How very pleasing that the future of the perfectly dire Loop Line at Butt Bridge is finally open to doubt. It is not the only monstrosity in Dublin, but it is just about the oldest one. It manages both to be ugly and to obscure not merely one of the great 18th century buildings in Dublin, the Custom House, but also one of the very few fine 20th century buildings, Busarus.
When my colleague Frank McDonald was writing about the Loop Line at Butt Bridge recently, he suggested that a replacement could be constructed with only a fortnight's interruption in transriverine traffic. Hmmm. Even if it were possible to build the proposed slim and elegant bridge in such a short time, the disruption resulting would nonetheless still cause an epidemic of burst blood vessels as battalions of snarling madmen tried to cross the river. No matter. We could do with a few less madmen, and the construction of an elegant bridge as a means of weeding them out merely serves to land two halibut with the one worm.
Car ferry
The issue of the Loop Line at Butt Bridge does prompt one parenthetic question: Is it not possible for some bright entrepreneur to run a car ferry-service between say, Howth/Sutton/Clontarf and Blackrock/Dun Laoghaire/ Dalkey? Would drivers not willingly amputate their feet with a rusting tin-can, never mind part with a few pounds in ferry-fare, rather than having to inch the length of the coastal road, their teeth tearing lumps out of the steering wheel? We gave the world the Titanic; are we now incapable of running a ferry-service across Dublin Bay?
Meanwhile, as we are getting rid of the Loop Line bridge, we should be turning Liberty Hall into Liberty Level. Liberty Hall is not just ugly; it is also dangerous. It was largely constructed from a glue made of flour and water, with the result that its large windows regularly flutter away from their moorings and redesign the physique of passing pedestrians below. Might not the removers of the Loop Line bridge, while they are directing their hammers at that monstrosity, in the backswing, sort of accidentally-on-purpose, not level Liberty Hall as well? All of mankind would be grateful, not least those unfortunates in the building itself, squatting in their overheated yet draughty offices, with seeping walls and hardboard instead of the sheet plateglass which had flopped out one night and fallen behind a Loop Line support, extensively altering the anatomies of a copulating teenage couple, who now know the meaning of windowpain.
Upriver, O'Connell Bridge House is a masterpiece of hideousness, a complete concrosity. That it should ever have been allowed to dominate O'Connell Bridge and the Liffey passes all understanding. The world would be a far better place were it to be ground into powder and fed to orphans. The same tempting fate should surely be reserved for Hawkins House behind it, and Dublin's city centre could revert to Georgian dimensions.
Home Rule leader
The violator of some of that Georgian elegance, the Loop Line at Butt Bridge, as you know was supposedly named after the leader of the Home Rule League. Paris has a similar construction, Le Pont de Mai, which Catholics declare was named after the month dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and communists because of the revolutionary implications of May day.
As it happens, both bridges owe their names to similar causes. When the committee to discuss the construction of the new railway bridge over the Liffey met some time late in the last century, the architect who had accepted the commission to design it, a barbarian much in love with the ferrousity of rivets and welding unrolled his plans.
"This is it, gentlemen, my masterpiece, the greatest work of my lifetime!" he cried, gesturing at his design of an elongated metal box which would conceal the grace and elegance of the Custom House, with only the latter's cupola appearing modestly over the top of the bridge. Revolted, the committee, patriots to a man, contemplated the atrocity in stunned silence, while their all-powerful chairman, a creature of great personal magnetism, began to choke.
Moved by project
The symptoms of extreme emotion being rather similar, the architect mistook the committee's wordless horror for speechless admiration. "Thank you gentlemen, thank you. I am flattered, deeply flattered, that you should have been so moved by my project. The only question now is, of course, what should we name it?"
A silence of uncertain longevity settled upon the company, while the appalled chairman feverishly worked on his collar. He was speechless, for he could not express the deep revulsion at what he saw. He pointed a wild finger at the drawing and spluttered, "But ... but ... but."
"A brilliant suggestion, sir," agreed the author of this pontifical monstrosity. "That great patriot Isaac Butt will be most pleased. Might I congratulate you upon your wisdom and your political sensitivity."
"Hear hear," murmured a couple of the chairman's toadies, who never missed an opportunity to concur with compliments about the great man. The vote to name it Butt Bridge was passed without division, even as the chairman fell into an apoplectic coma. Meanwhile in Paris, a similar chairman of a similar committee was similarly loosening his collar in similarly disbelieving horror at the plans from a similarly abominable architect; and on the threshold of a similar coma, he spluttered, "Mais ... mais ... mais". And communists and Catholics instantly and unprecedentedly agreed: "Ah! Magnifique! Le Pont de Mai! Quel homme!"