When histories of Dublin during the 20th century are written, they will undoubtedly include references to Peter Pearson. One of the capital's most ardent campaigners over the past 20 years for the appreciation and conservation of old buildings, Pearson has done his best to encourage similar understanding among fellow citizens. However, as this new book on the oldest part of the city centre frequently demonstrates, his efforts have met with only limited success. For all the worthy and beautiful structures saved from pointless destruction, many more have been lost, primarily because their inherent merits were under-appreciated and because greater financial profits were envisaged by site-clearance and redevelopment.
Pearson's emotional engagement with his subject is always apparent, as when he comments trenchantly on the wilful destruction of the interior of the Church of SS Michael and John, its Regency gothic decoration almost entirely removed so that the building could be used as a "Viking" centre. He describes the early 1970s office block which replaced Pim's department store on South Great George's Street as a structure "of supreme dullness" and calls the demolition of some 60 houses on St Stephen's Green during the 20 years from 1965 a "terrible devastation".
But he also allows that Dublin's engagement with its own history has forever been poor. The widely-lauded Wide Street Commissioners, for example, destroyed just as much as they created and ensured that little of the city's medieval form survived. The centre of Dublin remains a largely 18th-century creation, even if many of the buildings erected during that period have, in turn, since disappeared. The difference between that century and more recent times is twofold; the commissioners were members of an official body and their primary intention was to improve the circumstances of the entire population, whereas during the past 50 years Dublin's transformation has been due to private speculators interested only in private gain.
The result has been a dearth of imagination and an abundance of mediocrity. Were a latter-day Malton to create a series of images of contemporary Dublin, it seems unlikely that he would wish to include any building constructed since 1950; this must be a matter of shame to the city, its developers, administrators and architects. Had so much destruction taken place in order to produce buildings of exceptional design, the redevelopment of Dublin might have been justified but, as Pearson shows time and again, this was not the case.
As with his previous book on the Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown area, Between the Mountains and the Sea, he has trawled a wide variety of sources for information and incorporated an impressive range of illustrations on to every page. The work is not without faults, such as the omission of large maps which would assist the reader in following Pearson's text. And that text, while indisputably erudite, entertaining and informative is, on occasion, as well-organised as might be the case. The author knows so much and so wants to share it all with his audience that he does not always marshal the information well and is prone to leap without warning from one subject to another.
The Heart of Dublin can sometimes, therefore, be hard to follow. But the key word in that title is heart, of which Pearson quite clearly has an abundance. He loves his native city, despite witnessing everything she has had to suffer at the hands of other people and the primary purpose of this enthusiastic book is to convince everyone else that Dublin still deserves to be loved.
Robert O'Byrne is an Irish Times journalist and author of Hugh Lane 1875-1915: A Biography published by Lilliput