While estate agents, Hunters, may have had rather grand designs on securing a premium price for the former home of the late and much-celebrated architect Cathal O’Neill, they’ve since gone back to the drawing board, dropping the asking price by almost 18 per cent last Thursday.
Having first offered number 6 St James’s Terrace on Clonskeagh Road in Dublin 6 to the market for a not-insignificant €3.95 million in March of this year, they’ve cut the price by €700,000 to €3.25 million in a bid to draw renewed interest.
While that’s still a lot of money, number 6 is quite a lot of house. The elegant four-bedroom period terrace, which extends to 371sq m (3,993sq ft), is on a row of about 14 houses that have generous front gardens and large back gardens with southwest aspects.
The property’s period details remain intact, including intricate coving, shutters and historic house bells. It also comes with a two-storey coach house and a heated outdoor swimming pool.
O’Neill, who lived in the home with his late wife, the interior designer Deirdre (nee Monks), was the head of the school of architecture at University College Dublin from 1972 until 1996 and was described as a “gifted teacher” and a “wonderful mentor and advocate of younger architects” in an obituary by the university. He was mentored by renowned German modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe after spending time in Chicago at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
His career and style were deeply inspired by Mies van der Rohe, who he worked for after graduating shortly before he was offered a place to teach at UCD and returned to Ireland.
