Apartment blocks with outdoor "stair towers"

hatrickpatrick

Very random question, but I've only recently realised that those odd little round towers with a couple of military turret style windows on them which you find next to apartment blocks in Dublin are actually the stairs

Is this type of design unique to Dublin? Most apartment blocks elsewhere tend to either have fully indoor stairwells (whereby you actually need a key / to be buzzed in to the building itself, not just the individual apartments) or else an open stairwell which is separate to the actual apartments (so outdoor insofar as anyone can walk into them with or without keys / access to the building) but is nonetheless contained within the structure of the main building.

In Dublin we seem to have these cool round tower designs wherever there are apartments, apart from the very very futuristic / modern ones.

Anyone noticed this? Is it a design that dates from a particular era or is it a Dublin quirk?

I'll stick up a photo of one next time I'm in town, think Cuffe Street off Stephen's Green has a few of them.

EDIT: This is one of the Stephen's Green ones:

Saipanne

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Very random question, but I've only recently realised that those odd little round towers with a couple of military turret style windows on them which you find next to apartment blocks in Dublin are actually the stairs

Is this type of design unique to Dublin? Most apartment blocks elsewhere tend to either have fully indoor stairwells (whereby you actually need a key / to be buzzed in to the building itself, not just the individual apartments) or else an open stairwell which is separate to the actual apartments (so outdoor insofar as anyone can walk into them with or without keys / access to the building) but is nonetheless contained within the structure of the main building.

In Dublin we seem to have these cool round tower designs wherever there are apartments, apart from the very very futuristic / modern ones.

Anyone noticed this? Is it a design that dates from a particular era or is it a Dublin quirk?

I'll stick up a photo of one next time I'm in town, think Cuffe Street off Stephen's Green has a few of them.

I've seen them in cork too, I think.

ThisRegard

If you called them flats people may be able to picture what you're talking about better.

All ones I know of are decades old buildings, not in modern apartment complexes.

Arbiter of Good Taste

I've only ever seen them in council flats

Outkast_IRE

Nice design quirk.

But i do not think you will find them too often in newer builds as to the best of my recollection i think these types of steps are discouraged in public areas as people are more prone to falls on them as the width of the step varies across its length.

I cant think of any examples of these in cork at the moment.

hatrickpatrick

Arbiter of Good Taste wrote: »

I've only ever seen them in council flats

Always assumed the Cuffe Street ones pictured above were student gaffs for DIT folk, always loads of students milling around that square

Arbiter of Good Taste

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Always assumed the Cuffe Street ones pictured above were student gaffs for DIT folk, always loads of students milling around that square

Those flats have been there for donkey's years - I'd say long before DIT. Are you sure it's students?

Teyla Emmagan

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Always assumed the Cuffe Street ones pictured above were student gaffs for DIT folk, always loads of students milling around that square

They're council flats.

Hibernosaur

The council is obliged to provide a sheltered area where one can peddle ones narcotics.

January

Hibernosaur wrote: »

The council is obliged to provide a sheltered area where one can peddle ones narcotics.

Read the charter before posting again, especially the part about generalisations.

L1011

Standard on 1950s/1960s flat blocks be they private or council. Older ones usually had public but internal stairwells and newer ones (even 70s onwards) usually have lobbies/lifts/etc.

That there's very few private blocks of that age makes people assume its entirely council but it was just the prevailing style of the time.

It probably allowed another flat per floor in the main block, with the longer-term problem of maintenance, particularly to the cantilevered decks.

spurious

The same design was used in a number of council blocks. It's also in North William Street and Dunne Street.

hatrickpatrick

I just assumed most Dublin Council flats were built in very large clusters, while Cuffe St looks very small. I'm in college near St Patrick's Cathedral and along Cork St there are a few council estates which are all gigantic. Dolphin Park is one I walk through from time to time for example, and I reckon there are at least ten big blocks there, have relatives who used to live near the Phoenix Park on the North Circular and there was a nearby council flat complex which was again row upon row of '50s style single-balcony apartment blocks (not sure of the name but they've said it was used as a set for Love/Hate last year)

Is this style of stairwell a Dublin thing or do they have them elsewhere / in other countries? I've been walking past the Cuffe St one literally every day for more than a year and it only recently occurred to me (before I knew what it was) that these round towers could be found in some of the other places I mentioned, up until then I'd always thought it was some kind of monument

L1011

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I just assumed most Dublin Council flats were built in very large clusters, while Cuffe St looks very small.

