alberthouse

The Elephant House (formerly the Giraffe House)

from National Library of Ireland on The Commons

• 22 older comments, and then…
• derangedlemur said:

  If I remember rightly, it was still like that in the early '70s and would have been here: maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,712863,735325,7,9

• derangedlemur said:

  I think that's the Albert Tower that the elephants are in front of.

• derangedlemur said:

  From a similar picture in the Northside Pimple: "Dublin Zoo c.1950. Children stand very close, looking in awe at the large Indian elephant, Sara (1932 – 62), who was the last elephant used to give rides for children, and the smaller Ceylonese elephant Komali. The building on the right is the Elephant House or ‘Albert Tower’, which was built in 1845-6 to house a giraffe. On the death of the giraffe the elephants moved into the house. It was designed by George Wilkinson, who was also the architect for Harcourt Street Station"

• John Spooner said:

  Freeman's disagrees about the architect. The architect of the Albert Tower, Charles Sherrie, died "from the effects of an accident sustained by falling off a car whilst driving up from Holywood to Belfast ... He was also architect of several other important structures in this town, and at present had charge of the new Royal Theatre which is being erected in Belfast" (Freeman's April 11 1871). Admission fees for the Albert Tower in 1854-5 amounted to £1 13s 1d (AGM of the Royal Zoological Society reported in Freeman's May 2 1855). I couldn't help noticing that amongst other sources of income was "manure £14 13s 6d". I imagine elephants made a not insubstantial contribution

• derangedlemur said:

  There seems to be some difference of opinion as to who the architect was. My quote above is from a "From the Archives" page so I've no idea when it was originally written, other than that it was sometime after 1950. It does have a few design elements also found on Harcourt street station.