St. Stephen's Green
| St Stephen's Green | |
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Aerial view of St Stephen’s Green
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| Type | City park |
| Location | Dublin, Ireland |
| Coordinates | 53°20′17″N 6°15′33″W / 53.33806°N 6.25917°WCoordinates: 53°20′17″N 6°15′33″W / 53.33806°N 6.25917°W |
| Area | 9 hectares |
| Created | 1664 |
| Operated by | Office of Public Works |
| Status | Open all year |
| Public transit access | St Stephen's Green station |
| Website | ststephensgreenpark.ie |
St Stephen's Green (Irish: Faiche Stiabhna) is a city centre public park in Dublin, Ireland. The current landscape of the park was designed by William Sheppard, which officially opened to the public on Tuesday, 27 July 1880. The park is adjacent to one of Dublin's main shopping streets, Grafton Street, and to a shopping centre named for it, while on its surrounding streets are the offices of a number of public bodies and the city terminus of one of Dublin's Luas tram lines. It is often informally called Stephen's Green. At 22 acres (89,000 m2), it is the largest of the parks in Dublin's main Georgian garden squares. Others include nearby Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square.
The park is rectangular, surrounded by streets that once formed major traffic arteries through Dublin city centre, although traffic management changes implemented in 2004 during the course of the Luas works have greatly reduced the volume of traffic. These four bordering streets are called, respectively, St Stephen's Green North, St Stephen's Green South, St Stephen's Green East and St Stephen's Green West.
Until 1663 St Stephen's Green was a marshy common on the edge of Dublin, used for grazing. In that year Dublin Corporation, seeing an opportunity to raise much needed revenue, decided to enclose the centre of the common and to sell land around the perimeter for building. The park was enclosed with a wall in 1664. The houses built around the Green were rapidly replaced by new buildings in the Georgian style and by the end of the eighteenth century the Green was a place of resort for the better-off of the city. Much of the present-day landscape of the square comprises modern buildings, some in a replica Georgian style, and relatively little survives from the 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1814 control of St Stephen's Green passed to Commissioners for the local householders, who redesigned its layout and replaced the walls with railings.
After the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria suggested that St Stephen's Green be renamed Albert Green and have a statue of Albert at its center – a suggestion rejected with indignation by the Dublin Corporation and the people of the city, to the Queen's chagrin.
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