Kelly’s on the corner of O’Connell Street (then Sackville Street) and Bachelors Walk, which later became Kapp and Peterson (Image: NLI)
I noticed recently while walking through the city that Peterson pipes have moved from their Grafton Street HQ to a new premises on Nassau Street, just around the corner. The Dublin institution began life under the Kapp name, before becoming Kapp and Peterson, and later merely Petersons.
Frederick Kapp, from Nuremburg in Bavaria, opened a shop in the late 1870s in Dublin at 53 Grafton Street, which sold Briar and Meerschaum pipes. In time, this business would become known to generations of Dubliners as Kapp and Peterson, with the Peterson name coming from Charles Peterson, a Latvian immigant hired by Fredrick Kapp. In time, the Peterson family would buy-into the company and Kapp and Peterson was born.
For many years Kapp and Peterson operated from a business premises at the corner of O’Connell Street and Bachelors Walk. This premises was damaged during the Easter Rising of 1916, as the below newspaper piece shows, and was acquired by the company soon after the rebellion.
Image via the fantastic http://pipedia.org/
Passing this building today, Dubliners may not notice two excellent little features that hint at its former life, which we have photographed below. In the woodwork of what is now the Daniel O’Connell Newsagents, the letters KP can still clearly by seen:
Above the building, the name ‘Kapp and Peterson’ is still perfectly visible too.
Hopefully both of these features will be preserved well into the future, as they were the kind small but historic important details in a city that can often be lost.
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Donal
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Come Here To Me! 
There are some crackin photos in various Irish history Books showing the bullet ridden shop
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There’s a whole history of the city being lost beneath coats of paint and plastic frontages, not to mention stuff that is being just knocked down or laneways that now go through somebody’s kitchen, or bedroom even.
I was pleased recently to see that part of the old Lennox Chemicals building in Lincoln Place has reverted to scientific use,
http://photopol.blogspot.ie/2012/09/makeshop.html
even if this turns out to be only temporary.
I used to buy chemicals there a long time ago, for scientific and forensic experiments.
There is a mention of Kapp & Petersons being used by The Squad in T. Ryle Dwyer’s book about them.
i have a old kapp and peteron pipe i just aquired, unfortunately the band was missing, trying to find a replacement, any ideas? phone no. 352 239 7855, any help would be appreciated.
There is an interesting story about 111 Grafton Street, which was built for Kapp & Peterson in 1906. This had been a vacant lot for twenty or more years after the former 111 Grafton Street had been accidently demolished when the house next door (110) was demolished prior to it being rebuilt by George
Henderson. Needless to say the owner of 111, Thomas Brunker, was none too happy (he had just recently had a new front, designed by John Sloane, built) and he took North to court.
Regarding the “Capture of Kelly’s Fort:
“I was looking on O’Connell Bridge and Sackville Street, and the house facing me was Kelly’s—a red-brick fishing tackle shop, one half of which was on the Quay and the other half in Sackville Street. This house was being bombarded.
“I counted the report of six different machine guns which played on it. Rifles innumerable and from every sort of place were potting its windows, and at intervals of about half a minute the shells from a heavy gun lobbed in through its windows or thumped mightily against its walls.
“For three hours that bombardment continued, and the walls stood in a cloud of red dust and smoke. Rifle and machine gun bullets pattered over every inch of it, and, unfailingly the heavy gun pounded its shells through the windows.
“One’s heart melted at the idea that human beings were crouching inside that volcano of death, and I said to myself, “Not even a fly can be alive in that house.”
“No head showed at any window, no rifle cracked from window or roof in reply. The house was dumb, lifeless, and I thought every one of those men are dead.
“It was then, and quite suddenly, that the possibilities of street fighting flashed on me, and I knew there was no person in the house, and said to myself, “They have smashed through the walls with a hatchet and are sitting in the next house, or they have long ago climbed out by the skylight and are on a roof half a block away.” Then the thought came to me—they have and hold the entire of Sackville Street down to the Post Office. Later on this proved to be the case, and I knew at this moment that Sackville Street was doomed.
“I continued to watch the bombardment, but no longer with the anguish which had before torn me. . . .”
“About five o’clock the guns eased off of Kelly’s.
“To inexperienced eyes they did not seem to have done very much damage, but afterwards one found that although the walls were standing and apparently solid there was no inside to the house. From roof to basement the building was bare as a dog kennel. There were no floors inside, there was nothing there but blank space; and on the ground within was the tumble and rubbish that had been roof and floors and furniture. Everything inside was smashed and pulverised into scrap and dust, and the only objects that had consistency and their ancient shape were the bricks that fell when the shells struck them.”
— 1916 eyewitness account from “An Insurrection in Dublin” by James Stephens
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I have a Kapp and Peterson De Luxe pipe with a unique bowl design. It is one of 7 pipes made for the owner of a Scottish Island, He ordered 6 f his own design and the manager from the Grafton St Branch in Dublin, ordered an extra one for my dear mother who wanted it as a birthday gift for my beloved late brother. This was around 1943-4.
I have looked several times through every picture of every Kapp piper ever mande and have not found anything= resembling mine.
I wrote to Kapp many years ago telling them and they knew nothing about it. Of course the original people had already long died out, and as I am now 92 years old, and my dear brother was over 5 year older, I can see that they may haae the records but not digitalized and are too lazy to look for them. My pipe is unique and therefore a price can not be put on it , even for collectoras.
But I would like it to be estimated at some point.