Council honours Abbey architect

Dublin City Council has unveiled a plaque remembering Joseph Holloway (1861–1944), Architect and Theatre Critic, who designed the first Abbey Theatre born in Camden Street, where his father had a bakery, Holloway was educated at St Vincent’s in Castleknock.

Following the death of his father, in 1874, the family moved to 21 northumberland Road, where Holloway lived until his death in 1944.

After studying at the Dublin School of Art, in 1890 he joined O’Callaghan architects, in Kildare Street, Dublin.

Holloway’s most famous work was the remodelling of the Mechanics’ institute and Theatre on lower Abbey Street as the first Abbey Theatre, in December 1904.

He gave up architecture after the First World War, and, having a private income, he was able to devote himself to the theatre.

A great supporter of the theatre, he attended almost all rehearsals and first nights.

“We have one that’s carbon dated to the 11th Century and we have a second burial that was found with a diagnostic stick pin from the 11th Century. And that suggests that there was an earlier Christian and potentially monastic foundation here which predates the Savigniac and Cistercian Abbey.” bill Wolsey, managing director of beannchor, said it was impossible to have foreseen what the project would entail at its outset in 2017.

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