Kieran’s Our City, Our Town,

Cork Independent, 1 September 2011

Planning a City Hall

In an effort to mark the upcoming 75^th anniversary of the official opening of Cork City Hall on 8 September 1936, I wish to note some interesting histories about its evolution before its opening. Three years after the arson attack on the building (1920), a town hall competition looking for architects took place in July 1923. Plans were put up for public inspection in the Cork Municipal School of Art. On the 29 March 1924, Jones and Kelly architects were the chosen winners of the competition. The architectural partnership, between Alfred Edwin Jones ALFRED EDWIN and Stephen Stanislaus Kelly was formed in Dublin in 1919. The following year they won the competition for Ballymena Town Hall and in 1923 gained wider recognition as the winning entrants in the Cork City Hall competition. A contractor was then sought. Tenders were sought in November of that year.

However, in 1923 and 1924 the Irish Government found it necessary to remove the members of several local authorities and replace them temporarily by paid commissioners. Among the bodies removed were the Dublin and Cork city councils. Cork Corporation itself had been dissolved in 1924 after an investigation into its activities demanded by the Cork Progressive Association (which was founded in 1923). After some experience of the work of the commissioners in these cities there was a body of opinion in favour of retaining the commissioners after the elected councils were eventually restored.

The priorities of Cork Commissioner Philip Monahan were not in the rebuilding of City Hall. Housing and slum clearance became his priorities. a local committee of commercial and industrial interests was formed in Cork in 1926 to consider a scheme of city government and it appeared that the council-manager plan of city government would be acceptable. After discussion between the Minister and local representatives, the Minister, Richard Mulcahy, introduced as a Government measure the Cork City Management Bill, 1929 and it became law despite at times, vehement opposition to it. Dublin city got its Management Act in 1930 and was followed by Limerick in 1934 and Waterford in 1939.

With the return of Cork City councillors in 1929, focus was again on the rebuilding of a city hall. In April 1929, a sub committee was appointed to look at the costs of a new building. Connected with that, public discussions also took place in local and national newspapers in the ‘letters to the editor’ pages. One such discussion took place in late April 1929 when writer Daniel Corkery proposed a site for the new City Hall near Cork’s Coal Quay. He argued that the old City Hall site was not the way forward for a new building because of its close proximity to deep water quayage, the Customs House and Harbour Offices, the heart of City’s industrial and commercial activities. His proposal took in a semi-circular area extending from the corner of Kyrl’s Street, Cornmarket Street and looking down Lavitt’s Quay towards St. Patrick’s Bridge and swinging round Kyrl’s Quay to the northern end of Kyrl’s Quay.

At a Council meeting near the 23 October 1929, the Lord Mayor, Alderman Sean French noted that an agreement had been arrived at with regard to the site of the City Hall. The City’s Town Planning Association had agreed to the old Anglesea Street site but suggested that the main entrance should be on Anglesea Street and not on the quayside. With the councillors pushing the project, further discussion appeared in the makeshift council chamber in the Crawford Art Gallery.

In mid January 1932, the Corporation decided to ask the Minister for Local Government for his consent to go ahead with the job, on the assumption that they would get a £40,000 loan, plus cash on hand amounting between £12,000 to £15,000 and leave the borrowing of the balance of an estimated total of £150,000 to a future date. At a Council meeting in early February 1932, it was reported that three tenders had been received for the erection of the new City Hall. The City Manager noted that the three tenders did not conform to the terms of the advertisement, in regard to prices or to the construction time limit. It was noted that if the furnishing was taken out of the bill, the price for the completion of the building at least could be paid for. Hence the tender of John Sisk and Sons, Cork at £139,870 was accepted and in the last week of March 1932, the contract for the rebuilding was signed. In the event of certain provisional items being included, an extra £11,000 would be added.

The foundation stone was laid on 9 July 1932 by President of the Executive Council, Eamonn DeValera. In previous articles I have written about this. The foundation stone bore an inscription in Gaelic to the effect that on that day DeValera had laid it. He spread the mortar with a silver trowel and announced in Irish that the stone was well and truly laid. He added in English that he hoped that the new building would be “symbolic of the prosperity and the future glory of the country, to come as a result of the sacrifices, which had been made by the men like those to whom the Lord Mayor had referred to, Terence MacSwiney and Tomás MacCurtain”.

To be continued….

