Apartment blocks with outdoor "stair towers"

hatrickpatrick

Very random question, but I've only recently realised that those odd little round towers with a couple of military turret style windows on them which you find next to apartment blocks in Dublin are actually the stairs

Is this type of design unique to Dublin? Most apartment blocks elsewhere tend to either have fully indoor stairwells (whereby you actually need a key / to be buzzed in to the building itself, not just the individual apartments) or else an open stairwell which is separate to the actual apartments (so outdoor insofar as anyone can walk into them with or without keys / access to the building) but is nonetheless contained within the structure of the main building.

In Dublin we seem to have these cool round tower designs wherever there are apartments, apart from the very very futuristic / modern ones.

Anyone noticed this? Is it a design that dates from a particular era or is it a Dublin quirk?

I'll stick up a photo of one next time I'm in town, think Cuffe Street off Stephen's Green has a few of them.

EDIT: This is one of the Stephen's Green ones:

Saipanne

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Very random question, but I've only recently realised that those odd little round towers with a couple of military turret style windows on them which you find next to apartment blocks in Dublin are actually the stairs

Is this type of design unique to Dublin? Most apartment blocks elsewhere tend to either have fully indoor stairwells (whereby you actually need a key / to be buzzed in to the building itself, not just the individual apartments) or else an open stairwell which is separate to the actual apartments (so outdoor insofar as anyone can walk into them with or without keys / access to the building) but is nonetheless contained within the structure of the main building.

In Dublin we seem to have these cool round tower designs wherever there are apartments, apart from the very very futuristic / modern ones.

Anyone noticed this? Is it a design that dates from a particular era or is it a Dublin quirk?

I'll stick up a photo of one next time I'm in town, think Cuffe Street off Stephen's Green has a few of them.

I've seen them in cork too, I think.

ThisRegard

If you called them flats people may be able to picture what you're talking about better.

All ones I know of are decades old buildings, not in modern apartment complexes.

Arbiter of Good Taste

I've only ever seen them in council flats

Outkast_IRE

Nice design quirk.

But i do not think you will find them too often in newer builds as to the best of my recollection i think these types of steps are discouraged in public areas as people are more prone to falls on them as the width of the step varies across its length.

I cant think of any examples of these in cork at the moment.

hatrickpatrick

Arbiter of Good Taste wrote: »

I've only ever seen them in council flats

Always assumed the Cuffe Street ones pictured above were student gaffs for DIT folk, always loads of students milling around that square

Arbiter of Good Taste

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Always assumed the Cuffe Street ones pictured above were student gaffs for DIT folk, always loads of students milling around that square

Those flats have been there for donkey's years - I'd say long before DIT. Are you sure it's students?

Teyla Emmagan

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Always assumed the Cuffe Street ones pictured above were student gaffs for DIT folk, always loads of students milling around that square

They're council flats.

Hibernosaur

The council is obliged to provide a sheltered area where one can peddle ones narcotics.

January

Hibernosaur wrote: »

The council is obliged to provide a sheltered area where one can peddle ones narcotics.

Read the charter before posting again, especially the part about generalisations.

L1011

Standard on 1950s/1960s flat blocks be they private or council. Older ones usually had public but internal stairwells and newer ones (even 70s onwards) usually have lobbies/lifts/etc.

That there's very few private blocks of that age makes people assume its entirely council but it was just the prevailing style of the time.

It probably allowed another flat per floor in the main block, with the longer-term problem of maintenance, particularly to the cantilevered decks.

spurious

The same design was used in a number of council blocks. It's also in North William Street and Dunne Street.

hatrickpatrick

I just assumed most Dublin Council flats were built in very large clusters, while Cuffe St looks very small. I'm in college near St Patrick's Cathedral and along Cork St there are a few council estates which are all gigantic. Dolphin Park is one I walk through from time to time for example, and I reckon there are at least ten big blocks there, have relatives who used to live near the Phoenix Park on the North Circular and there was a nearby council flat complex which was again row upon row of '50s style single-balcony apartment blocks (not sure of the name but they've said it was used as a set for Love/Hate last year)

Is this style of stairwell a Dublin thing or do they have them elsewhere / in other countries? I've been walking past the Cuffe St one literally every day for more than a year and it only recently occurred to me (before I knew what it was) that these round towers could be found in some of the other places I mentioned, up until then I'd always thought it was some kind of monument

L1011

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I just assumed most Dublin Council flats were built in very large clusters, while Cuffe St looks very small.

There's plenty of single block or otherwise small corpo flat blocks around. The big developments were probably rarer and definitely unwise in the long term.

FreudianSlippers

Arbiter of Good Taste wrote: »

Those flats have been there for donkey's years - I'd say long before DIT. Are you sure it's students?