There's plenty of single block or otherwise small corpo flat blocks around. The big developments were probably rarer and definitely unwise in the long term.

FreudianSlippers

Arbiter of Good Taste wrote: »

Those flats have been there for donkey's years - I'd say long before DIT. Are you sure it's students?

Those and the ones behind RCSI were absolute no-go zones in the 80s /90s; they seem quiet these days

doolox

This is only possible in private developments where money can be charged for services annually in order to clean and maintain the public access areas. The outdoor stairwells are better in this respect in that an accumulated rubbish etc is quickly dispelled by rain and wind.

I used to work on deliveries involving visits to one public authority set of flats with indoor public areas and while the private areas of the flats themselves were adequately cleaned and maintained, the public areas were an atrocious and filthy mess. The smell of human waste and rotting food waste etc was horrendous. People from outside the area used to sleep rough in these stairwells causing no end of trouble for the locals.

hatrickpatrick

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Those and the ones behind RCSI were absolute no-go zones in the 80s /90s; they seem quiet these days

Seriously? The ones beside Stephen's Green?

Maybe I'm too young to remember, but I can't imagine anywhere around the Harcourt / Camden St area being "no go" apart from late weekend nights if you're not into loud music and drunken eejits

jobbridge4life

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Seriously? The ones beside Stephen's Green?

Maybe I'm too young to remember, but I can't imagine anywhere around the Harcourt / Camden St area being "no go" apart from late weekend nights if you're not into loud music and drunken eejits

The whole area is a sea of council and pre-welfare state charitable housing. As a proud resident of the area it is definitely quiet nowadays although on occassion you can get a bunch of youngsters (i sound like I'm a 100) acting the maggot. The worst spot in my experience would be little laneway running from Mercer St to Aungier St at the back of the York St Flats.

FreudianSlippers

I vividly recall being with my dad and parking on York St in the 80s and the car would almost certainly be broken into. That is unless one of the helpful local youths offered to mind your car for a few bob

hatrickpatrick

^ Would appear that the city centre in general has quietened down recently. I had a thread a few weeks ago about the general Dolphin's Barn / Rialto / Donore Ave area which I'd heard horror stories about and the consensus was that post 2010 it's all pretty tame.

Regardless, I've been Googling around a bit and I can't seem to find any example of this kind of stair-tower design outside Dublin and certainly not outside Ireland.
When did the idea of an indoor "lobby" for apartment blocks become the norm, whereby you have to be buzzed in by a specific resident to enter the building itself? This seems to be the standard in the vast majority of Dublin apartment blocks these days, in contrast to places like Italy or France where the outdoor common area / individually locked apartment lots is the standard.

salmocab

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

^ Would appear that the city centre in general has quietened down recently. I had a thread a few weeks ago about the general Dolphin's Barn / Rialto / Donore Ave area which I'd heard horror stories about and the consensus was that post 2010 it's all pretty tame.

Regardless, I've been Googling around a bit and I can't seem to find any example of this kind of stair-tower design outside Dublin and certainly not outside Ireland.
When did the idea of an indoor "lobby" for apartment blocks become the norm, whereby you have to be buzzed in by a specific resident to enter the building itself? This seems to be the standard in the vast majority of Dublin apartment blocks these days, in contrast to places like Italy or France where the outdoor common area / individually locked apartment lots is the standard.

