house

Terraced three-bay four-storey house over exposed basement, built c.1765. Now in use as theatre and offices. Built as pair with No. 37. Pitched slate roof with clay ridge tiles behind rebuilt red brick parapet wall with squared render coping. Rendered chimneystacks with clay pots to party walls, shared with No. 37 to south. Having mixed cast-iron and replacement uPVC rainwater goods. Flemish bond red brick walls with moulded granite ashlar plinth course and granite platband over rendered walls to basement. Cast-iron brackets below ground floor windows and cast-iron lantern on bracket. Gauged red brick flat-arched window openings with rendered reveals and rendered sills. Granite ashlar sills to basement level openings. Historic replacement one-over-one timber sliding sash windows to basement, recent replacement timber sliding sash windows elsewhere. Cast-iron balconettes to first and third floors. Square-headed door opening within painted stone Tuscan doorcase having engaged columns with responding pilasters on plinth blocks with tooled limestone plinth, columns and pilasters surmounted by moulded lintel, cornice and entablature with open-bed pediment housing replacement stained-glass fanlight. Replacement timber door to opening and stained glass to sidelights. Door opens onto granite flagged platform flanked by wrought-iron railing with wrought and cast-iron boxed corner posts on replacement granite plinths. Matching gate accessing limestone flagged basement, shared with No. 37, via steel staircase with cast-iron handrail.

This dignified building has maintained an early aspect and is an integral component of the streetscape. It was built in the 1760s by Henry Darley, who built five other houses on the eastern side of the square. The fine well-balanced façade is greatly enlivened by the tripartite doorcase which augments the building's presence within the streetscape. Its sympathetic timber sash windows and the foreground stone plinth and decorative cast and wrought-ironwork enhance the appearance of this building. Parnell Square was the creation of Dr Bartholomew Mosse. In 1748 he leased four acres at the junction of three important sites: the Gardiner Estate, Sackville (now O’Connell) and Great Britain (now Parnell) Streets. There the New Gardens (now Garden of Remembrance) were constructed, a landscaped tract of land with illuminated paths, obelisks and a loggia. Entrance fees to the gardens funded the construction of the Rotunda Hospital to the south, Mosse’s life ambition, and the success of the gardens precipitated the development of the surrounding square, largely by the hospital's chief builders. No. 36 is also believed to have a hall and annex to the rear, built in 1926 by A. O’Connor for the National Teachers' Club.