Dublin Furniture Centre

Terraced four-bay four-storey building over concealed basement, built 1841-5, formerly pair of two-bay townhouses, now unified internally and in use as furniture shop with apartments over, having recent timber shopfront to. Original two-bay four-storey return to rear (east) with recent single-storey concrete extension. Pitched roof of unknown material to fore of roof structure having pitched and hipped roof to rear, southern pitch shared with No. 53. Two central stepped rendered chimneystacks with clay pots, rebuilt parapet wall with squared granite coping. Replacement aluminium rainwater goods throughout. Yellow brick walls laid in Flemish bond. Top floor rebuilt. Cast-iron bracing plates to first and second floors, and plastered, moulded roundel to first floor with '55' to No. 55. Rendered walls to rear elevation and return. Gauged brick flat-arched window openings throughout with patent rendered reveals and granite sills. Original timber sliding sash windows, six-over-six pane to first and second floors and three-over-three to third floor. Upper floors accessed by square-headed door openings to each end of facade. Original granite kerbing to street front. Car park to rear of site enclosed by recent steel fence and bounded to north and south by coursed random rubble stone walls.

This building, formerly two houses, is typical of the structures along this early thoroughfare. Significant original fabric remains, including timber sash windows and a shared return, despite extensive alterations internally and to the ground floor. The symmetrical façade forms a pleasing aesthetic and is a refined example of the modest Georgian architecture that is so common in this part of Dublin. Capel Street was laid out by Humphrey Jervis c.1678 to link the Essex Bridge to the Great North Road. It was developed largely in the eighteenth century with detached houses and gardens which were later subdivided for terrace use, but much of the shared streetscape characteristics survive despite some nineteenth-century alterations.