Talk:O'Connell Street

Date of Name Change
O' Connell Street is mentioned by name in Joyce's Ulysses - which would lead one to believe the name had been changed as early as 1904. At any rate, it means the name of the street was changed from Sackville Street by at least 1922. The article claims 1924. 83.71.1.102 12:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Looking thru the Irish Statute Book it appears that until at least 1924 Sackville Street was the formal name but O'Connell Street was the common name, see . Djegan 18:04, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Looking thru the debates of the Oireachtas the term Sackville Street pretty much disappears after 1924 and by 1929 is regarded as the former name. Djegan 19:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Ever since the opening of O'Connell Bridge in 1880 and the unveiling of O'Connell Monument in 1882, if not earlier, a movement got into motion to change the name of Sackville Street to that of O'Connell. It appears that Dublin Corporation didn't have direct control over the naming of streets until the passing of the 1890 Dublin Corporation Act, but in spite of this, as Yvonne Wheelan notes in her work 'The Iconography of Sackville Street before Independence': "It is significant...that Dublin Corporation was not always successful in its efforts to 'nationalise' the urban landscape. Plans to rename many of the city's streets in the decades before 1922 met with limited success".
 * Certainly Sackville Street was known by most people of a nationalist disposition as O'Connell Street many years before it was renamed; indeed there are stories, perhaps urban myths, of Unionist taxi cabs refusing to acknowledge the destination of patrons wishing to be dropped off on O'Connell Street. The thoroughfare was officially renamed post-independence in 1924. GrahamH 22:47, 16th June 2006
 * The Corporation originally tried to change the name in the 1880's but were stopped by a court injuction. If memory serves me correctly, they then toyed with the idea of renaming a street in Monto after the person who brought the injunction. I must reborrow the book that I saw that in. FlowerpotmaN &middot;( t ) 01:19, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * (And finally...)Going by one source, (Dublin Through Space & Time), but judging from passing mentions online, there are other reliable sources: a Corporation committee looking at Dublin street names recommended that Sackville Street be renamed to O'Connell Street in 1884; this was after the erection of the O'Connell momument. The Corporation decided to go ahead but some of the traders objected and Hedges Eyre Chatterton got a court injunction to stop the Corporation going ahead with the name change. (One of the reasons he gave was that it was that name-changing was just part of a fad and the street would continue to be renamed according to the prevailing fashions. I would think there were other reasons.) Apparently this didn't go down well with the Corporation and they did consider renaming part of Temple Street in his honour, as the street was on the edge of the red-light district of Monto. Yes, they almost did take him up to Monto.  FlowerpotmaN &middot;( t ) 14:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Dancing rabbit statues
Does anybody know anything about those stupid dancing-bunnywabbit statues that the city elders have decided to foist on O'Connell Street and Parnell Square? The one that has been unceremoniously plonked at the gates of the Garden of Remembrance is particularly offensive. If I could find some material (and especially opinions) on them I'd put it in, in NPOV style of course. 83.71.28.145 17:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No point - they'll be gone soon! They're part of a travelling exhibition that was brought here to celebrate the reopening of The Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Square. Not a fan of them either - especially on O'Connell Street! GrahamH 20:19, 14th July 2006

Ulster Unionist March, 2005
The article gives a link to the UUP in NI marching on O'Connell St in 2005 and causing havoc.

Wasnt it a parade by "Love Ulster" not UUP?

As far as I know, Love Ulster is an amalgam of Orange order groups and the UPRG, and not connected to moderate Ulster Unionism, or at least the UUP. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Icanseeformilesandmiles (talk • contribs) 23:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC).

Europe's widest urban street?
Don't know where this information comes from but it's clearly not true. To name but two, the Champs-Élysées are 70m wide and the Avenida da República (Lisbon) is 60m wide. --Jcmo 11:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup. Unless the "Urban" prefix, or something about the definition of "Street" (versus "Avenue"), somehow puts the Champs-Élysées and O'Connell street into different categories, I agree that this is a somewhat dubious claim. Unless a source is available which confirms why O'Connell street is "Europe's widest urban street", when there are (apparently) others which are wider, then - for the time being at least - I'm going to change this to "It is one of Europe's widest urban streets". Guliolopez 12:05, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed it is a dubious claim. Since nobody to my knowledge has measured every principal street in Europe, I fear we will never know the answer to this question! As such I have reverted the article back to 'one of'. And as well-intentioned as the description 'urban street' is, it is at the end of the day a tautology in this context, given all streets within cities are urban ones! GrahamH 02:29 30 May 2007 (GMT)

Statue of Jesus Christ
Why is there no mention of the statue of Jesus Christ in the section on monuments?