Those and the ones behind RCSI were absolute no-go zones in the 80s /90s; they seem quiet these days

doolox

This is only possible in private developments where money can be charged for services annually in order to clean and maintain the public access areas. The outdoor stairwells are better in this respect in that an accumulated rubbish etc is quickly dispelled by rain and wind.

I used to work on deliveries involving visits to one public authority set of flats with indoor public areas and while the private areas of the flats themselves were adequately cleaned and maintained, the public areas were an atrocious and filthy mess. The smell of human waste and rotting food waste etc was horrendous. People from outside the area used to sleep rough in these stairwells causing no end of trouble for the locals.

hatrickpatrick

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Those and the ones behind RCSI were absolute no-go zones in the 80s /90s; they seem quiet these days

Seriously? The ones beside Stephen's Green?

Maybe I'm too young to remember, but I can't imagine anywhere around the Harcourt / Camden St area being "no go" apart from late weekend nights if you're not into loud music and drunken eejits

jobbridge4life

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Seriously? The ones beside Stephen's Green?

Maybe I'm too young to remember, but I can't imagine anywhere around the Harcourt / Camden St area being "no go" apart from late weekend nights if you're not into loud music and drunken eejits

The whole area is a sea of council and pre-welfare state charitable housing. As a proud resident of the area it is definitely quiet nowadays although on occassion you can get a bunch of youngsters (i sound like I'm a 100) acting the maggot. The worst spot in my experience would be little laneway running from Mercer St to Aungier St at the back of the York St Flats.

FreudianSlippers

I vividly recall being with my dad and parking on York St in the 80s and the car would almost certainly be broken into. That is unless one of the helpful local youths offered to mind your car for a few bob

hatrickpatrick

^ Would appear that the city centre in general has quietened down recently. I had a thread a few weeks ago about the general Dolphin's Barn / Rialto / Donore Ave area which I'd heard horror stories about and the consensus was that post 2010 it's all pretty tame.

Regardless, I've been Googling around a bit and I can't seem to find any example of this kind of stair-tower design outside Dublin and certainly not outside Ireland.
When did the idea of an indoor "lobby" for apartment blocks become the norm, whereby you have to be buzzed in by a specific resident to enter the building itself? This seems to be the standard in the vast majority of Dublin apartment blocks these days, in contrast to places like Italy or France where the outdoor common area / individually locked apartment lots is the standard.

salmocab

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

^ Would appear that the city centre in general has quietened down recently. I had a thread a few weeks ago about the general Dolphin's Barn / Rialto / Donore Ave area which I'd heard horror stories about and the consensus was that post 2010 it's all pretty tame.

Regardless, I've been Googling around a bit and I can't seem to find any example of this kind of stair-tower design outside Dublin and certainly not outside Ireland.
When did the idea of an indoor "lobby" for apartment blocks become the norm, whereby you have to be buzzed in by a specific resident to enter the building itself? This seems to be the standard in the vast majority of Dublin apartment blocks these days, in contrast to places like Italy or France where the outdoor common area / individually locked apartment lots is the standard.

In fairness they were built in a different time security wasn't a big issue back then kids were out all day running up and down the stairs and into the flats now they need locked doors and intercoms to keep people away from their x-box

K.Flyer

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I vividly recall being with my dad and parking on York St in the 80s and the car would almost certainly be broken into. That is unless one of the helpful local youths offered to mind your car for a few bob

Hey Mister, I'll mind yer car for ya for a pound..
F#@k off ye little b@llix, there's an mad dog in the back of the car, and if anyone tries to get into the car it'll destroy them..
Eh.. is it any good at puttin' out fires..

gaiscioch

Rialto, Dublin v. Rialto, Venice

Grand Canal, Dublin v. Grand Canal, Venice

Cork Street, Dublin v. Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Venice?

salmocab

gaiscioch wrote: »

Rialto, Dublin v. Rialto, Venice

Grand Canal, Dublin v. Grand Canal, Venice

Cork Street, Dublin v. Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Venice?

In fairness the picture of grand canal in Dublin looks nicer than the one in venice. The rialto bridge in Vegas has escalators!

January

What's your point there, gaiscioch?

jobbridge4life

gaiscioch wrote: »

Rialto, Dublin v. Rialto, Venice

Grand Canal, Dublin v. Grand Canal, Venice

Cork Street, Dublin v. Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Venice?

Given the native Venetian population has devolved into inbreeding and illiteracy I'll gladly take our canals. Like for like or please don't bother.

gaiscioch

January wrote: »

What's your point there, gaiscioch?

