Qualla: O'Connell Street, Limerick

O'Connell Street, Limerick: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roland Czaczyk FreeBird 03:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC), Public domain. Walk south down O'Connell Street and at the end of it, where the avenue curves into the Crescent, Daniel O'Connell himself stands on a pedestal looking back at you. The Liberator - the man who won Catholic Emancipation in 1829 - watches over the street that took his name when George's Street was deemed too colonial. The mile of pavement between is the spine of Limerick: Georgian brick, contemporary glass, banks where the old houses used to be, a coffee shop named for what was here before.

Image: Roland Czaczyk FreeBird 03:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC) | Public domain

O'Connell Street, Limerick: Pery's Grid

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roland Czaczyk (FreeBird 19:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)), Public domain. In 1765, Edmund Sexton Pery commissioned an engineer named Davis Ducart to lay out a new town south of medieval Limerick. Ducart drew a grid - rare in Ireland, rarer still in a city this old - and the centerpiece was a broad thoroughfare running northeast to southwest, parallel t...

Image: Roland Czaczyk (FreeBird 19:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)) | Public domain

O'Connell Street, Limerick: Todd's Fire

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 25 August 1959, smoke began drifting from the William Street side of Todd's department store at eleven in the morning. By 12:30 the entire city block was a blazing inferno. Todd's was Limerick's largest and best-known store, occupying a hulk of building that fronted onto O'Con...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0

O'Connell Street, Limerick: Civil War on the Pavement

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. In July 1922, the Irish Civil War came to O'Connell Street. Anti-Treaty forces held four military barracks and most of the city. Free State soldiers held Cruises Hotel on O'Connell Street, along with the Customs House, the Jail, and the Courthouse - a thin perimeter of stronghold...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0

O'Connell Street, Limerick: Revitalisation

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. In November 2021 the diggers arrived for what was meant to be a ten-month rebuild - wider footpaths, new street furniture, cycle lanes, a bus priority lane, on-street parking moved off to side streets. The original deadline was September 2022. Then it slipped to November 2022. Th...

Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0