14 Henrietta Street – a museum brought alive by community 

Henrietta Street is an often-overlooked road in Dublin’s north inner-city. The street has been seen as just the sight of a cosy pub and the prestigious Kings Inns for many years – but the reality is, Henrietta Street is a time capsule of the history of Dublin.

The houses on Henrietta Street were built in the 1720s to house Dublin’s elite during the winter. By the 1800s, the houses had many purposes: they were the homes of working professionals, the headquarters of government agencies, and even a home base for the Dublin militia for more than 10 years. In 1876 a Thomas Vance bought 14 Henrietta Street and turned it into tenements. These tenements would define the next 150 years of the house.

From its opening in the 18th century until the 1970s, around 100 people lived in the 19-room house at any given time. The last tenant moved out in the late 1970s as she had been warned that the building could collapse at any moment. From there, the building fell into disrepair, and this was when Dublin City Council stepped in – and our story began. 

Dublin City Council dedicated itself to purchasing and restoring the house to convert it into a museum to display the lost history of the house. 

“Dublin City Council heritage office did a conservation plan for the street as it’s the first Georgian street of the empire,” Iseult Dunne, CEO of Dublin City Council Culture Company, said. “Because a conservation plan and a heritage plan were in existence, it was then possible to proceed to take all measures to preserve the street.

“It was a compulsory purchase process, to save some of the houses that were in need of stabilisation. That landed in the courts – it took about 10 years for that to come through.”

Once the council had purchased the house, the process of turning it into a museum began.  

“You’ve got a building that’s 300 years old, which means it has 300 years of history. So very clearly, what was needed was historical experts from different periods. It was always developed from the very beginning, with the advisory groups or working groups that included people with different expertise, including historians for the different eras, people who’ve developed visitor experiences, artists, and residents,” said Dunne. 

Despite the multitude of historians and artists who worked on this project, the former residents really brought the museum alive. The tours are filled with personal stories and the old belongings of people who grew up inside the walls of 14 Henrietta Street.  

“We hosted a ‘Remembering that Tenements’ in Kings Inn just up the road, and a lot of people turned up with things to show, but also stories to tell. The decision was made to record some of them and also speak and spend more time with them to find out what they remembered,” said Dunne.  

“When it came specifically to people who grew up in the building, they turned up and just made themselves known.” 

“For example, Peter Branigan, he always used to come and walked the street remembering the voice of his mam, he says. One of the days he was walking the streets, and he saw that workmen were in the house, and there hadn’t been anybody in it for a long, long time. So, he walks through the front door basically going, you know, can I have a look?” 

Thanks to the heavy citizen involvement, the museum stands as a beacon of community that can be felt throughout the tour. 

“We also made an effort to involve people who live locally, who lived in the shadow of the building, who used to live in the building, and whose family used to live in tenements. Such a range of connections. But we also meet people in the museum on a regular basis who are descendants of the family that built a house,” said Dunne. “They still continue to inform the museum. The museum is a story, and we just tell the story.” 

One of the most striking things about the museum is the way that tenements were painted by the former residents. Everything I have ever been taught about the tenements illustrated a dismal place where greedy landlords and horrible living conditions made people miserable. This museum illustrates the opposite. They do not overshadow how dreary the tenements could be. However, all the firsthand accounts describe a place filled with happy families, laughing children, and palpable community. 

“There were different types of tenements,” Dunne said. “We know 14 Henrietta Street was a tenement where people, mostly men, worked [outside the home]. There were tenements where people weren’t working. There were places where things were worse, and there were also places where things were better. So, there is a huge range in that tenement story about conditions. 

“We find that a lot of the people that we were talking to were children in the tenements. They’re talking about happy times with loads of friends around and loads of kids and people and toys. People didn’t have this, and that. But all the people we’ve talked to, they just remember the happy times.”