Aras an Uachtarain

Aras an Uachtarain (The President’s Residence), in the Phoenix Park, is one of city’s most attractive buildings and a favourite with both locals and tourists. It was designed by amateur architect and park ranger Nathaniel Clements in 1751 and completed in 1757. The building was bought by the British Crown in the 1780s as the summer residence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, while his official residence was in the Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle. Soon the building became known as the Viceregal Lodge, which was occupied for most of the time from the 1820s onwards. 

Aras an Uachtarain

The road in front of the building, Chesterfield Avenue, is named after Philip Stanhope, 4^th Earl of Chesterfield, who was appointed Lord Lieutenant in 1745. During his short tenure in Ireland he opened The Park to the public, made improvements on the property and erected the Phoenix monument.

During visits by Queen Victoria in the 1850s and 1860s she planted trees in the garden, and thus began the practice of guests planting a tree when they visited the president. This was carried on by Douglas Hyde, the first Irish President, and continues to this day.

It seems fairly obvious that the building is where the President should reside, but there was a time when other places were considered. In 1922 Glenstal Castle in Limerick, with its history of medieval Irish and English architecture, was a popular choice. However, due to the difficult economic position of the new state, and its distance from Dublin, it was decided to look elsewhere.  

Apart from not considering the Aras as the President’s Residence, we are lucky to have the place at all. Eamon De Valera suggested that the building should be demolished to get rid of the colonial association, and replaced with something more suitable. However, the outbreak of World War II put an end to that plan, and by 1945 with the war over, the building had become very much associated with Douglas Hyde (from 1938) and the presidency.

Douglas Hyde

The Little Museum of Dublin

It may indeed be little but the museum is big on the history of Dublin, with many pictures, drawings and artifacts bringing the story to life. Our tour guide, Trevor, was engaging with those in the group, as he pointed to various items in the collection before telling of their background, and often with a humorous tale to add to its importance.

The museum is ten years old, and many of the exhibits have been donated by Dubliners who wished for them to be seen in such a place. These treasured items – movie posters, road signs, a milk bottle from the 1988 one thousandth year celebration of Dublin’s beginning, and many more – have now found a fine home, and they help ‘flesh out’ the city’s history in a way that is accessible, and fun.

Harry Clarke’s glass is class!

We found out about the history of St Stephen’s Green, its development, and the part it played in the Easter Rising. After a few questions from various group members I was amazed to find out that during the fighting in and around The Green there was a one-hour ceasefire each day during hostilities. What for, we thought, only to find out that the time was used by Park Rangers to feed the local ducks! That, not surprisingly, got a warm response, as did many of the other stories we heard.

There are signed papers by Eamon de Valera, Countess Markievicz and a beautiful piece of stained-glass by Harry Clarke, that shimmered in the sunlight. I noted a key to The Green that a resident would have owned, before the place was bought by Lord Ardilaun (Sir Arthur Guinness) and opened to the public on the 27^th July 1880.

You can see photographs of Dublin from over the years, and of many of its native sons and daughters and their contribution to the world of arts, sports and beyond.

It’s a must see.

On your bike!

Erwin Schrodinger – Nobel Physicist who lived in Dublin

Erwin Schrödinger

For a man interested in colour and who published scientific papers on the subject, the adjective colourful applies to Erwin Schrödinger who lived on Kincora Road, Clontarf  for seventeen years and certainly left his mark. Among his many achievements here was a series of lectures given in Trinity College in February 1943 on ‘What is life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell.’ This was inspirational to many scientists, most notably James Watson and Francis Crick whose work led to the discovery of DNA in 1953. A sculpture commemorating the achievement was unveiled on its 60th anniversary in the Botanic Gardens which James Watson attended.

Schrödinger was an only child born in Vienna in 1887 to middle-class, educated parents and was tutored at home until the age of eleven. Later he attended school, then university where he excelled and gained a PhD in Physics. World War I interrupted his progress and he spent it as an officer in the Austrian army.

DNA sculpture in Botanic Gardens

After the war he had a number of different positions, married Annemarie (Anny) Bertel in 1920, before he was offered the chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of Zürich in 1921. He stayed there for six years, probably the most productive time in his career, before being offered the post of Max Planck’s replacement at the prestigious University of Berlin. And it was during his time in Zürich that he became interested in wave mechanics after reading a paper by Albert Einstein. Thinking about how to explain the movement of an electron as a wave his 1926 paper provided a theoretical basis for the atomic model. His groundbreaking work is hailed as a masterpiece, and one of the greatest accomplishments ever in in science. It subsequently led to new insights into quantum mechanics and other areas of chemistry. In 1933 both he and Paul Dirac (Cambridge University) were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ is his famous thought experiment that illustrates the problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics when applied to everyday objects.

DIAS – Burlington Road

By that time he was aware that many of his Jewish colleagues were being dismissed from their posts and he decided to leave Hitler’s Germany. He went to Oxford University for three years before returning to Austria in 1938. The following year he accepted Eamon de Valera’s offer of coming to Ireland and helping establish the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). De Valera, himself a mathematician, got ‘his man’ and made sure that Schrodinger’s visa arrangements were processed speedily. For Schrodinger’s needs were indeed complicated and had previously stymied him at both Princeton and Oxford, as he lived with his wife and his lover, Hilde March, with whom he had a daughter. Of his relationship with the fairer sex he said: ‘Poor things, they have provided for my life’s happiness and their own distress. Such is life.’ Colourful indeed.

Plaque in Kincora Road, Clontarf