In fairness they were built in a different time security wasn't a big issue back then kids were out all day running up and down the stairs and into the flats now they need locked doors and intercoms to keep people away from their x-box

K.Flyer

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I vividly recall being with my dad and parking on York St in the 80s and the car would almost certainly be broken into. That is unless one of the helpful local youths offered to mind your car for a few bob

Hey Mister, I'll mind yer car for ya for a pound..
F#@k off ye little b@llix, there's an mad dog in the back of the car, and if anyone tries to get into the car it'll destroy them..
Eh.. is it any good at puttin' out fires..

gaiscioch

Rialto, Dublin v. Rialto, Venice

Grand Canal, Dublin v. Grand Canal, Venice

Cork Street, Dublin v. Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Venice?

salmocab

gaiscioch wrote: »

Rialto, Dublin v. Rialto, Venice

Grand Canal, Dublin v. Grand Canal, Venice

Cork Street, Dublin v. Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Venice?

In fairness the picture of grand canal in Dublin looks nicer than the one in venice. The rialto bridge in Vegas has escalators!

January

What's your point there, gaiscioch?

jobbridge4life

gaiscioch wrote: »

Rialto, Dublin v. Rialto, Venice

Grand Canal, Dublin v. Grand Canal, Venice

Cork Street, Dublin v. Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Venice?

Given the native Venetian population has devolved into inbreeding and illiteracy I'll gladly take our canals. Like for like or please don't bother.

gaiscioch

January wrote: »

What's your point there, gaiscioch?

Perhaps it has some inspiration from that external staircase in Venice, just as other areas of Dublin's architecture were inspired by Venetian precedents. (Original post: "Is this type of design unique to Dublin? Most apartment blocks elsewhere tend to either have fully indoor stairwells")

hatrickpatrick

K.Flyer wrote: »

Hey Mister, I'll mind yer car for ya for a pound..
F#@k off ye little b@llix, there's an mad dog in the back of the car, and if anyone tries to get into the car it'll destroy them..
Eh.. is it any good at puttin' out fires..

This actually came up at dinner the other day, I'm too young to remember (25) but apparently there was a time when cars getting stolen was ridiculously common in Dublin. Didn't know we'd had a carjacking epidemic here at all! Were joyriders particularly tech savvy, or were car manufacturers particularly tech incompetent when it came to locking mechanisms?

FloatingVoter

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This actually came up at dinner the other day, I'm too young to remember (25) but apparently there was a time when cars getting stolen was ridiculously common in Dublin. Didn't know we'd had a carjacking epidemic here at all! Were joyriders particularly tech savvy, or were car manufacturers particularly tech incompetent when it came to locking mechanisms?

Lousy locks, kids were into joyriding using real cars not x-boxes, the car getting burnt out at the end of the night usually involved an insurance claim. It could work out well for all parties if we were looking at an over-insured banger.
Any car parked in city centre Dublin with country plates was fair game. so the likes of an All-Ireland was mardi-gras time.

L1011

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This actually came up at dinner the other day, I'm too young to remember (25) but apparently there was a time when cars getting stolen was ridiculously common in Dublin. Didn't know we'd had a carjacking epidemic here at all! Were joyriders particularly tech savvy, or were car manufacturers particularly tech incompetent when it came to locking mechanisms?

Immobilisers (easy as first generation ones are to beat, they still require *some* work) only became standard on European cars from about 1996 onwards and cheap Japanese cars until vastly later (2004 comes to mind, so most import Vitz/March are hotwireable) so it was a case of smash a window, flick the handle, and you had the car driving in a minute.

The NCT coming in took the bulk of older cheap cars off the road and slow attrition due to the remaining ones being the ones that were piss easy to nick really means there's not a huge amount that can be stolen easily anymore.

Which is why they now try to get your keys instead...

FloatingVoter

L1011 wrote: »

Which is why they now try to get your keys instead...

This is true. Back in the day (1980s), fishing rod theft of keys (pole through the letter-box to fish keys off a hook) was almost unheard of. Waking up in the morning to discover an empty driveway was extremely common. My uncle had his car nicked three times in one year. Two different cars, one robbed twice.