This photograph shows a view of O’Connell Street from Nelson’s Pillar taken on Monday 7th September 1942. We are always hearing how bleak Ireland was during the 1940s and 50s but to be honest I wouldn’t mind a good look around the shops on this block. The Thom’s Street Directory for 1942 lists the businesses as the Saxone Shoe Company; Dunn & Co., hatters; Rowntree & Co. Ltd., cocoa, chocolate and confectionary manufacturers; Jameson & Co., jewellers; Bobby Morris, ladies’ hairdressers and Clifford’s and Maxwell’s, tailors. It also includes Jordan’s Billiard Saloon.
The print is actually quite small but I don’t mind that the close-ups are slightly blurred as they still give a real sense of the street showing cyclists, delivery trucks, people chatting and going about their everyday lives.
According to The Irish Times for the date you could go and see the following films at O’Connell Street cinemas: the Metropole was showing a farce called Charley’s American Aunt with Jack Benny, Kay Francis, James Ellison and Anne Baxter. The Savoy was showing Gone with the Wind and the Carlton featured Elsie Janis and Wendy Barrie in Women in War. Jim Keenan’s Dublin Cinemas: A Pictorial Selection (2005) and Marc Zimmerman’s History of Dublin Cinemas (2007) provide an excellent account of Dublin’s many cinemas.
LOVE this shot! All of these people passing on the busy corner. Lives going in all directions. Yup, it’s all in the details.
[…] a number of Irish American mugshots that the the author bought on Ebay and some beautiful shots of O’Connell Street taken from Nelson’s Pillar in September […]
These photographs are beautiful. Dubin did seem glamorous then. There was a cafe then called the Broadway Soda Fountain, for example, which was owned by an Italian man and apparently it was very classy (it is now an internet cafe – next to the Grand Central Hotel, which used to be a cinema).
Thanks Candace, Hope all well with you and the thesis is progressing. We must have a class reunion! All the best, Orla.
Bottom of page: 4 shots from top of Pillar. Early 1960s (I think)
http://photopol.com/gallery/dublin.html