Captions:

606a. Ruined old Cork City Hall Building (pictures: Cork City Library)

606b. Cork City Hall under construction, February 1935

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 25 August 2011

Lecture: Creating an Irish Free State City

Continuing with the showcasing of some of the work I am pursuing for heritage week, there are two events over the next week, which engage with aspects of Cork’s development in the 1920s and 1930s. The first event is a historical walking tour of Cork City Hall on this Saturday for Cork Heritage Open Day and the second is a lecture on Cork in the 1920s and 1930s for the South Parish Historical Society.

It’s difficult not to be enthused by what was achieved in Cork during the 1920s and 1930s. I have documented aspects of this era in this column over the last number of months by exploring the twentieth century heritage on the Carrigrohane Straight Road. However, there is much I am still researching and trying to come to grips with. Indeed, the City is blessed with an enormous newspaper clippings archive in Cork City and County Archives in Blackpool, where 90 years ago someone cut hundreds of columns out of Cork Examiner newspapers to create scrapbooks. Negotiating ten years of them one begins to see one strong element shining through – the strong vision and ambition that the management of Cork Corporation had at that time. The opening of City Hall 75 years ago on the 8^th September may seem a pinnacle of success in those times but there were in my opinion other impressive strands to the Corporation’s work.

The slow rebuild of the half burnt St. Patrick’s Street is evident in the archive’s collection of letters from the Corporation asking for updates from the shopkeepers. The debate by City councillors to rebuild the burnt out City Hall also echoes strongly in the stream of debate in the makeshift Council Chamber in the lecture theatre of the Crawford Art Gallery. However, with the dissolution of the Council in 1924, the young national government appointed a city commissioner in the form of City Administrator Philip Monahan.

Philip Monahan was appointed in November 1924. In the early 1920s, he had being Mayor of Drogheda and a member of Louth County Council. He was also a commissioner in Kerry by 26 years of age. Finding his feet quickly in Cork, by the following March 1925, he was talking to the press and setting out his goals; Using some of Westminster’s compensation package for the burning of the city, he sidelined the rebuilding of City Hall, not all of it, he did set about getting new designs; However, he was to set aside £25,000 for the installation of a new filtration plant at the waterworks, invested £50,000 for asphalting 68,000 square yards of streets, pushing for the completion of St. Patrick’s Street, the  re-building of Parnell Bridge, the purification of the city’s sewage schemes, the replacement of the eighteenth century culverts under St. Patrick’s Street to create new sewers, strove to create a new cattle market for the city and took over of management of what the press called the ‘Mental Hospital’ in Sunday’s Well.

Being invited to lecture on aspects of democracy and local government in the new Irish Free State, Philip Monahan called for the adoption of Cork: A Civic Survey. In 1926 the Cork Town Planning Association produced the latter document, which provided a debate template on the City’s slum conditions. The founding of the Cork Town Planning Association in 1922 marked the beginning of a serious attempt to deal with the problem of the dreadful housing conditions in parts of the Middle Parish and the areas around Barrack Street, Shandon Street and Blarney Street. Indeed in March 1925, Monahan pitched that he would invest £70,000 for the provision of 200 houses in Turners Cross in the immediate interim. He also put down his marker that he was to build efficiency in the local public sector. Indeed with the threat of using direct labour, he pursued an agenda to reduce the wage of Corporation workers to 4s. 6d. per week.

In an age of a non welfare state, it is also interesting to read of work of the Corporation Schools Medical Officer Dr. Annie O’Sullivan. By 1930 arrangements had been put in place for the treatment of ear diseases and defects and diseases of the eye, nose and throat. In 1933, 8,139 children had been checked at clinics at city schools. School meals were given of hot cocoa with bread and butter or jam or currant buns with milk in some schools. The Cork Children’s Fresh Air Fund, established in 1932, helped 500 children. In 1933, 442 children, 229 girls, 213 boys (5 to 14 years of age) were sent to Rostellan, Rathcormac, Ringaskiddy and Youghal and housed there for a fortnight. The initiative was funded by concerts, flag days and garden fetes. These were difficult and stressful times and also times where people worked harder to mind their families and survive. But certainly the array of ideas put forward by Monahan and his team makes for interesting reading in revealing their determination, realism and ambition in making the City a better place to live and work in.

Kieran’s Events:

Saturday, 27^th August 2011, 1.30pm; History and legacy: A historical walking tour through Cork City Hall, meet at Cork City Hall, Anglesea Street entrance. Booking at 021 4924717.

Wednesday 31^st August 2011, 8pm; Creating an Irish Free State City, Cork in the 1920s & 1930s in association with South Parish Historical Society, South Parish Community Centre.

