Áras an Uachtaráin
Áras an Uachtaráin (Irish pronunciation: [ˈaːɾˠəsˠ ənˠ ˈuəxt̪ˠəɾˠaːnʲ] ; "Residence of the President"), formerly the Viceregal Lodge, is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of Ireland. It is located off Chesterfield Avenue in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. The building design was credited to amateur architect Nathaniel Clements but more likely guided by professionals (John Wood of Bath, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce and Richard Cassels) and completed around 1751 to 1757.[2]
Áras an Uachtaráin
Viceregal Lodge
Completed
Private
Dublin
Ireland
1751[1]
1840s, 1849, 1852, 1908, 1911
- Raymond McGrath
- Michael Stapleton
- Bartholomew Cramillion
92
Origins[edit]
The original house was designed by park ranger and amateur architect Nathaniel Clements in the mid-18th century. It was bought by the Crown in the 1780s to become the summer residence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the British viceroy in the Kingdom of Ireland. His official residence was in the Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle. The house in the park later became the Viceregal Lodge, the "out of season" residence of the Lord Lieutenant (also known as the Viceroy), where he lived for most of the year from the 1820s onwards. During the Social Season (January to Saint Patrick's Day in March), he lived in state in Dublin Castle.
Phoenix Park once contained three official state residences. The Viceregal Lodge, the Chief Secretary's Lodge and the Under Secretary's Lodge. The Chief Secretary's Lodge, now called Deerfield, is the official residence of the United States Ambassador to Ireland. The Under Secretary's Lodge, now demolished, served for many years as the Apostolic Nunciature.
Some historians have claimed that the garden front portico of Áras an Uachtaráin (which can be seen by the public from the main road through the Phoenix Park) was used as a model by Irish architect James Hoban, who designed the White House in Washington, D.C. However, the porticoes were not part of Hoban's original design and were, in fact, added to the White House at a later date by Benjamin Henry Latrobe.
Phoenix Park Murders[edit]
In 1882, its grounds were the location of the Phoenix Park Murders. The Chief Secretary for Ireland (the British Cabinet minister with responsibility for Irish affairs), Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his Under-Secretary, Thomas Henry Burke, were stabbed to death with surgical knives while walking back to the residence from Dublin Castle. A small insurgent group called the Irish National Invincibles was responsible. The 5th Earl Spencer, the then Lord Lieutenant, heard the victims' screams from a window in the ground floor drawing room.
Residence of the Governor-General[edit]
In 1911, the house underwent a large extension for the visit of King George V and Queen Mary. With the creation of the Irish Free State in December 1922, the office of Lord Lieutenant was abolished. The new state intended to place the new representative of the Crown, Governor-General Tim Healy, in a new, smaller residence, but because of death threats from the anti-treaty IRA, he was installed in the Viceregal Lodge temporarily. The building was at the time nicknamed "Uncle Tim's Cabin" after him, in imitation of the famous US novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by the US author Harriet Beecher Stowe.[3] It remained the official residence of the Governor-General of the Irish Free State until 1932, when the new Governor-General, Domhnall Ua Buachalla, was installed in a specially hired private mansion in the southside of Dublin.