Parliament House () in Dublin, Ireland, was home to the Parliament of Ireland, and since 1803 has housed the Bank of Ireland. It was the world's first purpose-built bicameral parliament house. It is located at College Green.
History
Originally it was the site of Chichester House, which was built in the early 17th century by Sir Arthur Chichester. This building was adapted for use by the Irish Parliament in the 1670s, and was demolished to make way for a new parliamentary building. Chichester House was flanked by rows of narrow houses known as Dutch Billies, which were demolished and replaced during the Wide Streets Commission. Construction started in 1729. The building was home to the two Houses of Parliament, serving as the seat of both chambers (the Lords and Commons) of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Ireland for most of the 18th century until that parliament was abolished by the Act of Union of 1800, when Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The current parliament building is Leinster House.
Plans for the new building
In the 17th century, parliament settled at Chichester House, a townhouse in Hoggen Green (later College Green) formerly owned by Sir George Carew, Lord President of Munster and Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, which had been built on the site of a nunnery disbanded by King Henry VIII at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. Carew's house, named Chichester House after its later owner Sir Arthur Chichester, was a building of sufficient importance to have become the temporary home of the Kingdom of Ireland's law courts during the Michaelmas law term in 1605. Most famously, the legal documentation facilitating the Plantation of Ulster had been signed there on 16 November 1612.
Chichester House was in a dilapidated state, allegedly haunted and unfit for official use. In 1727 parliament voted to spend £6,000 on a new building on the site. It was to be the world's first purpose-built two-chamber parliament building.
The then ancient Palace of Westminster, the seat of the English (before 1707) and, later, British Parliament, was a converted building; the House of Commons's odd seating arrangements were due to the chamber's previous existence as a chapel. Hence MPs faced each other from former pews.
The design of this building, one of two purpose-built Irish parliamentary buildings (along with Parliament Buildings, Stormont), was entrusted to an architect, Edward Lovett Pearce, who was a member of parliament and a protégé of the Speaker of the House of Commons, William Conolly of Castletown House. During construction, Parliament moved into the Blue Coat Hospital on Dublin's Northside. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 3February 1729 by Thomas Wyndham, 1st Baron Wyndham, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Design
Pearce's design was revolutionary. The building was effectively semi-circular in shape, occupying nearly 6,000 m2 (1.5 acres). Unlike Chichester House, which was set far back from Hoggen Green, the new building opened directly onto the Green. The principal entrance consisted of a colonnade of Ionic columns extending around three sides of the entrance quadrangle, forming a letter E (see picture below). Three statues, representing Hibernia (the Latin name for Ireland), Fidelity and Commerce (later carved by Edward Smyth) stood above the portico. Over the main entrance, the royal coat of arms was cut in stone.
The building underwent extensions by architect James Gandon, as Pearce had died. Gandon was responsible for three of Dublin's finest buildings, the Custom House, the Four Courts and the King's Inns. Between 1785 and 1789 he added a new peers' entrance at the east of the building, facing onto Westmoreland Street. Unlike the main entrance to the south, which came to be known as the House of Commons entrance, the new peers' entrance used six Corinthian columns, at the request of peers who wished their entrance to be distinct from the Ionic columns of the main entrance. Over this, three statues by Edward Smyth were placed, representing Fortitude, Justice and Liberty. A curved wall joined the Pearce entrance to Gandon's extension. This masked the uneven joins of some of the extension, as shown below. The wall, built of granite with inset alcoves, bears little resemblance to the building as it was in its parliamentary days.