shop/retail outlet

Terraced five-bay four-storey commercial building with attic, built 1924, now in use as amusement arcade and having recent shopfront to ground floor. Flat roof with pan-tiled front pitch having five dormers. Red brick chimneystacks to both party walls with cement coping and clay pots. Dormers set behind red brick parapet wall with cement coping and deep moulded Portland stone cornice to base. Machine-made red brick walls laid in English garden wall bond to upper floors with Portland stone course to third floor sill level. Central three bays slightly recessed with upper floor windows arranged vertically with Portland stone frames and brick panels between. Square-headed window openings throughout with plain Portland stone surrounds to outer bays, steel casement windows throughout and painted window aprons to central windows with gilt wreaths, festoons and frames. Continuous Portland stone cornice at first floor sill level with Portland stone architrave and frieze. Structure extended full depth of site.

This commercial building was built to replace earlier structures damaged during the widespread destruction of the 1916 Rising. The present shopfront possibly disguises the original scheme beneath but manages to respect the symmetrical five-bay arrangement of the upper floors. The retention of original steel windows and façade embellishments gives the structure some integrity and forms part of the early twentieth-century character of the streetscape. 55-56 O'Connell Street Upper was the premises of the Monument Bakery which opened in November 1931 followed by the Monument Café in January 1932 'with an imposing double shopfront [and] impressive specially designed interiors including – highly unusual at the time – a no smoking area' (Brenda Ryan in Dublin Historical Record 20190, 147): the bakery and café closed in 1966.