Recently, the subject of Dublin’s ugliest building and what would constitute a deserving winner (if that’s the right term) came up on our Facebook page in discussion. Quick as a flash, Hawkins House was proposed. I’ve always been painfully aware of it, owing to using the Pearse Street bus stop opposite, but when you actually go down to have a look at it up close you realise that perhaps Dubliners are a little bit hard on Liberty Hall.
Like an East Berlin block of flats, the 1962 Hawkins House looms over everything around it, visible from College Green and even poking its ugly head over the other neighbouring structures to make it visible from the O’Connell Bridge.
It’s truly heartbreaking to think that this is the spot where once stood the glorious Theatre Royal. I don’t know where they filmed Goodbye Lenin, but they missed a great location here.
Hawkins House, take a bow. You horrible, horrible place.
Brilliant post. I thought i was the only one who thought that. Looks unsafe and about to fall down
the screen cinema in the foreground is a pretty amazing feat of shite concrete block architecture too.
altough you almost expect it from a cinema complex, even if it was built before most of the big multi-screen square box type ones that surround our cities.
Not only does it look unsafe but its full of asbestos. The poor old Dept of Health workers are slaving away in a really sick building. I’ve been to a few meetings in there and it is a real shithole…
[…] Still Not <3ing Hawkins House. […]
The worst looking building in Dublin is the local opticians.
Because it’s a site for sore eyes!
Boom boom!
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You could add to that pretty much everything that went up along the riverfront during the past fifteen years, particularly the ridiculous conference centre which almost ruins the Beckett Bridge.