Galway Corporation has agreed to re-examine the fate of Prairie House, one of the last original seaside boarding houses in Salthill, which was due to be demolished to make way for a hostel and apartment block.
Indeed, the developer is also sympathetic. Mr Barry Fitzgerald, who received planning permission for the development, said he did not realise that the building had a particular architectural or historical merit.
Nor was he advised of this by the local authority when he made his original application.
Prairie House was built in Georgian style and dates from the late 18th or early 19th century, according to Mr Jim Higgins, Galway Corporation's new heritage officer, who became aware of the threat to the building only last week when contacted by the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.
As Mr Tom Kenny of Kennys' Bookshop notes, families tended to rent out a room there on a self-catering basis. "The original village ran from O'Connor's pub to what is now the Seapoint ballroom, but was originally a seawater baths, and it really took off as a holiday destination for rural people after the Famine.
"They were known as the `Famairi', or farming people, and they came for the air and for the water, as seawater was considered to have a lot of iodine," Mr Kenny has written in one of many articles which he is now collecting into a book.
Apart from bath-houses, where people sought cures, there were pubs, tea rooms, guest houses and small hotels. The village was surrounded by dense woodland and green fields.
When horse-drawn trams were introduced, linking it to Eyre Square, the village was transformed. "Traffic increased, the Prom [promenade] was built, hotels were built, the golf club and tennis club opened," he said. In 1949 Seapoint ballroom appeared on the scene; by the 1950s, when currach races were part of the calendar, up to 50,000 visitors were attracted to the resort.
The Government's seaside resort scheme, of which Mr Fitzgerald is availing, has transformed the resort once again; some say for the better, given the preponderance of gaming arcades, some say for the worse.
Under new planning legislation, buildings such as Prairie House will be subject to the protection of a permanent list drawn up by the local authority, aimed at including more recent constructions than hitherto.
The term "protected structure" will replace the designation "listed building" under the 1999 Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, and will include buildings constructed in the past two centuries which have not come under the narrow definition of national monuments.
Galway Corporation is believed to be "preparing" its list. The legislation takes effect in the new year.