Recently, and completely by accident, I stumbled across newspaper reports of the ‘opening’ of Dublin’s first escalator. It all struck me as a little bit Father Ted, with the Lord Mayor of Dublin on hand for proceedings. He then had the honour of being the first person in Dublin, and indeed the nation, to use an escalator.
Fine Gael politician James Joseph O’Keefe was the Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1962-1963, and then again from 1974-1975. On Monday, March 25th 1963 he found himself in Roches Stores on Henry Street to “inaugurate” over the unveiling of the first escalator in Dublin, at an event which made the front page of The Irish Times the following day.
The escalator extended from the basement to the ground floor and from there to the first floor, and the opening coincided with the Roche’s Stores Fashion Show. The Irish Independent ran the image below, which shows the Lord Mayor cutting the ribbon to proclaim the escalators ‘open’. The design of the escalators was carried out by Clifford,Smith and Newman of Limerick.
The Irish Independent, March 26th 1963
Patrick Lagan wrote lightheartedly of the event in The Irish Press the week after the escalator was deemed open, writing that he had always enjoyed the “uplifting experience” of hopping on an escalator in a London tube station, and that he felt they were built not only to be useful but indeed enjoyed.
Lagan went on to note that:
On Monday last the Lord Mayor of Dublin , Alderman J.J O’ Keefe was,as was only right, the first man to make the ascent. But he won’t be the last. Let me thank the people who run that big store for making it possible for myself and others to enjoy this purest of human pleasures without the trouble of having to go as far as Euston Station.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
It was momentous day for Ireland and the older people still talk about it. I’ve always felt it should be marked with a public holiday. The first escalators were a turning point in the development of the Irish economy. They were instrumental in bringing about the visit later that year of the Beatles. The band insisted on only visiting countries that had escalators because one of them had fallen arches…..
Would welcome a comment from the first child to press the emergency stop button.
😀 One of my earliest childhood memories is of pressing the stop button on the Roches escalators (you’d have sworn I was a tiny criminal from the reaction to it).
Ah ha! An early childhood vandal. I bet you went on to rob banks or worse again….became a TD!
Well done Claire. I think I did it in Easons first. And ran to one of the two exits after. Handy.
Now, that’s doing it properly. I just saw “Stop” and took it literally.
It must have started a political tradition: since then we’ve had Bertie who would turn up to cut the ribbon if one of his supporters opened their lunch.
Have you done the first traffic lights? Clare St/Merrion Square, I think, c. 1947.