Displaying items by tag: Dublin Port 1867 to 1897
#TransitGateway - As part of “Port Perspectives”, Transit Gateway is a project that documents the transitional changes of the shape of Dublin Port from its medieval shoreline to its current infrastructure. This months free seminar: Mapping Phase 4 Dublin Port 1867-1897 Frency & Excitement is detailed further below.
The changes of the port as a gateway to the city bring to mind the void of communication of the 18th century on the ships before Marconi, the forced emigrations of the 19th century, the modern context of maritime holiday migration that shaped the 20th century, and which now extends itself to the cruise business the 21st century, and how cargo volumes changed over the centuries in terms of goods, locations and quantity.
Transit Gateway is an artistic mapping cartography that will show the changing connections of the city and the port throughout the years, and how the port as a gateway creates a vital connection of the city with the wider world. In collaboration with partners and the local community, the artist Silvia Loeffler has been commissioned by Dublin Port Company to create a social and collaborative artistic mapping project that looks at the port ‘s transitional phases over a time period of 9 months.
A large-scale installation series loosely based on the various maps used by H.A. Gilligan in his “History of the Port of Dublin” is currently being created, and the works are displayed in the Terminal 1 Building in Dublin Port. Each month, a new map layer will be added to the installation.
Each month, a specific seminar, which will be held in the Venue: LAB Gallery on 1 Foley Street, Dublin in order ‘to bring the port back into the city’, will accompany the map layer.
This months free event: “Dublin Port from 1867 to 1897/ Frenzy and Excitement” is the fourth seminar in this series.
Date: Wednesday, 31 May
Time from 18:15 to 20:15
To Register: The event is free, but places are limited. So please make sure to register HERE and for more about each of the speakers.
We will refer to the port in the late Victorian period, which was shaped by its chief engineer Bindon Blood Stoney. The Custom House Docks declined gradually, as the improvement of entrance locks proved to be too costly. (The warehouses were still used to store cargo, which was transported from the vessels that berthed at the deepwater section.) A tramway was built across reclaimed land to connect the jetty of the chemical firm W.H.M. Goulding, with their factory. The Port and Docks Act of 1869 recommended rebuilding works at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay and Great Britain Quay and suggested that Stoney’s project for the North Wall extension come to life. The sheer float and the diving bell were delivered in 1866, and when the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Dublin on 11 April 1885 to inspect the extension, they could view the spectacle of 6 men, who excavated soil from the river, emerge from the water in a diving bell. The adjoining basin was named Alexandra Basin after the princess.
Again, the Liffey was to be the connecting lifeline of the city with the port, the river’s bridges being the connecting points. Grattan Bridge at Capel Street was rebuilt in its present form in 1873-5. A new swivel bridge, Butt Bridge, opened in 1879 and was used for shipping cargo upriver until 1888. (In 1891, Butt Bridge became a ‘loopline’ railway bridge, and it was not possible for ships to pass underneath any longer.)
Carlisle Bridge, which was rebuilt and renamed O’Connell Bridge, opened in 1880. The three bridges, who are distinctive landmark features of the Dublin of today, were designed by Bindon Blood Stoney, who retired in 1898 because of poor health, after working for the port for almost forty-three years.
We hope that you are able to join us with the discussion of Dublin Port of this particular era where steam boats offered ever more speed and comfort and engineering feats added to the frenzy and excitement of a a building boom in the city that continued on both sides of the river.
Speaker panel:
Seán ó’Laoire (architect / Diving Bell development)
Vanessa Daws (artist)
Fergal Mc Carthy (artist)
The Transit Gateway seminars are part of a wider public engagement programme for Port Perspectives 2017. They are funded by Dublin Port Company and the LAB Gallery.
Dublin Port's 2017 Port Perspectives / Engagement Programme has been developed in collaboration with Dublin City Council, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, UCD School of Architecture, National College of Art and Design, Irish Architecture Foundation, Create [the National Collaborative Arts Agency] and Business to Arts.
Dr Silvia Loeffler is an artist, researcher and educator in Visual Culture. She is the organiser of the Transit Gateway seminars, funded by Dublin Port Company, and run in close collaboration with the LAB. This seminar series will continue until October 2017 and is part of Silvia's artistic cartography 'Transit Gateway: A Deep Mapping of Dublin Port'.
