President Patrick Hillery opens the new Arts Building at Trinity College Dublin.
At a cost of £5.5 million, this is the first building in the 400 year old history of Trinity College Dublin to be financed by the state. The building has a large variety of functions and contains over 188,000 sq ft of space over five floors. This includes a large library, five tiered lecture theatres, four flat lecture theatres, and 50 seminar rooms. Additional facilities include a fully equipped television studio, a sound recording studio, a language laboratory and a photographic centre. The only section of the new building not funded by the state is the Douglas Hyde Gallery.
The new building which cost five and a half million pounds was conceived in the mid-sixties.
This building is part of plans to cater for a projected population at Trinity College of six thousand students. At the opening, President Patrick Hillery noted that the building resulted in the formation of the first new square at TCD since the 1830. The president unveiled a plaque to commemorate the occasion.
Paintings and sculptures, mainly from Irish artists, can be found throughout the building. These include a mural by Robert Ballagh called 'Three People with a Jackson Pollock'. One anonymous graduate donated a work by American sculptor Alexander Calder called 'Cactus' which stands between the new building and the old library.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 11 December 1978. The reporter is Sean Carberry.
