Sir, - Congratulations on your plea for the restoration of O'Connell Street to its deserved splendour (Editorial, June 21st). It is sad how, over the past 30 years or so, such a splendid thoroughfare and a centre of commerce and entertainment has been ignored and allowed to deteriorate.
Many of us remember such popular shops as Lemons, Nobletts, Elverys, Kingstons, O'Beirne & Fitzgibbon and many more, the excellent restaurants and the range of cinemas and ballrooms - all enjoyed in an atmosphere of relaxation and friendship.
Your article prompted me to look up "A Book of Dublin", the official handbook published by Dublin Corporation in 1929, price one shilling. It was edited by Bulmer Hobson. It describes O'Connell Street thus:
"From the Ballast Office, at right angles to the river, runs O'Connell Street. it is a broad thoroughfare, constructed by the Commissioners of Wide Streets in 796. The statue of Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator, stands near the bridge. Beyond is the Nelson Column, and opposite it the portico of the Post Office, and further off the Parnell Statue and the Rotunda. At the Post Office was posted up, on Easter Monday, 1916, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The building was occupied by the Volunteers and farmed their headquarters during the Rising, when part of the street was destroyed by fire. The street assumed normality again, only to see another large block of buildings fall victim to the flames during the civil strife of 1922."
Accompanying that somewhat prosaic description is a wonderful drawing by Hilda Roberts which shows the grandeur of our No 1 thoroughfare after reconstruction in the 1920s. There were no garish signs or plastic shop fronts in sight but rather a perspective of international quality.
The handbook carries an advertisement for Clerys, which had just been rebuilt and transformed from draper's shop to modern store. Part of the advertisement reads: "In a myriad way this store has had a part in the lives of the people of Dublin: we have endured together, we have weathered panic and fire together, we are now prospering together. We ask no better than to continue to be worthy of Dublin as it is. and of the Grander Dublin that is to be."
Is it not time for our authorities, both municipal and national, to follow the sentiments of Clerys nearly 70 years ago and ensure that our O'Connell Street is worthy of Dublin, of Ireland and indeed of Clerys, who have done so much to maintain the standards despite the apparent lack of official interest in O'Connell Street? - Yours, etc.,
Stepaside,
Co Dublin.