Perhaps it has some inspiration from that external staircase in Venice, just as other areas of Dublin's architecture were inspired by Venetian precedents. (Original post: "Is this type of design unique to Dublin? Most apartment blocks elsewhere tend to either have fully indoor stairwells")

hatrickpatrick

K.Flyer wrote: »

Hey Mister, I'll mind yer car for ya for a pound..
F#@k off ye little b@llix, there's an mad dog in the back of the car, and if anyone tries to get into the car it'll destroy them..
Eh.. is it any good at puttin' out fires..

This actually came up at dinner the other day, I'm too young to remember (25) but apparently there was a time when cars getting stolen was ridiculously common in Dublin. Didn't know we'd had a carjacking epidemic here at all! Were joyriders particularly tech savvy, or were car manufacturers particularly tech incompetent when it came to locking mechanisms?

FloatingVoter

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This actually came up at dinner the other day, I'm too young to remember (25) but apparently there was a time when cars getting stolen was ridiculously common in Dublin. Didn't know we'd had a carjacking epidemic here at all! Were joyriders particularly tech savvy, or were car manufacturers particularly tech incompetent when it came to locking mechanisms?

Lousy locks, kids were into joyriding using real cars not x-boxes, the car getting burnt out at the end of the night usually involved an insurance claim. It could work out well for all parties if we were looking at an over-insured banger.
Any car parked in city centre Dublin with country plates was fair game. so the likes of an All-Ireland was mardi-gras time.

L1011

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This actually came up at dinner the other day, I'm too young to remember (25) but apparently there was a time when cars getting stolen was ridiculously common in Dublin. Didn't know we'd had a carjacking epidemic here at all! Were joyriders particularly tech savvy, or were car manufacturers particularly tech incompetent when it came to locking mechanisms?

Immobilisers (easy as first generation ones are to beat, they still require *some* work) only became standard on European cars from about 1996 onwards and cheap Japanese cars until vastly later (2004 comes to mind, so most import Vitz/March are hotwireable) so it was a case of smash a window, flick the handle, and you had the car driving in a minute.

The NCT coming in took the bulk of older cheap cars off the road and slow attrition due to the remaining ones being the ones that were piss easy to nick really means there's not a huge amount that can be stolen easily anymore.

Which is why they now try to get your keys instead...

FloatingVoter

L1011 wrote: »

Which is why they now try to get your keys instead...

This is true. Back in the day (1980s), fishing rod theft of keys (pole through the letter-box to fish keys off a hook) was almost unheard of. Waking up in the morning to discover an empty driveway was extremely common. My uncle had his car nicked three times in one year. Two different cars, one robbed twice.

hatrickpatrick

One of my mates' dads who worked near where the IFSC now is back in the day has memories of the whole area around Seville Place / Oriel Street being a sort of unspoken joyriding graveyard where the cars would ultimately be dumped and burned out, so that apparently (although I'm sure he exaggerates) you'd drive through the place and be likely to pass several smouldering cars on any random day

You can see this now up in the mountains. A lot of the small / semi-official car parks for hillwalking in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains have a couple of burnt out car skeletons lying around, which obviously makes the prospect of parking there for the day while wandering the mountains a little less appealing. It's never immediately obvious how long they've been there for but they tend to be severely decayed, rusty metal skeletons - not sure how long it would take for that to happen after being firebombed though. There's one carpark near Glendalough (but not the official one) which has a crap ton of these.

When ye talk of immobilisers (apologies for the ignorance here) are you basically saying that the concept of needing the key to actually start the engine was irrelevant back then? As I understand it, hotwiring modern cars is so complicated that it's not worth the hassle for "casual" joyriders, and is only employed by gangs etc who have a serious use in mind for the car?

Heard another story at the same dinner in which a woman was getting a bag of chips somewhere in town while thinking her kids were in school and the car was at home in her driveway, and she happened to look out the window of the place and see her car flying past with her kids and a few of their mates hanging out the windows

FreudianSlippers

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

When ye talk of immobilisers (apologies for the ignorance here) are you basically saying that the concept of needing the key to actually start the engine was irrelevant back then? As I understand it, hotwiring modern cars is so complicated that it's not worth the hassle for "casual" joyriders, and is only employed by gangs etc who have a serious use in mind for the car?

Basically, yeah. The immobiliser requires the key to be present (or more usually a chip within the key) for the car to start. In theory it prevents hotwiring, but until recently it wasn't 100% - particularly it was very easy to access the car's computer and program in a new key code that matched one that the thief had on them.

I think this has all but become impossible in the past 5-10 years though.

L1011

Burnt out frames can actually look rusty immediately so the mountain cars may not be that old (we've gone rather far off topic now!)

hatrickpatrick

L1011 wrote: »

Burnt out frames can actually look rusty immediately so the mountain cars may not be that old

Well that's very reassuring

(we've gone rather far off topic now!)