Captions:

605a. The imposing Christ the King Church in Turners Cross opened in October 1931 overlooking Capwell Road houses, which got their first Corporation tenants in April 1928 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

605b. Photograph of Philip Monahan, City Manager in a late 1920s Cork City Hall diary (source: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 4 August 2011

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 266)

Speech Notes at a Skyscraper

“On many building sites in many parts of the world, Irish craftsmen have shown their skill and have proved their worth on the construction of large and complicated buildings. The County Hall offered those of us who are privileged to remain in our country an opportunity and a challenge to create for our own people a contemporary building of some dignity and a worthy centre of county administration.” (extract from architect Patrick L. McSweeney’s speech at the opening of Cork County Hall, 16 April 1968).

Paul McSweeney, son of the architect, Patrick McSweeney of Cork County Hall was in contact to flesh out some of the narrative on his father’s work. He outlined that his father was born in late 1918, a native of Ballydehob. “My father came into architecture by an odd combination of circumstances, hard work and luck.  His formal education pretty much finished in Ballydehob at the end of primary, but in 1941 (aged about 20), he joined the naval service and got into the drawing office in the naval dockyard in Haulbowline where he trained as a draftsman and took evening classes in the Crawford Tech.  He qualified as a naval architect and left the navy in 1946 as a Chief Petty Officer (I think senior sergeant), then trained in civil architecture with O’Flynn & Green’s before qualifying with the RIBA in London in 1948. 

He worked briefly with Cork County Council before moving briefly to Carlow County Council and then returned as Cork County Architect in the early 1950s.  He was in this role (and also in charge of planning in Cork county) until he took early retirement in 1975.  Thereafter until he died in 1994, he had a small practice of his own; he never actually retired.  He had an interest in sculpture all his life and was involved in the committee that selected pieces for Fitzgerald’s Park (he also knew Seamus Murphy reasonably well). His main buildings of note are Bantry Library (I think it was his favourite), the County Hall and Frankfield church in addition to a number of banks built (e.g., Bishopstown) or renovated for the then TSB. He was also involved in renovating a number of churches in latter years.”

The County Library’s draft schedule and plan of operation gives further perspectives on the building. On the day of the opening, 16 April 1968, members of Cork County Council held their last meeting at Cork City Courthouse on Washington Street starting at 11am. At 11.20 they adjourned their meeting and moved to the Carrigrohane Straight Road. The Minister of Local Government Kevin Boland arrived at noon and at 12.15 the Chairman of Cork County Council Cllr. Martin Corry officially turned the key of the front door of County Hall and opened the building. Speaking at the event, Cllr Corry articulated: “the erection of a building like this has been the concern of every County Council for last seventy years…we feel certain that this County Hall will enable us to provide a more efficient service for the people of Cork County”.

Heading to the Council Chamber, the selected guests and councillors listened to Cllr. Corry again noting his deep satisfaction with the new building. There Minister Boland replied. Born in Dublin in 1917, Kevin Boland was the son of Gerald Boland, a founder-member of Fianna Fáil and the nephew of Harry Boland.  He noted that “Cork’s new County Hall is a credit to all concerned and must inspire confidence in the future of Cork County. It will indeed be a just cause for civic pride for many years to come”.

By 2pm, the guests had moved to luncheon in the Imperial Hotel on the South Mall. Here the Lord Mayor of Cork, Alderman Pearse Wyse T.D. was given the opportunity to speak; “This magnificent building projects the image of modern Ireland and certainly proves beyond all doubt, the ability of our builders and craftsmen to meet the challenge of modern architecture and construction. One usually associates a project such as the present County Hall with development now taking place in Irish industry and commerce…I am sure that members of both councils realise the importance of continuing co-operation and good will in the challenging years ahead so as to ensure that we avail of all possible opportunities that may arise especially in the field of industry, which will be of benefit to city and county people.”

In a similar vein to the Lord Mayor, the County Manager replied and commented about the City and County Council’s relationship; “My lord Mayor, the new Cork County Hall may be in Cork City by accident, but I want to assure you that you yourself are here today by design. We are happy that the people of Cork City represented by you are celebrating this happy occasion with us because we believe that developments in the City and County of Cork are intermingled and interdependent and our hopes are for further and rapid economic development of both areas together. Our recent participation in the Cork Economical Development Council is tangible evidence or our desire to ignore artificial boundaries when the economic advancement of the entire Cork area is at stake.”

