Mansion House, Dublin

Mansion House
County Dublin
Mansion House, Dublin
Type:	Official residence
Location
Grid reference:	O16053362
Location:	53°20’25"N, 6°15’29"W
City:	Dublin
History
Address:	Dawson Street
	Built 1710
For:	Joshua Dawson
	Official residence
	Neo-Classical
Information
Owned by:	Dublin City Council
Website:	www.mansionhouse.ie

The Mansion House stands on Dawson Street in the centre of Dublin, and has been the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin since 1715.

The house was built as a private house for a wealthy merchant of the city in 1710 during the reign of Queen Anne, but was bought by the Corporation of Dublin just five years later.

The Mansion House's most famous features include the Round Room, where the 'First Dáil' assembled on 21 January 1919 to proclaim the Irish Declaration of Independence. On 21 January 1969 a special fiftieth anniversary joint session of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann assembled there and was addressed by the then President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera.

Externally, the distinctive metal portico over the main door was erected for the visit of Queen Victoria in 1900.

History

The Mansion House was built in 1710 by the merchant and property developer Joshua Dawson, after whom Dawson Street is named. Dublin Corporation purchased the house in 1715 for assignment as the official residence of the Lord Mayor. It retains this purpose to this day.

In the 1930s and 1940s, plans were made to demolish the building, and all other buildings on the block on which it is located (which covered an area on Dawson Street, Molesworth Street, Kildare Street and the North side of St Stephen's Green), to enable the building of a new Dublin City Hall. However the decision of the Irish Government to erect a new Department of Industry and Commerce on a site on the same block, on Kildare Street, led to the abandonment of the plans.

In August 2006, the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force claimed they had planted a bomb in the Mansion House in 1981, in an attempt to wipe out the Sinn Féin leadership at their party conference of that year. The claim led to a security alert at the house, as the Garda Siochana and army searched for the 25-year-old bomb.

• 
  First Dáil Éireann at the Mansion House 21 January 1919.
• 
  Crowd outside Mansion House ahead of War of Independence truce 8 July, 1921
• 
  Dáil Éireann meeting in the Mansion House, August, 1921.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Mansion House, Dublin)

• The Mansion House - Lord Mayor of Dublin
• Mansion House Dublin