Aungier Street
Aungier Street
In Brief
In Ithaca Bloom looks up from his back garden to the
window of the bedroom above and sees the light of an oil lamp
projected on the roller blind. The chapter notes that he
purchased the blind from "Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain
pole and revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street."
The number is off by one but the business was real, and by
including it in his novel Joyce called attention to a
historically important thoroughfare.
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Aungier Street (the name is French, but for Dubliners it
rhymes with other formerly French words like ranger, danger,
changer, and manger) lies in the southern part of the inner
city about a quarter of a mile west of St. Stephen's Green,
running southward from South Great George's Street all the way
to Cuffe Street. The first planned street in post-medieval
Dublin, it was laid out in 1661 about a decade before the
construction of St. Stephen's Green, and at the time it was
the widest street in the city. In The Encyclopaedia of
Dublin (1991), Douglas Bennett notes that the medieval
name was St Stephen Street, as shown on Speed's map of 1610.
Sir Francis Aungier, created Earl of Longford in 1677, renamed
the street after his ancestor Sir Francis Aungier, created
Baron Aungier, as part of a development that also encompassed
Longford Street and Cuffe Street. The poet Thomas Moore,
author of Moore's Melodies, was born at number 12.
Joyce's address for Frank O'Hara's window dressing business,
number 16, is wrong. In James Joyce's Dublin, Ian Gunn
and Clive Hart note that "O'Hara's shop was at 17 Aungier
Street. The error arises from Joyce's having consulted the
alphabetical list in Thom's where the incorrect
address appears. Both the street list and the trades'
directory have the correct address. Clearly O'Hara does not
find his way into Ulysses through Joyce's having
looked up a likely window blind manufacturer in Thom's.
He knew about O'Hara first, and then checked to find his
address in the easiest way, by looking him up in the
alphabetical list" (121-22).
By Joyce's time Aungier Street had fallen a long way from its
18th century splendor, when grand townhouses lined the
spacious thoroughfare. The decline continued through much of
the 20th century, but in recent years measures have been
initiated to revitalize the historic neighborhood as part of
the City Council Public Realm Strategy adopted in September
2012. Photos of number 21, more or less across the street from
O'Hara's shop, can give a sense of the promise of this ongoing
urban renewal project.
Source: www.invaluable.com.
