Gas Company Building, Dublin

Sometimes I get to a great Art Deco building and for some reason I can’t take a nice photo because the weather is bad or the sun is in the wrong place or there is something in the way. In the case of the Gas Company Building in Dublin it was a couple of double-decker buses. It was a busy time of day and there was so many buses coming and going that I never got a clear shot. Even so, this is a great building and there are lots of pictures of it on the FJP Dublin Photos page.

The three storey building has a smooth black granite façade on the ground floor with large shop windows with two rows of smaller office windows on the floors above. A scalloped pattern decorates the façade just below the flat roofline.

The single word “GAS” displayed above the door gives no doubt of the buildings purpose. Designed by Robinson & Keefe in the late 1920s or early 1930s this building was the showroom for the Gas Company servicing the Irish capital.

Three etched windows above the entrance depict gas related motifs. The central panel shows what could be a gas production vessel surrounded by stylised flames while the panels on either side each show a man working with a shovel in front of a factory.

The façade also has several stepped elements. The whole of the display windows and doors are stepped back into the building. There is a stepped ornament above the door and one is each of the alcoves on either side at street level. Even the small vents along the front of the building have been designed in the style of a sunburst.

The building is now the School of Nursing and Midwifery Studies, Trinity College. Their site has a nice collection of photographs of the interior of the Gas Company Building.