Slovakia Shop

Terraced two-bay five-storey house, built c.1790, now converted to shop and flats with shopfront to ground floor. M-profile pitched roof, hipped to north. Render chimneystack with stepped cap to south party wall. Roof concealed behind low parapet with granite coping. Cast-iron rainwater goods. Rendered walls over ground floor shopfront, with render corner pilasters to north and south. Square-headed window openings with flush reveals and painted granite sills housing two-over-two pane timber sliding sash windows. Vitreolite shopfront to ground floor comprising vitreolite pilasters having masonry plinth supporting vitreolite fascia, some Doric columns visible to interior and recent sheet-metal section dividing door and windows. Square-headed window opening with single fixed-pane display window in aluminium frame over masonry plinth course riser. Square-headed shop entrance to north, separate recent entrance to upper floors to north of shop entrance.

This elegant former townhouse remains in good condition, retaining timber sash windows and elements of the original shopfront including Doric columns. The simple façade complements the classical tone of the architecture of the area, while the building's height and proportions reflect neighbouring properties to pleasing effect. The building forms an important element in Capel Street, which was laid out by Humphrey Jervis to link the new Essex Bridge (now Grattan Bridge) to the Great North Road in the seventeenth century. Originally a fashionable residential street of houses it became largely commercialized around 1800 and this building stands as testament to this historical redevelopment. Seán Lemass, former Taoiseach, was born here in 1899.