Proprietor Barry Canny has spent the past year developing Brownes, a 12-bedroom hotel at 22 St Stephen's Green, Dublin which is due to open at the end of this month. The bijoux-style hotel and restaurant is housed in what is one of the most attractive buildings on the Green.
The building, with its eye-catching, ornate, wrought iron balcony, was occupied up to three years ago by the Order of the Friendly Brothers of St Patrick, which was founded in the early part of the 18th century to stop "the barbarous practice of duelling". A less pugnacious, rather civilised type of clientele is being envisioned by Mr Canny, thanks to the £1.3 million renovation which has transformed the Georgian townhouse into a high-spec hotel and restaurant. Each of the 12 bedrooms has been fitted out with antique furniture, oil paintings and etchings. Mr Canny was keen to create a country house feel right in the middle of the city. "The building itself dictated the style," he says. "For example, the rooms came with beautiful marble fireplaces, the staircase is Portland stone and there's an impressive gold-leafed vaulted veiling on one of the landings." As he hopes to attract business travellers, all the rooms have ISDN lines, fax machines and personalised telephone numbers.
The largest suite, at the front of the building with three windows and the fine balcony overlooking the Green, goes further towards meeting the needs of even the most demanding of business travellers. Most unusually, it is a boardroom which converts into a bedroom. One wall is covered in bookshelves that fold down to become a bed. The 12-seat boardroom table canthen be divided up to become accent tables, and voila - in a new twist on the expression from boardroom to bedroom - the room that by day is a sophisticated meeting room becomes by night a romantic bedroom.
According to Mr Canny, the bed cost £15,000 which must make it the most expensive hotel bed in the city. Room rates at Brownes start at £155 per night up to £300 for the boardroom-cum-bedroom. Brownes Brasserie is an 80-seat restaurant which takes up the entire hall-floor level. Dinner for two will cost about £60. Aside from its sheer scale, the atmosphere in the diningroom is made even more dramatic by antique French chandeliers and a large mural by Belfast artist Suzanne Garuda, who has created decorative art work for the Sultan of Brunei and the Kremlin. Mr Canny's background includes 10 years in London working in the clothing business. He had the well-known Olive Restaurant in Sandycove, before joining property company Trinity Real Estate, which bought the St Stephen's Green building. Mr Canny has now left the company and is leasing the building from it.
This is the second hotel to open on St Stephen's Green this year. The Fitzwilliam, a four-star, ultramodern-style hotel was officially opened by its designer, Terence Conran, last month.
In answer to the increasingly asked question: is Dublin overhoteled?, Mr Canny says it is, which is why he has developed Brownes as something different - a relaxed country house hotel that enjoys the perfect city centre view - looking over St Stephen's Green.
