O’Connell Street

O'Connell Street (Irish: Sráid Uí Chonaill) is Dublin's main thoroughfare. It measures 49 m (54 yds) in width at its southern end, 46 m (50 yds) at the north, and is 500 m (547 yds) in length. During the 17th century it was a narrow street known as Drogheda Street (named after Henry Moore, Earl of Drogheda). It was widened, and renamed 'Sackville Street' (named after Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset) in the late 1700s until 1924, when it was renamed in honour of Daniel O'Connell, a nationalist leader of the early 19th century, whose statue stands at the lower end of the street, facing O'Connell Bridge.

Located in the heart of Dublin city, O'Connell Street forms part of a grand thoroughfare created in the 18th century that runs through the centre of the capital, O'Connell Bridge, Westmoreland Street, College Green and Dame Street, terminating at City Hall and Dublin Castle. Situated just north of the River Liffey, the street has a fine axial positioning, running close to a north-south orientation. Lined with many handsome buildings, O'Connell Street is the most monumental of Dublin's commercial streets, having been largely rebuilt in the early 20th century following extensive destruction in the struggle for Irish independence and subsequent civil war. It has the air of an imposing 1920s boulevard, with signature stone-faced neoclassical buildings such as Clerys department store complemented by the more subtle grain of elegant bank and retail premises. O'Connell Street Upper by contrast retains something of its original 18th century character, with the western side conforming to original plot widths and some original fabric still intact.

The street's layout is simple but elegant. Not dissimilar to Paris' Champs-Élysées, though more intimate in scale, it has a wide pavement each side of the street serving the retail outlets that line its length, and a parallel pair of two-lane (formerly three-lane) roadways. A paved median space runs down the centre of the street, featuring monuments and statues to various Irish political leaders. The famous large London Plane trees that lined the median for the second half of the 20th century were removed in 2003 amidst some controversy, with the oldest of these at the northern end planted c. 1903 being cut down in 2005 – all as part of an extensive regeneration scheme recently completed by Dublin City Council.

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Wikipedia