Veritas Building

Terraced three-bay four-storey brick building, built c.1920, with three-tier oriel windows and pair of shopfronts. Flat roof hidden behind rendered brick parapet wall with granite coping and chimneystacks to both party walls. Red brick walls laid in Flemish bond with flush granite ashlar courses and granite blocking course forming third floor lintel surmounted by deep granite moulded cornice supported on large scrolled console brackets to either end. Each oriel window set in recess from first to third floors with central shallow canted section and replacement timber casement windows. Full-span moulded timber sills and rendered aprons to each floor with wreath mouldings to outer bays and festoons to central bay. Two replacement timber shopfronts to ground floor each framed by original channel rusticated granite piers on moulded plinths and granite cornice above. Central round-headed door opening formed in gauged bowtell-moulded red brick with granite keystone and replacement double-leaf glazed timber doors and overlight. Door opens onto two nosed granite steps flanked by granite piers to shopfront and plain granite fascia and cornice over.

This commercial building forms part of the extensive reconstruction of the O’Connell Street area following the 1916 Rising. Built as part of a terrace of five similar buildings that strove to maintain the vertical emphasis and plot ratios of the previous buildings. Much of the original form and fabric have been retained, with granite platbands and cornice providing a textural contrast to the red brick walls. The building forms part of a terrace of early twentieth-century buildings on the north side of Lower Abbey Street, with a number of shared motifs including granite cornices and oriel windows, providing a sense of unity, and adding architectural interest to the overall composition of the streetscape.