‘Don’t make Dublin a Museum’: Urban Heritage and Modern Architecture in Dublin, 1957–71

In 1958, the architect and journalist Niall Montgomery gave a paper at the Architectural Association on his ideas for the future of Dublin, unambiguously entitled ‘That’ll All Have to Come Down.’ 1 He told the assembled crowd of architects that the eighteenth-century city was ‘a cenotaph, empty tomb of that really underprivileged figure, the Unknown Nobleman, and it even has its perpetual flame—dry rot.’ 2 To replace this decrepit ‘empty tomb’, memorializing a departed aristocracy, he called for the complete reconstruction of the city. Taking inspiration from the architect Le Corbusier, he suggested that the relics of the colonial past should be erased, and that Dublin should be recreated as a rational, efficient, and modern urban environment using the latest technologies and materials. This future city would feature ‘houses from fifteen to twenty stories high, with lifts all the way up, roof gardens and...