The Tourist Information Dublin website
[visit
link] tells us:
"Leinster House ("Teach Laighean"
in Irish) is the name of the building housing the Oireachtas, the national
parliament of Ireland.
Leinster House, designed by
Architect Richard Cassels, was first built in 1745–48 by James, Earl of Kildare.
It was located on the unfashionable and isolated south side of the city, far
from the main locations of aristocratic residences north of the Liffey. From the
late eighteenth century Leinster House (then called Kildare House) was the
Earl's official Dublin residence. When the Earl was made Duke of Leinster the
house was renamed Leinster house.
In the history of aristocratic
residences in Dublin, no other mansion matched Kildare House for its sheer size
or status. Its first and second floors were used as the floor model for the
White House by its Irish architect, while the house itself was used as a model
for the original stone-cut White House exterior.
The 3rd Duke of Leinster sold
Leinster House in 1815 to the Royal Dublin Society( the RDS). In the late
1800's, two new wings were added, to house the National Library of Ireland and
the National Museum of Ireland. The Natural History Museum was built on the
site.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921
provided for the creation of the Irish Free State and the Provisional Government
sought a temporary venue for the meetings of the new Chamber of Deputies Dáil
Éireann and the Senate Seanad Éireann.
Plans were made to turn Royal
Hospital Kilmainham, an eighteenth century former soldiers' home in extensive
parklands, into a full-time Parliament House. But it was still under the control
of the British Army, and the new Governor-General of the Irish Free State was
due to deliver the Speech from the Throne opening parliament within weeks, it
was decided to hire the main RDS Lecture Theatre attached to Leinster House for
use in December 1922 as a temporary Dáil chamber. The building was bought
outright from the RDS in 1924.
A new Senate or Seanad chamber was
created in Duke's old ballroom, while wings from the neighbouring Royal College
of Science were taken over as used as Government Buildings."
The Oireachtas website [visit
link] also tells us:
"The history of Leinster House -
the building that now houses the National Parliament of Ireland - evolved in
stages.
The house was originally known as
Kildare House after James Fitzgerald, the Earl of Kildare, who commissioned it
to be built between 1745-47: James Fitzgerald set out to create the stateliest
of Dublin Georgian Mansions to reflect his eminent position in Irish society. It
is told that the Earl had said that fashion would follow in whatever direction
he led. In succeeding, he caused an unfashionable area of the city to
become a desirable one. On becoming the Duke of Leinster in 1776 (Dublin and
Kildare are in the province of Leinster) the house was renamed Leinster
House.
The designer of Leinster House was
the architect Richard Cassels (or Castle), who was born in Hesse-Cassel in
Germany about 1690. The design is characteristic of buildings of the period in
Ireland and England. It has been claimed that it formed a model for the design
of the White House, the residence of the President of the United States. This
claim may have its origins in the career of James Hoban, who in 1792 won the
competition for the design of the White House. He was an Irishman, born in
Callan, County Kilkenny in 1762, and studied architecture in Dublin, and
consequently, would have had an opportunity of studying the design of Leinster
House.
Supporter of the United Irishmen,
who advocated complete separation of Ireland from England, Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, fifth son of the first Duke of Leinster, was arrested shortly before
the insurrection of May 1798 and died of wounds received during his capture. No
doubt it was beyond his wildest dreams that many years later the Irish
Parliament would be located in his family home.
In 1815, Augustus Frederick, the
third Duke of Leinster, sold the mansion to the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) for
£10,000 and a yearly rent of £600 which was later redeemed. The purpose of the
society was to improve the wretched conditions of the people.
Many important public institutions
of the present day owe their origins to the RDS:
the National
Botanic Gardens (Glasnevin),
the National College of Art
and Design,
the Dublin Veterinary
College,
the National Library,
the
National Gallery,
and the National Museum.
The Society made extensive
additions to the house, most notably the lecture theatre, later to become the
Dáil Chamber.
A number of historic events took
place in Leinster House. The first balloon ascent in Ireland was made in July
1783 by Richard Crosbie from Leinster Lawn. The Great Industrial Exhibition was
opened on Leinster Lawn on 12 May 1853.
After the establishment of the
Irish Free State in 1922, the Government secured a part of Leinster House for
parliamentary use. The entire building was acquired by the State in
1924.
Today, Leinster House is the seat
of the two Houses of the Oireachtas (National Parliament), comprising Dáil
Éireann (the House of Representatives) and Seanad Éireann (the
Senate).
The purpose which it now serves may
put off to some distant time the "unhappy day" referred to in the inscription on
the foundation stone, which in translation from the original Latin
reads:
The house,
of
which this stone is the foundation,
James, twentieth Earl of
Kildare,
caused to be erected in Molesworth's field,
in the year of our
Lord 1747.
Hence learn, whenever, in some unhappy day,
you light on the
ruins of so great a mansion,
of what worth he was who built it,
and how
frail all things are,
when such memorials of such men cannot outlive
misfortune.
By Richard Castle, Architect"