Irish Houses of Parliament - Design of The New Building

Design of The New Building

Pearce's design for the new Irish Houses of Parliament, or Parliament House, was revolutionary. The building was effectively semi-circular in shape, occupying nearly 6,000 m² (1.5 acres) of ground. Unlike Chichester House, which was set far back from Hoggen Green, the new building was to open up directly onto the Green. The principal entrance consisted of a colonnade of Ionic columns extending around three sides of the entrance quadrangle, forming a letter 'E' (see picture at the bottom of the page). Three statues, representing Hibernia (the Latin name for Ireland), Fidelity and Commerce stood above the portico. Over the main entrance, the royal coat of arms were cut in stone.

The building itself underwent extensions by the architect James Gandon, as Pearce had died young. Gandon was responsible for three of Dublin's finest buildings, the Custom House, the Four Courts and the King's Inns. Between 1785 and 1789 he added a new peers' entrance at the east of the building, facing onto Westmoreland Street. Unlike the main entrance to the south, which came to be known as the House of Commons entrance, the new peers' entrance used six Corinthian columns, at the request of peers who wished their entrance to be distinct from the Ionic columns of the main entrance. Over this, three statues were placed, representing Fortitude, Justice and Liberty. A curved wall joined the Pearce entrance to Gandon's extension. This did not mark the exterior of the building but masked the uneven joins of some of the extension, as shown in the view at the bottom of this page. The wall, built of granite with inset alcoves, although an instantly recognisable aspect of the building today, bears little resemblance to the building as it was in its parliamentary days.

Another extension was added on the west side into Foster Place, designed in 1787 by another architect, Robert Parke; while matching Gandon's portico, he tried a different and less successful solution, linking the other portico to the main Pearce one by a set of Ionic pillars. The result proved unattractive. When the Bank of Ireland took over the building, it created an architectural unity by replacing this set of Ionic columns by a curved wall similar to that built on the east side by Gandon. Ionic columns were then added to both curved walls, giving the extensions an architectural and visual unity that had been lacking and producing the building's exterior as it is today.

The interior of the Houses of Parliament contained one unusual and highly symbolic feature. While in many converted parliamentary buildings where both houses met in the same building, both houses were given equality or indeed the upper house was given a more symbolic location within the building. However, in the new Irish Houses of Parliament the House of Commons was given pride of place, with its octagonal parliamentary chamber located in the centre of the building. In contrast, the smaller House of Lords was given a sideline position nearby.

The original domed House of Commons chamber was destroyed by fire in the 1790s, and a less elaborate new chamber, without a dome, was rebuilt in the same location and opened in 1796, four years before the Parliament's ultimate abolition.