To be continued…

Captions:

602a. Construction photograph of Cork County Hall, c.1967 (source: McSweeney family)

602b. Construction  photograph of Cork County Hall, near completion (source: McSweeney family)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork  Independent, 27 July 2011

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 265)

Attributes of a Skyscraper

“The site provided an opportunity to place the new building in an area rich in space, rivers and greenery. It was realised that this location could provide a good working environment. Its reasonable proximity to the city along with its good approaches made it an acceptable site. The overall idea of a well proportioned simple block evolved as it was appreciated that the magnitude of the project was such, any solution would, to some extent, impose itself as a physical influence upon the area (Patrick L. McSweeney’s introduction, 1968 commemorative booklet to mark the opening of Cork County Hall).”

The information plaque near the entrance of the current Cork County Hall notes that when the building was created it represented a unique creation on the Irish landscape. Its architect, Patrick L. McSweeney (1918-1994) was a native of Ballydehob in West Cork. He joined the Irish Naval Service as a young man and became an Associate of the Institute of Naval Architects in 1944. On leaving the Naval Service, he studied architecture while working in the office of E. P. O’Flynn qualifying in 1949. He was Cork County Council Architect from 1953 to 1975 and designed numerous buildings in Cork City and County while in public and private practice.

Various newspaper spreads appeared in April 1968 showcasing the attributes of the new County Hall. The various functions of the building indicated that departments required an approximate average of 5,000 square feet each. High speed lifts connected them to the ground and to each other. Fifteen floors of office accommodation and one for the Council chamber were required. The overall height was in excess of 200 feet above pavement level. Pile foundations went down more than fifty feet to rock beneath the building.

The gable walls were designed to resist wind loading. Quite distinctive in the external design of the building was the white concrete tracery, which formed a lattice work over all four faces. It concealed the platforms outside the windows, on which each floor was created. They also formed a wind and rain breaker. From an architectural standpoint Patrick McSweeney noted in a commemorative brochure to mark the official opening that it was quite logical that the facade should be broken up into different planes. The building would weather better; it also provided the opportunity for what he deemed a “livelier and more kinetic architecture”.

McSweeney highlighted that other designers in the country at the time had exploited the natural plasticity of concrete to good sculptural effect. Most interesting he noted was the American Embassy building in Dublin where the pre-cast panels were “inter alia, load-bearing external wall panels of pre-cast concrete modelled around the windows”. In the County Hall, the pre cast units were not used structurally but were suspended from the main structure. This was much less expensive and the undiminished effect of these “graceful castings” according to McSweeney was “decisive even at close range, with the natural and inevitable weathering of the anodised aluminium windows”. The glazed area was approximately 7,000 feet. Heat from three oil-fired low pressure boilers located in the separate boiler house began to diffuse through the building’s 900 radiators a year before the opening to speed up the drying process for work such as laying teak parquet flooring. The large number of radiators was explained by the heat losses through single panes of glass.

Prolonged glare and solar heat build-up were reduced by the north-south orientation of the building. The office grid for central corridor access with 17 foot deep offices on either side, full width open planned offices. At Council Chamber level a deliberate attempt was made to break away from the mechanical efficiency of the office planning. McSweeney noted in the commemorative booklet that “a quality of dramatic change was attempted as the meeting place of the elected representatives of the people demanded a classic dignity and monumental self-assurance. It was felt that this could well be provided by a classic colonnade enclosing the floor of the Chamber surrounded by a dignified ambulatory or gallery.”The Chairman’s rostrum with seating and desks for two senior officials was at one end of the room, and behind him was a black marble plaque on which noted Cork sculptor Seamus Murphy had carved the names of the Council’s chairmen since the setting up of the Council on the abolition of the Grand Jury in 1899. Jeremiah J. Howard was its first chairman, William J. Broderick its longest serving (1927-1957) whilst the then incumbent Martin J. Curry T.D. was the oldest member of the council and was occupying the chair for his third time in office. Ten mahogany seats combining with desk accommodated the 48 councillors, 24 to each side of the chamber.

Mr. Harry Wallace produced a thought provoking sculpture for the main entrance foyer depicting the “machinations of computerised administration run riot”. The Cork Examiner on the opening day of County Hall on 17 April 1968 reported:

“Arriving at the County Hall, one is welcomed by a parallel concourse leading to the main entrance, which is highlighted by a daring three-piece in-situ concrete sculpture thrusting upwards.”

To be continued….

Captions:

601a. Cork County Hall, 1968 (source: Cork County Library)

601b. Concrete tracery on Cork County Hall, 1968 (source: Cork County Library)