In October 2006, the Temple Bar Cultural Trust and the Irish Architectural Archive produced an exhibiton and catalogue called Temple Bar 15 to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the architectural competition to find a framework plan for the renewal and development of the Temple Bar area of Dublin.

Temple Bar 15 included a set of photographs taken in 1985 by the Irish Architectural Archives photos as part of an Inner City Survey project. We’ve digitised a selection of them below to compare with Temple Bar today – some 40 years later.

Crown Alley from Fownes St Upper (this and all 1985 photos via Irish Architectural Archive)

The catalogue describes what Temple Bar was like in the late 1980s…

“The Temple Bar of the late 1980s was a place of narrow streets lined by mainly nineteenth-century industrial, commercial and domestic structures. Signs of neglect and urban decay were everywhere, engendered by the intention to develop the area as a major bus transportation hub. The building stock was allowed to slip into disrepair, and a significant number of structures were removed altogether”.

And it also cites one of the reasons for the Temple Bar 15 review…

“The Temple Bar 15 catalogue and exhibition offer us a stark reminder of what was and what might have been, and help to create a background against which Temple Bar today can be understood and appraised.”

In the Temple Bar 15 catalogue, Richard Dann is thanked for “his work on the photographs”.

The colour photos above were taken by Brian McMahon, January 2026.