Pho Ta

Attached three-bay three-storey former house, built c.1750, now in use as restaurant. Flat roof hidden behind smooth rendered parapet with masonry coping, rendered chimneystack having clay pots. Smooth rendered walls to upper floors over channelled rendered wall and masonry plinth course to ground floor. Square-headed window openings with masonry sills to ground and first floors, continuous masonry sill course to second floor, replacement six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows with flush sash boxes to first and second floors, some shutters visible to interior, moulded architraves, masonry sills and fixed pane windows to ground floor. Round-headed door opening with granite step and replacement granite block-and-start doorcase, timber panelled door and plain fanlight.

This building, along with those adjoining it to the east and west, is among some of the oldest remaining buildings in Temple Bar and appears on John Rocque’s 1756 map of Dublin. Though substantially altered and its roof removed, the centrally-placed chimneystack indicates an early date. It is recorded as a house and yard in Griffith’s Primary Valuation, as a warehouse in the 1901 census and as offices in the 1911 census. Its scale and proportions are in keeping with the small collection of eighteenth-century buildings in Temple Bar which together chart the early architectural development and history of the area. Although it has lost some original fabric, its form and character are retained.