If it hadn't been for a Daily Express reporter, Busáras might never have been built, writes Hugh Oram.
Dublin's central bus station opened 50 years ago this year but behind its design and construction lay an extraordinary story of political intrigue and public controversy, beside which the recent uproar over the Spire of Dublin was feebleness personified. The story of the man who designed Busáras, Michael Scott, is just as intriguing.
Born in Drogheda of Kerry parents, the young Michael Scott was articled to an architectural practice in Dublin in the 1920s. However, Scott was just as keen on the theatre and also trained as an actor in both Dublin and the US.
In 1929 he returned from a tour in the US with the Abbey company and went on to perform in London in a play called The New Gossoon, by George Sheils.
He earned superlative reviews, but because he didn't want his architectural colleagues to know he was moonlighting on the stage, called himself "Wolfe Curran". He was three weeks into the run when a Daily Express reporter rumbled him and said in print that the leading man of such extraordinary talent was really a young architect from Dublin. Scott promptly pulled out of the play and pulled down the curtain on his acting career. He never acted again.
During the 1930s, he and a colleague designed all sorts of buildings, such as hospitals in Portlaoise and Tullamore. In 1938, he designed his own house in Sandycove in 24 hours and later remarked, "I was a quick boy in my day". His Irish pavilion at the New York Fair in 1939 was an outstanding forerunner of Busáras.
On January 1st, 1945, the State transport company, CIÉ, came into being. The initial plan was to centralise its various offices around Dublin into one new building which could also be used as a bus station. Scott was chosen to make Busáras a bold statement of the new Ireland, with the full backing of Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil government.
Scott had impeccable Fianna Fáil connections and was particularly friendly with Sean Lemass, later to become Taoiseach. The first chairman of CIÉ was a man called Percy Reynolds, who lived at Abbeville, Kinsealy, in north Co Dublin. For him, Scott designed alterations to the house, now the home of Charles J. Haughey.
When the inter-party government led by John A. Costello came into office in 1948, it disapproved of what it regarded as mere Fianna Fáil extravagance. It decided to downgrade Busáras and turn it into an unemployment exchange for women, which prompted the Irish Times columnist, Myles na Gopaleen, to christen it the "Bust Station". At one stage, when much of Busáras had been built, construction work was even suspended. After Fianna Fáil returned to office in 1951, work resumed - to completion.
For years previously, Dáil debates on the topic had been marked by splendid vituperation. The site choice itself had been very controversial. Three other locations had been considered: one at Aston Quay, another beyond Christ Church cathedral and the third in Smithfield, but Store Street was the cheapest. Yet there were complaints over the cost, more than £1 million. The work on the design had been full of infighting and intrigue and matters were made worse when a senior civil servant, Dan O'Donovan, was put in charge of the project. He and Michael Scott simply didn't get on.
Scott conceived Busáras as a work of art but the public was bemused by this first expression in Ireland of the modern architectural movement. One of the milder nicknames for Busáras was the "Glass House". Few outside the architectural profession realised that Scott was a disciple of Le Corbusier, the great Swiss modernist architect. From works of Le Corbusier, such as the Swiss Pavilion at the University of Paris, built in the early 1930s, you can trace a direct visual lineage to Busáras.
The end result created immense interest among architects all over Europe and beyond. Scott went on to leave his architectural mark on other buildings such as the Bord Fáilte building at Baggot Street Bridge, the RTÉ studios in Donnybrook, the present Abbey Theatre and the Carrolls tobacco factory in Dundalk. Donnybrook bus garage and the Charlemont Street flats also bore his imprint.
The actual Busáras bus station wasn't opened until October 1953, but before then, CIÉ had been elbowed aside and what was the Department of Social Welfare moved into the rest of the building. Civil servants had to cope with a brand new idea for Ireland: the whole building was air conditioned and the windows were designed not to be opened. Another fancy idea was a newsreel cinema in the basement, which later became a theatre. The vast, convoluted controversies about Busáras are long forgotten and while not many people, even today, would profess to love the place, it is now regarded as a classic of modern Irish architecture.