Bank architecture in Dublin

A history to c.1940

Michael O'Neill

This book, commissioned as an action of the Dublin City Heritage Plan, opens with an historical introduction to eighteenth and nineteenth century banking, beginning with private banking concerns, the emergence of the Bank of Ireland and the arrival of large joint-stock companies. The architecture of the impressive head-office buildings and their sumptuous banking halls are treated chronologically and thematically, tracing Italianate and later Ruskinian Gothic influences, cash-office arrangements, and the impact of politics reflected in building materials and sculptural decoration. The spread of bank branch architecture away from the core around College Green is traced throughout the city and the emerging suburbs up to the arrival of avant-garde architecture. An appendix on documentary sources for further research and a pictorial architectural synopsis conclude this study.

This book is published by the Heritage Office of Dublin City Council.

Michael O’Neill is an architectural historian living in Dublin. He is currently cataloguing the nineteenth-century architectural drawings of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners held in the Representative Church Body Library.