Handsome on Harcourt Terrace

DUBLIN 2: €2.95M:IT'S RARE that a house on Harcourt Terrace comes on the market. It is Dublin's only formally planned block of houses from the Regency period and, as the wide street has been blocked off at one end, it is quiet with a residential feel. And all only a couple of minutes from St Stephen's Green.

The 10 houses in the terrace were built in the 1840s by John Jasper Joly and laid out in pairs. Some are now in purely commercial use, some residential and this house, number 3, is a mixture of both.

It is for sale through Douglas Newman Good for €2.95 million.

The main part of the three-storey over basement house is in office use, while the basement is a two-bedroom apartment. The size of the handsome house (366sq m/3,946sq ft), its city centre location and its current commercial usage might encourage new owners to look at it with a view to working in one part – it would make an ideal location for a medical consultancy, for example – and living in the rest.

Above all, number 3 is a particularly handsome looking period property. Painted white like its neighbours, it features the original highly-decorative stucco frieze in the front façade at ground floor level. The wide sash windows, two on each floor, give an idea of the rooms inside and the front door opens into a hallway which, like the other principal rooms in the house, still has its decorative ceiling plasterwork.

There are basically two large rooms per floor (only the top floor room to the front still has its original fireplace), so new owners could decide how to lay out the space to best suit their needs. As it is currently in office use, there is no large kitchen or bathroom which gives a small indication of the expense required to restore it to residential use. At basement level, and with its own front door, is the modernised two-bedroom apartment which has an outdoor patio area at the back.

The 24-metre back garden has been paved over and is used as a car park accessed from the front by an ugly electric garage door. New owners will probably replace that with something a little more aesthetically sympathetic. They can’t entirely block off this side entrance however as the next door neighbours have right of way access to their back garden through it.

At the height of the boom number 3 would probably have been bought for its commercial use, with a small residential element in the basement.

Now that set-up is likely to be turned on its head, with the house reverting back to residential use with perhaps an office or consultancy rooms in the basement.

3 Harcourt Terrace, D2

Large period house currently in commercial use may revert to residential

Agent: Douglas Newman Good