shop/retail outlet

Attached three-bay four-storey commercial building with dormer attic, built c. 1910, with recent shopfront of c. 1995 to ground floor. Mansard-style roof to east pitch with three gabled dormers, and flat roof to rear (west), concealed behind parapet with raised masonry verges to north and south, and having red brick chimneystack to south party wall with red brick and masonry coping. Machine-made red brick walling, laid in Flemish bond, with rendered dressings, including crown cornice to eaves and continuous moulded sill and lintel courses. Square-headed window openings framed by flanking panelled brick pilasters with painted rendered stops and ornate foliate capitals, those to first floor rising to segmental and triangular pediments over continuous moulded cornice and plain individual frieze. Windows are replacement bipartite side-hung timber casements. Rendered surrounds to dormers, having square-headed openings framed by panelled pilasters with foliate capitals supporting plain entablature and triangular pediments, moulded finials to apex, and replacement timber casement windows. Continuous rendered cornice spanning ground floor, with lead-lined moulded cornice over dentillated and egg-and-dart mouldings. Forms part of retail complex comprising Nos. 1-5 Clarendon Street, Nos. 38-44 Wicklow Street and Nos. 88-95 Grafton Street.

Eclectic early twentieth-century commercial premises remodelled c.1995 when the Switzer and Company department store was taken over by Brown Thomas. The alterations included the insertion of a new ground floor shopfront designed to unify the disparate buildings which make up the retail complex. The lively façade is enriched with classical detailing devices, including pedimented dormers and window surrounds. Despite some loss of historic fabric, the original shopfront cornice and the upper floors are well preserved. The building provides a focal point in the streetscape and contributes to the rich and diverse character of the area.