Hatrick's law of Boards relativity. As the page number increases, the relation to the OP decreases whilst the likelihood of havoc, fighting, and (on AH) bashing of minorities increases exponentially.

tricky D

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Hatrick's law of Boards relativity. As the page number increases, the relation to the OP decreases whilst the likelihood of havoc, fighting, and (on AH) bashing of minorities increases exponentially.

But some of us are still on page 1!!

Meanwhile and back on topic, I've only noticed that some of these complexes with outer stairs have some quite fancy mosaic work. The mosaics seem to be confined to the particular types of flats that we're talking about.

Eg. flats between Clarence Place Great and the railway between Pearse and Grand Canal Dock have train mosaics and the ones just west of North Strand and the Royal Canal have sea/waves mosaics.

Any others that posters know of???

jobbridge4life

tricky D wrote: »

But some of us are still on page 1!!

Meanwhile and back on topic, I've only noticed that some of these complexes with outer stairs have some quite fancy mosaic work. The mosaics seem to be confined to the particular types of flats that we're talking about.

Eg. flats between Clarence Place Great and the railway between Pearse and Grand Canal Dock have train mosaics and the ones just west of North Strand and the Royal Canal have sea/waves mosaics.

Any others that posters know of???

There are mosaics of the Dublin City cityscape on the blocks on Kevin St Lower. I like them. I always thought that the large flat surfaces that tend to go along with dated public housing in the city centre could be utilized for public artworks.

tricky D

^ Nice find. Looks like alternating skyline and hills panels from what I can make out on Streetview. Outer stairs too.

Stojkovic

Apartments ?
Bless him.

****hole 1960/70s council flats.

anncoates

Stojkovic wrote: »

Apartments ?
Bless him.

****hole 1960/70s council flats.

I'd probably take one over any of the Dublin 'apartments' for which people paid hundreds of thousands of euro in the last 15 years or so.

Mesrine65

Stojkovic wrote: »

****hole 1960/70s council flats.

Far from it, they're extremely comfy little abodes for a family with one child.

I know I was raised in one :eek:

jobbridge4life

Stojkovic wrote: »

Apartments ?
Bless him.

****hole 1960/70s council flats.

Many of the ones in the area have been renovated to a very high standard. I know I'd love to get an apartment/flat with multiple bedrooms only a few feat from St Stephens Green for almost nothing.

frankoreagan

I'm surprised that some of the flats (ones on Cuffe St in particular) survived being knocked and the site sold for mega money during the boom.

fleet_admiral

jobbridge4life wrote: »

There are mosaics of the Dublin City cityscape on the blocks on Kevin St Lower. I like them. I always thought that the large flat surfaces that tend to go along with dated public housing in the city centre could be utilized for public artworks.

If it hasnt already been mentioned, there are mosiacs of trains on flats beside the railway line southbound out of Pearce street station

Stojkovic

jobbridge4life wrote: »

Many of the ones in the area have been renovated to a very high standard. I know I'd love to get an apartment/flat with multiple bedrooms only a few feat from St Stephens Green for almost nothing.

Did they renovate them to a very high standard and then charge almost nothing ?

Wow !!!

January

Stojkovic wrote: »

Did they renovate them to a very high standard and then charge almost nothing ?

Wow !!!

They're council houses so the rent on them is in proportion to what you earn.

jobbridge4life

January wrote: »

They're council houses so the rent on them is in proportion to what you earn.

In proportion to what you earn in the sense that it responds to ones income but not at all proportionate in comparison to market rents.

ThisRegard

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Seriously? The ones beside Stephen's Green?

Maybe I'm too young to remember, but I can't imagine anywhere around the Harcourt / Camden St area being "no go" apart from late weekend nights if you're not into loud music and drunken eejits

Went to college in Kevin Street in the early 90s, you stayed away. The phone boxes on the corner of Camden Street was a common place to trap students in and rob them.

Even these days, probably for historical purposes, I'm uneasy in that general area.

January

jobbridge4life wrote: »

In proportion to what you earn in the sense that it responds to ones income but not at all proportionate in comparison to market rents.

Depends on what you earn

Stojkovic

ThisRegard wrote: »

Went to college in Kevin Street in the early 90s, you stayed away. The phone boxes on the corner of Camden Street was a common place to trap students in and rob them.

Even these days, probably for historical purposes, I'm uneasy in that general area.

The ol man had a shop on the corner of Wexford Street in the late 70s. Well dodgy area at the time.

anncoates

jobbridge4life wrote: »

In proportion to what you earn in the sense that it responds to ones income but not at all proportionate in comparison to market rents.

Why on earth would local authority housing designated to low income tenants have any connection to market rates?

That said, depending on income, the rent is sometimes quite far from a peppercorn rent given that rent is calculated on household income and not therefore a free gift to tenants.

York, Kevin and Cuffe Street flats have calmed down am awful lot since the 80s by the way.