page_title: Mountjoy Square
section_title: Development of the square
hierarchical_section_title: Mountjoy Square / Development of the square
caption_attribution_description: English: In November 1968 Dennis Dennehy moved in with his wife and two children to 20 Mountjoy Square, abandoned by its owner. Dennehy was a member of the radical socialist group the Irish Communist Organisation, and the campaigning group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Housing_Action_Committee.
context_page_description: Mountjoy Square is a Georgian garden square in Dublin, Ireland, on the north side of the city just under a kilometre from the River Liffey. One of five Georgian squares in Dublin, it was planned and developed in the late 18th century by the Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy. It was surrounded on all sides by terraced, red-brick Georgian houses. Construction began in the early 1790s and the work was completed in 1818.
  Over the centuries, the square has been home to many of Dublin's most prominent people: lawyers, churchmen, politicians, writers and visual artists. The writer James Joyce lived around the square during some of his formative years, playwright Seán O'Casey wrote and set some of his most famous plays on the square while living there, W.B. Yeats stayed there with his friend John O'Leary, and more recently, much of the Oscar-winning film Once was made in the square. Historic meetings have taken place there, including planning for the Easter Rising and some of the earliest Dáil meetings. Prominent Irish Unionists and Republicans have shared the square.
  Mountjoy can boast being Dublin's only true Georgian square, each of its sides being exactly 140 metres in length.
context_section_description: The first Luke Gardiner (died 1755) was a highly successful banker, developer and Member of Parliament for Dublin in the early 18th century. During his career he acquired a wide variety of properties throughout the city. The major continuous part, much of which he purchased from the Moore family in 1714, was a large piece of land to the East of the then established city. This estate corresponds to the modern area bounded by The Royal Canal, Dorset Street, the Western Way, Constitution Hill, Parnell Street, O'Connell Street and the River Liffey. As owner of this land, Gardiner led the development of the Northside of the city east along the river, developing what is now O'Connell Street (then Sackville Street), Dorset Street, Parnell Street and Square (then Rutland Street & Square). After his death, his son and heir Charles continued the development, finishing Rutland Square before his grandson, the second Luke Gardiner (later Lord and Viscount Mountjoy) inherited the estate and accelerated the development further East. A powerful figure, Luke II was a member of the Wide Streets Commission and MP for County Dublin.
  Mountjoy square was developed as part of this third development phase. An early plan and elevation, known then as Gardiner Square was drawn up in 1787 by Thomas Sherrard, surveyor to the Wide Streets Commissioners. Gardiner and Sherrard had an ambitious vision for the square. It was on high ground, so all streets off it led downhill. It overlooked The Custom House and was connected to it by Gardiner Street. The plan included a rebuilt St. George's Church in the centre of the park. The original West side plans show a palatial stone-clad street frontage with a terrace of brick residential houses behind the cladding. A less ambitious compromise of red-brick façades, consistent with other nearby streets, eventually prevailed.
  The square was laid out and construction began first on the south side, about 1790, continuing until 1818. The stuccadore Michael Stapleton was one of the first to acquire leases (dated October 1789), corresponding to Nos. 43, 44 and 45 Mountjoy Square (all demolished in the 1980s, despite the presence of Stapleton's decoration). His houses were complete by 1793. Luke Gardiner II was killed at the Battle of New Ross during the Rebellion of 1798 with the third side still under construction.
  After completion, contemporaries Warburton, Whitelaw and Walsh said of it:
  This square, which is now completely finished, is neat, simple and elegant, its situation elevated and healthy … the elevation of the houses, the breadth of the streets, so harmonize together, as to give pleasure to the eye of the spectator, and to add to the neatness, simplicity, and regularity every where visible, entitling this square to rank high among the finest in Europe.
  In 1825, George Newenham Wright described the square:
  This small, regular and elegant square, which is named after the proprietor, Viscount Mountjoy (now Earl of Blessington) is not far from Rutland Square ... The air in this neighbourhood is considered extremely pure, being at the extremity of Dublin, and on the most elevated ground.
  In 1939, a plebiscite of local ratepayers rejected a proposal to change the name of the square.
  More recently in 2005, architecture critic Christine Casey stated:
  The outstanding feature of Mountjoy Square is its Neoclassical plasterwork, which is finer even than that found in the contemporary terraces on the south side of Merrion Square.
caption: The doorway of number 20 Mountjoy Square
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