Sir, It is difficult to understand what your Environment Correspondent had in mind when he wrote of "Hilton's Hope" (January 25th), a massive hotel development being proposed for the immensely important site bordering Westmoreland, College and Fleet Streets.
The article in question offers no point of view on the project apart from those of persons involved with the scheme, either directly as architects or as paid consultants. Predictably, these people have nothing but disdain for the several 19th century buildings to be demolished for the sake of this development (all of which are dismissed as either obsolete or out of place "curiosities"), and an equal measure of praise for the bleak and clumsy infill" planned as replacement for the charming collection of existing buildings.
Not only are some of these potentially doomed buildings listed for protection it is also clearly the case that each one of the Westmoreland and College Street structures is an integral part of our visual heritage in this most strategic and historically charged area of Dublin a section of the city which should without question be allowed to retain whatever is left of its distinctiveness and human scale. However, your correspondent goes so far as to call the proposed infill facades "well modulated companions" for those buildings which are to escape the wrecking ball. Even the ghastly and obtrusive new roof line, which would forever alter the architectural mood of the area, is said by one quoted consultant "to minimise its effect on the skyline".
Surely no one knows better than your Environment Correspondent the price we have all paid over several decades due to the thoughtless demolition of irreplaceable buildings in the name of "progress". Reference to "economic obsolescence" is a stunningly inappropriate way of assessing the value of older buildings. One could scarcely find streets capes of greater historical, cultural or psychological significance than those of Westmoreland and College Streets. So much has been lost in our city centre can Dublin afford further loss on such a scale?
Some, though not all, of the buildings these developers propose to demolish have certainly been neglected and their interiors ill treated over time. This could plead us to draw a number of conclusions, particularly with regard to the inadequacy both of the system for listing buildings, and of the mechanism for enforcing compliance with the few protections that do exist. It would surely be a tragic error to conclude instead (as this article apparently invites us to do) that developers should have carte blanche either to obliterate or fundamentally alter buildings which have stood as witness to so many of the events of modern history and all this just to achieve the necessary "critical mass" for Hilton Hotels International? Yours, etc.,
An Taisce Dublin City Planning Group, The Tailors Hall, Back Lane, Dublin 8.