Come Here To Me!

A visitor to Bruxelles today couldn’t help but notice the rich musical pedigree of the pub, with framed memorabilia honouring the connection of the establishment to Phil Lynott, whose statue takes pride of place in Harry Street outside the pub.

Bruxelles has layers of history to it however, beginning life as The Grafton Mooney in the 1880s. The unusual Victorian design of the pub was the work of architect J.J O’Callaghan, who has left a rich architectural legacy across the island of Ireland.

J.J O’Callaghan’s Harry Street design (Dublin City Library and Archive collection)

In 1947, The Grafton Mooney was rebranded The Zodiac Bar, described in the press as the “newest and quaintest cocktail bar in Dublin”. By then, cocktails were very much in fashion, panicking some. In the words of one temperance association that same year:

Due to modern influence, human respect and lack of moral courage, many of our young people are cultivating the cocktail habit, imagining that it charmed away the possible evil consequences of strong drink. Gin was gin, whether it was taken in the ‘Lady in Pink’ or the ‘Lady in Green’

1947 advertisement for The Zodiac.

At a time when ladies were increasingly accepted in Dublin’s public houses,cocktail focused bars like The Zodiac were opening in the city. More peculiar about the bar than serving cocktails was the iconography of the bar, bedecked with unusual tiled designs “showing the ancient signs of the Zodiac”,which remain behind the main bar today, shown here by DublinTown.

The novelty of cocktail bars (the Evening Herald wrote of the “frivolous, flighty, feather-brained creatures often encountered in American social life” who hung around such establishments) passed of course, and in time the Zodiac was a regular boozer, both like and different from McDaid’s across the street. In the 1970s, at the time of Ireland joining the European Economic Community, the public house was once again rebranded, this time taking the name Bruxelles. The flags of the EEC member states would adorn the walls, as well as tiled features showing the EEC flag, but the zodiac symbols remain for those who look hard enough.