On King’s Island, the heart of medieval Limerick, is one of the city’s earliest Modernist buildings. A national school, at the forefront of contemporary design, is weaved into the centuries’ old fabric of the city. The young architect who designed it, Andy Devane (1917-2000), gifted the insights of his mentor, America’s Frank Lloyd Wright, to the city that raised him.
King’s Island takes its name from King John’s Castle and contains other medieval gems such as St Mary’s Cathedral and the remains of several friaries. St Mary’s national school on Bishop Street was built c.1870, originally part of St Mary’s Convent, founded by the Sisters of Mercy. The demands on the school increased after the city slum clearances started in 1932 in parts of Irishtown. This saw the bizarre construction of Corporation housing in the courtyard of King John’s Castle and, three years later, the Corporation estate St Mary’s Park on the north end of King’s Island, built by G&T Crampton.
(School of Architecture. University of Limerick)
The Mercy Order commissioned Devane (1917 – 2000) of Robinson Keeffe and Devane Architects (today RKD Architects) in 1949 to carry out additions and an extension to the nineteenth century school (1). The building contractor was Murphy Bros. Ltd, from Cork. Devane had just returned from a two-year scholarship studying under the great US Architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959) at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. He returned to Ireland in 1948, enthusiastic to bring Wright’s 'Usonian’ (his word for US-derived) style of architecture to RKD and to use as a template for post-war construction in Ireland. As Peter Carroll, Head of Architecture, University of Limerick points out, ‘This school represents one of the first design commissions Devane received on returning to practice in Ireland in 1948’.
Devane grew up in Newtown Pery, at the heart of Limerick’s Georgian grid on the other side of the river from Englishtown. One can only wonder what Devane made of the challenge of infilling a new generation of structures into the narrow medieval streets rather than designing a stand-alone building. The nineteenth-century national school is a seven-bay, two-storey building with limestone walls and polychrome brick dressing and a pitched slate roof. It was originally a girls’ school but today is co-educational with c.140 pupils.
Devane used fair-faced blockwork in a stack bond, broken up by large windows topped with elegant concrete over-sailing eaves and canopies. The façade cranks with the curve of the narrow, medieval Bishop Street. His new school entrance confidently terminates a street, in the warren of streets on the island. The economic use of materials continues inside with terrazzo on the stairs and toilet plazas. Circular roof lights in the corridors bounce natural light across these polished surfaces.
Concrete shelters lined with seating divide the school yards to protect against the rain. These are filled with cross-ribbed glass bricks, again in a stack bond bringing more light to these spaces. Wright, too, often used glass brick refraction to bring light into previously unlighteable spaces. Devane thought of every detail, such as the raised concrete plant beds and raised drain covers to create seats at child-level. There is a striking similarity between the draughting studio of Taliesin West and the auditorium of St Mary's with its exterior 'knuckles’ and soaring ceiling line. As a true disciple of Wright, Devane wanted to showcase concrete as the perfect building material.
On the 2 September 1951, the new St Mary’s national school was opened by the Minister for Education, Seán Moylan, the Bishop of Limerick Dr P. O’Neill and Mayor of Limerick Stephen Coughlan (2). The final cost of the building work came to £90,000.
Peter Carroll eloquently sums up the success of Devane's additions to St Mary’s National School: ‘This is a school that continues to stand the test of time. Like an integral part of a city’s fabric, you do not notice it. Its architecture is silent. Yet it delights on so many levels in its lively conversation with Limerick City and beyond’.
Thanks to Peter Carroll for sharing his images, his research and his time.
[1] Tender invited for carrying out the building work went out in 1948 as appeared in the Irish Builder No.90, 13 November 1949, p.934.
[2] The Irish Examiner 4 September 1951
