held; and just as much can be read into neglect as into new soft pile carpets or re-gilding in government buildings. Building projects aim to realign cities, revitalise communities, and they create the social world within (and without) their walls. But if that story is there to be read on the sides of the roads, streets and laneways of Ireland, a yet more telling tale emerges from those buildings we choose, or allow, to be knocked down.
The ESB’s destruction of 12 Georgian houses on Fitzwilliam Street in the 1970s, to build their new Stephenson Gibney office block, is an example that seems to sum up so many of the arguments. Caught between an ambivalence for a colonial past (architecture being the tangible symbol of what long-dead generations imposed), and an equal ambivalence about what sort of a future we should be heading towards, heritage issues became conflated with the idea that those who wanted to preserve them were also arguing for the continuance of the unequal systems of the past. Now that the ESB is planning to rebuild on the Fitzwilliam Street site, it’s hard not to see the first 1970s destruction as simply paving the way for the total disruption of the Georgian sensibility you can still (just about) get from looking up the street from Merrion Square, through Fitzwilliam Square and beyond.
Getting rid of constructed symbols of the past in Ireland didn’t start in the 1970s. There was the burning of the Custom House in 1921, and the 1920s also saw many of the great houses destroyed. Into the 1940s, de Valera’s government planned the demolition of the Viceregal Lodge and of Merrion Square. These were saved, ironically, by the second World War, which was responsible for so much other appalling destruction and, subsequently, the plans were abandoned. The Viceregal Lodge is now Áras an Uachtaráin.
Postcolonial ambivalence is not unique to Ireland. Neither is the destruction of architecture to make a point. Politics is at play, both with a small and a capital “P”, as the actions of peoples and governments all have their impacts.
In Classical Greece and also in the Roman Republic, houses were destroyed as punishments for political wrongdoing. Places of worship have been sacked throughout history, by all sides. And across Europe in Russia, legacies of empire, fascism and communism have all left buildings behind to be ignored, assimilated or destroyed. Not all such building consists of major works of architecture either: examples include the construction of the Israeli homes in the occupied West Bank, and the demolition of homeland settlements of indigenous peoples throughout world history.
Dr Terence Dooley of the history department in NUI Maynooth (NUIM), and director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Houses and Estates (CSHIHE), agrees it is a global topic, and yet remains one generally only discussed in local or national terms. With this in mind, the conference The Politics of Architectural Destructionaimed to draw together ideas and research from around the world. The conference, which was to have taken place recently at Castletown House, fell victim to the volcanic ash cloud, and has now been rescheduled for next year. "The idea came, as it did for the establishment of the CSHIHE in 2004, from the changing public perceptions of, and relationships to, our built heritage," says Dooley.
This is not simply a question of a blithe acceptance of time sanitising the sweep of history. In 2008, launching the OPW/NUI Maynooth Archive and Research Centre at Castletown House, president Mary McAleese summed up the sentiment when she said she “was not reared to love the big house”.
“It would have been easy to want to obliterate the big house, but that would not have obliterated the past,” she adds, making the point that demolitions are often an attempt to erase memory.
Later that year, in a foreword to The Irish Georgian society: a celebration, she referred to Ireland as being blessed "by many fine edifices erected by our forebears". Dooley sums this up as demonstrating how "in architectural terms the nation had become more inclusive than at any time since independence".
Nevertheless, ambivalence remains. For the owners of the big houses, first rents, then investments declined, and Dooley describes the challenge facing them – “how to sustain the houses into the future. What kind of activity would make them viable?” This ties into questions about the land, as well as what we have built on it: who should own it? How should it be used? How much should unprofitable forms of agriculture be supported in order to sustain the land as an environmental, as well as an aesthetic, resource?
These themes are the subject of another CSHIHE conference, taking place in June. The eighth annual Historic Houses of Ireland conference, Destruction, Restoration and Consolidation, was to have followed on from the themes of the cancelled Politics of Architectural Destruction. The organisers have now responded to the cancellation by including an international element in the June conference. "The aim," says Dooley, "is to be of interest to the public as well as to historians, and to show how these houses were, and are, part of society."
It’s not all about big houses. Dublin Corporation’s housing projects for the working classes in the 1940s are up for discussion, as is the work of the Landmark Trust, which preserves such snippets of architecture as lighthouse keepers’ cottages and schoolhouses. And just to underline the axiom that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, Dooley reminds me of a statement made in the Dáil, by Deputy John Lyons. “There are thousands of acres in the hands of a few people, and the least we can expect from our own Government is that these lands will be taken over.” Lyons said that in 1923. He could have been talking about Nama.
Destruction, Restoration and Consolidation takes place on June 10-11. historicirishhouses.ie
Deliberate Destruction
AZTEC CITIES, MEXICO
Destroyed 16th century by Hernán Cortés and the Conquistadors
WILTON CASTLE, WEXFORD, IRELAND
Burned, March 5, 1923, during the Civil War
COVENTRY AND DRESDEN CATHEDRALS
Both became iconic ruins after being bombed, along with much of their surrounding cities, November 14, 1940 (Coventry), February 13-15, 1945 (Dresden)
SARAJEVO LIBRARY
Destroyed by shelling, August 25 and 26, 1992, during the Bosnian War
WORLD TRADE CENTRE,
NEW YORK, USA
Destroyed in terrorist attack, September 11, 2001
