Nestled across the road from the Garden of Remembrance, No 11 Parnell Square will serve as the new home for Poetry Ireland and the Irish Heritage Trust.
A €5.5m conversation and restoration project got underway in 2024, breathing new life into a Georgian building with more than hundreds of years of history behind it.
The project was backed by €3.9m in funding from the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) under Project Ireland 2040, as well as an additional €1.55m in funding from philanthropy and other sources.
Soon, No 11 Parnell Square will be open to the public for a range of events, providing a space for performances, reading, and celebrations of the arts.
Dating back to the 1750s, No 11 Parnell Square counted the old Dublin County Council among its tenants from 1901, and Fingal County Council used the building up until the 1970s.
The oak-panelled fittings from the council chambers formed part of the conservation work. The room provides the setting for James Joyce’s short story ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’, which was published in Dubliners.
No 11 Parnell Square was officially opened on Thursday in a ceremony led by a speech from President Catherine Connolly.
She welcomed the opening of the building at a time when “cultural spaces are under severe pressure, or are looked on as a commodity”.
“I believe the decision to locate Poetry Ireland and the Irish Heritage Trust in this beautiful Georgian building, imbued with centuries of history and located in the centre of Dublin, is very significant, placing as it does poetry and heritage at the heart of our Republic,” she said.
In addition to serving as home for Poetry Ireland and the Irish Heritage Trust, No 11 Parnell Square will also house the new Seamus Heaney Poetry Library.
The library, comprised of Heaney’s private collection, which has been bequeathed to Poetry Ireland by his family.
It will also contain the Austin Clarke poetry collection, and a “fine contemporary poetry collection” put together over the last 50 years.
John O’Donnell, the chair of Poetry Ireland, told the crowd attending the official opening that an idiosyncratic door in the Heaney Library, which does not open, has already been christened the ‘Door into the Dark’, after one of the late Nobel Laureate’s best-known works.
He said: “Now, thanks to the Bourke Builders and in particular the foreman Anthony Dawnay, and to our architects McCullough Mulvin, I think we can say – at the risk of triggering people with memories of the Leaving Cert English – that we may let the scaffolds fall, confident that we have built our wall.”
Also speaking at the opening was Housing Minister James Browne, who said the redevelopment of the building “represents a significant addition to the built and cultural heritage of this part of Dublin city”.
“No 11 Parnell Square East has a storied past and through this renovation, it can now continue on with a renewed purpose.
“State support for this building through URDF funding is now also a part of its story and I hope that No 11 Parnell Square East will serve as an exemplar to future projects under this scheme.”
