Come Here To Me!

1970s postcard of Liberty Hall.

Higher than a county lark
Can fly, a speck that sings,
Sixteen-floored Liberty Hall
Goes up through scaffoldings

So wrote Austin Clarke in his poem ‘New Liberty Hall’, composed in the 1960s as the trade union headquarters along the quays witnessed an incredible transformation. Gone was the crumbling Liberty Hall of the Larkinites, purchased in 1912 and created in what was once the Northumberland Hotel,and here was something new entirely. A skyscraper by Dublin standards, a more regular office block to some of the cities of the world.

I recently acquired this great 1970s postcard image of Liberty Hall, then still new along the quays.  The building looks familiar yet strikingly different from today; as Archiseek note:

At the time of its construction, it was fitted with non-reflective glass which gave the building a much-more translucent effect. However a bomb explosion in 1972 blew out most of the glass which meant that the glass was replaced but with a reflective variety and the viewing deck was closed.

The only building of its scale in the very heart of the city, surprisingly few have engaged with Liberty Hall and the opportunities its scale offers. In 2013 and 2016, tapestries of work by the artist Robert Ballagh decorated the building, to mark the centenaries of the Lockout and Easter Rising, events to which the earlier Liberty Hall was central.

Between 24 September and 11 October 2009, the project Playhouse transformed the union office “into a giant 50 metre, low resolution, TV screen.” This innovative and popular art project was part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Tetris appeared on the building, along with love hearts and messages, and it was interactive too, allowing the public to directly engage.

Playhouse, 2009 (Image Credit: Dublin Theatre Festival Archive)

Liberty Hall under construction, 1960s (National Library of Ireland on Flickr)