Street of the Week: Dawson Street

This week’s Street of the Week is…. Dawson St!

DublinTown is filled with streets steeped in history and businesses that make it a place to visit. Whether you want to shop, dine or socialise, DublinTown has it all! But when was the last time you visited a street out of the norm? Each week, DublinTown is going to focus on one of the streets in the city, giving you a little history and showing you some of the great businesses in the area that make it worth visiting. And for this week we bring you Dawson St.

Watch below to see our whistle stop tour of the many businesses that make this street what it is today.

 A little history… 

The street we know today as Dawson Street began life as the vision of Joshua Dawson at the very beginning of the 18^th Century. At the time Grafton Street was an unimpressive narrow laneway and to its east there was little but marshland without so much as a laneway crossing it. By 1705 Joshua Dawson had purchased these seemingly unimpressive lands from Henry Temple and come up with a plan to develop the area from the east side of Grafton Street as far as Molesworth Street.

In 1706 he had already laid out the plans for Dawson Street, Duke Street, Anne Street and the various lanes we know today as Anne’s Lane and Duke Lane. That same year he built himself a fine house on the new, straight, wide street that he had laid out. He was to remain at this address until 1715 when the house was purchased from him by the Dublin Corporation for £3,500, along with a yearly rent of 40 shillings and 6lbs double refined sugar each Christmas. This house was to become the residence of the Dublin Lord Mayor, the Mansion House as we know it today.

In 1720 the Church of St. Anne was constructed for the newly created parish of St. Anne’s and the area continued to develop quickly. Numbers 39 and 40 Dawson Street would have likely been built in this first phase of construction between 1706 and 1730 when Viscount Molesworth’s land east of Dawson Street began to be developed right at the beginning of the Georgian era giving the area much the same layout as we know today. What was once swampy, marshland had quickly become one of the most fashionable addresses in Dublin.

Finally in late 2017 the Luas Cross City works were completed, which meant a new way of travel for people on the street with a brand new tram route that travels across the city.

Come back to DublinTown.ie for more Streets of the Week and if your looking to know more about businesses in the area just look at our what’s on section