I think it should appear on the list before Parnell. I'm going to check...89.100.222.68 (talk) 18:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)kevin89.100.222.68 (talk) 18:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Definitely deserves a mention; it mysteriously re-emerged after the street renovations. Could be connected with the nearby taxi rank? Would love to know who is behind it (apart from Parnell). Sources please! RashersTierney (talk) 20:40, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Modern O'Connell Street
While looking for information on the spire, I happened upon this article and the discussion of the renovations (renaissance) of O'Connell Street. This section could do with some updated information addressing the effectiveness of the actions to date (occupancy, crime, tourism, real estate prices) and any impact on the planning due to the recession. I'm not terribly familiar with the subject - I'm sure almost anybody would know more than me - but I'll take a poke at it if nobody else does. TreacherousWays (talk) 18:27, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

"Sackville St"
Should it be included in the article that before 1924 O'Connell St was Sackville St? Is only says it was Sackville St and doesn't mention why there is a different name until near the end of the article.

For example:

O'Connell Street was named Sackville Street before it was officially changed in 1924. Sackville Street prospered in the 1800s, though an invisible boundary seems to have been maintained for some time between the Upper and Lower street. As planned, Lower Sackville Street...

Kei_Jo (Talk to me baby! :þ) 00:14, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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1764 impressions of a visitor to Dublin
I'd like to add below info, but @Financefactz considers it a "not very interesting or accurate post by a non notable person". Although he is non-notable, granted, I would consider it a very valuable addition, but I'd be interested to hear what others think.

In 1764, an English traveller named John Bush visited Dublin and made the following assessment of the street: "There are on this side (north of the Liffey) many spacious and regular streets: one in particular in the north-east part of the town. Sackville-Street, about 70 feet wide or nearly, with a mall enclosed with a low wall...". Bush, however, bemoaned the failures of the builder for not aligning the street with the Rotunda Hospital:


 * "[This street] which, but for the execrable stupidity of the builder, would have been one of the most noble streets in the three kingdoms, had it been carried, as it might have been, and was proposed to him at the time of laying it out, directly up to the front of the lying-in hospital, the most elegant and the best finished piece of architecture in Dublin, and I believe in Ireland: and if, besides this, the projected addition of a street from the bottom of it, on the same plan, directly on to the Liffy, to which the present street directs, had been executed, and terminated, as was intended, on the opposite side of the river by a view of some public building that was there to have been erected in front of the street, it would have been one of the grandest and most beautiful streets perhaps in Europe. But as the first absurdity of carrying up to the present street just by the end of the hospital has taken place, this projected improvement will hardly ever be carried into execution, and the obstinate fool of a builder will deservedly be damned by every stranger, of common sense and taste, that shall ever walk up Sackville Street."

Ridiculopathy (talk) 12:15, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Thousands of people have written and spoken similar comments about the street, why is this one relevant or notable. It seems as if you have just heard of the book by John Bush and are transcribing it into various articles regardless of their suitability.Financefactz (talk) 13:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)


 * - Yeah I recently bought the book and am slowly adding bits out of it to all the relevant articles I can.
 * - I'm interested in what regular Joe Soap type of contemporary visitors (such as Bush) thought of the city at the time, as I'm sure other readers of Wikipedia are too. I'm sure there's a fairly limited pool of these 1700s visitors impressions which were published at the time, which is why I think they're good additions. You'd probably know more than me on that though, and if it were the case that hundreds of visitors to Dublin in the mid-1700s wrote accounts of what they saw, obviously the inclusion of Bush's account over theirs might seem a bit selective, but I don't know of any other accounts than Bush's. If you do know of other such sources, could you recommend one above others so I could add theirs instead, or supplementary to Bush's?
 * - If you find his impressions so disinteresting or inaccurate then how come you left it this long to revert one of my additions from this source, and left my similar edits to The Old Custom House, Dublin, Georgian Dublin and Dublin Castle up?
 * P.s. nobody else took issue with any of those additions.
 * Regards, Ridiculopathy (talk) 15:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)