Sir, – Tom Ryan (Letters, August 18th) notes, rightly, that Dublin city planners have allowed Gandon's Four Courts masterpiece to be hidden behind a mask of plane trees on Dublin's city quays.
Unfortunately, it is not the only such instance. College Green in Dublin is an architectural setpiece of European importance. The plane trees there are effectively giant weeds which greatly detract from the appreciation, especially, of the pre-Union Irish Parliament House, now the Bank of Ireland. The view of the adjacent Foster Place, home to the building’s west portico, is similarly ruined by trees.
I have raised this on a number of occasions with the city council in the context of their unrealised plans for College Green but have got nowhere.
Would St Peter’s Square in Rome be enhanced by planting trees there? No. Tree planting must take the architectural context into account, and we have failed on this in the two instances mentioned here. – Yours, etc,
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DECLAN DOYLE,
Dublin 3.