Grand Old Lady of St Stephen’s Green unveils her facelift

The Shelbourne has always had more grandeur than any other hotel in Dublin’s history. And now, following an almost complete restoration of its exterior, the Grand Old Lady of St Stephen’s Green is looking better than ever.

Not since 1867 when Dublin-born architect John McCurdy remodelled a terrace of five Georgian houses in High Victorian style, giving the Shelbourne its current appearance, has the hotel seemed so crisp and splendid as it does today.

Founded in 1824 by Tipperary man Martin Burke, the Shelbourne first comprised three Georgian houses and aimed to "woo genteel customers who wanted solid, comfortable and serviceable accommodation at a fashionable address".

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An upper bay during the restoration

Early guests included William Makepeace Thackeray and, later, Elizabeth Bowen, who marvelled that "perhaps indeed in no other capital city does any one hotel play such an outstanding role".

What gave the Shelbourne its cachet was McCurdy’s highly successful reordering of the hotel nearly 150 years ago, with an extravagantly decorated facade, projecting bay windows and cast-iron Nubian torchbearers flanking the entrance.

All of this work had been commissioned by the Shelbourne's new owners, headed by William Jury, whose illustrious name still attaches to a string of budget inns. But the Jury's group sold out eventually to Forte Hotels and now it's run by Marriott.

A consortium headed by developer Bernard McNamara bought it near the height of the boom in 2005 and reportedly spent €80 million renovating and extending the hotel, which now has more than 260 bedrooms and a full range of facilities.

What was neglected then was the exterior. Apart from giving it a lick of paint, nothing was done to remedy inherent defects that became patently obvious during the “ice periods” of 2009 and 2010, when external plaster features began falling apart.

Wire netting had to be placed over the crumbling cornices of the big bay windows, and new US owners Kennedy Wilson, who acquired the hotel in 2014, responsibly faced up to the onerous task of tackling fundamental problems with the building.

Roman cement cornices, brackets and panels on the exterior were tenuously held together by multiple layers of paint, according to conservation architect Alistair Lindsay. “Stuff started freezing, stuff started falling off,” he recalls.

Working with Meath-based specialist contractors Acol, Lindsay and his team started with a small section on Kildare Street – where falling masonry would have been dangerous – and it became a “test bed” for the extensive restoration that followed.

Incredibly, the Shelbourne managed to stay open as builders were hacking cement pointing out of the joints between more than 99,000 bricks, leaving the job of “wigging” them all with red-dyed and white-lined lime mortar to expert craftsmen.

Wigging is a long-established Dublin technique for disguising the irregularity of handmade bricks.

Lime mortar, which is porous and permeable, not only protects the bricks much better than cement but also allows an old building to “breathe”.

Ferrous metal in a ring-beam behind the main cornice had corroded due to water penetration over the years, and Belfast-based McFarland Associates devised a cathode protection system that will protect steel supports for at least 60 years.

As for all of the decorative Roman cement plasterwork, Acol’s Dermot Collier remembers some of it was in such a ropey state that cornices and other elements literally “came away in our hands”. Moulds were then used to replicate these pieces.

Original design

Up to 60 craftsmen worked on the job with carpenters and joiners doing the windows, including reinstatement of McCurdy’s original design for the attic floor, as well as engineers, roofers, slaters and wiggers.

“We had every trade you could think of involved,” Lindsay says.

There was “no skimping”, or at least not much. Original drawings by McCurdy show an elaborate wrought-iron balustrade on the ridge of the roof, but this has not been replicated. “We’ll leave that for the next generation,” he adds.

The importance of the project to demonstrate "best practice" in restoring historic buildings was underlined when Dublin City Council and Dublin Civic Trust organised certified courses in professional development on-site throughout the build.

For 13 months, the Shelbourne was encased by scaffolding covered with a full-scale photographic image of itself so convincing that some passers-by and even some guests were taken in by it. They simply didn’t realise major work was going on.

The elaborate railings in front have been stripped down and repainted while the three Georgian houses that form part of the extended hotel have also been restored, including the removal of layers of paint from their grand stone doorcases.

The hotel operators showed great forbearance in facilitating the project, which is believed to have cost at least €3 million. Great credit is due to the owners for footing this bill; they have guaranteed the survival of this historic building for decades.

A big Tricolour flutters above the main front now, but we know what was there before that when Union Jacks were flown on the parapets of gentlemen's clubs along the north side of St Stephen's Green and on the Shelbourne Hotel itself.

The hotel may have been taken over by British forces to snipe at Irish Citizen Army rebels in the Green, but it took pride of place in the nationalist narrative for the first-floor room in which the Irish Free State’s Constitution was drafted in 1922.

In 50 years, when more work may be required, whoever carries it out will be able to draw on some 30,000 photographs taken during the latest project to reinstate the exterior to what it was when John McCurdy created his Victorian “wedding cake”.