The Irish Times begins the new year with several stories about how Dublin’s Georgian heritage is threatened by degradation and development.

Dereliction has become “endemic” in the north Georgian core of the city, according to Independent Senator David Norris. O’Connell Street and the surrounding Georgian and Victoria district are slipping into ever greater degradation with derelict historic buildings, a build-up of household rubbish and inappropriate infill developments on the site of former Georgian houses, the Times reports.

The Georgian period stretched through the reigns of four King Georges from 1714 to 1830. The style of buildings in the period derived from Palladian Architecture.

Dublin image from Panoramio.

A sidebar in the Times package details the 1757 creation of the Wide Streets Commission, which was “responsible for creating the grand Georgian boulevards of the capital and for turning it from an east-west to a north-south orientated city though the development of new bridges.”

Here’s a link to the Irish Georgian Society. And another blog about the period from Dublin by Lamplight.