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ULSARA 50: a mystery villa on Pembroke Road

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Another from one of our members: a mystery villa from somewhere on Pembroke Road. It looks like it might have been on the south side of the road but does anyone know exactly where it stood?  Where on Pembroke Road? Look closely at the photograph and you can see that this swanky block with its pair of turreted slate roofs, set on top of big bay windows, was originally a much more ordinary house with a shallow hipped roof like lots of other villas in the area. Later on, it looks like someone who had done well for themselves wanted to make the house more impressive so the bay windows with decorated Gothic capitals and emphatic key stones were added  and the centre was built out with a heavy porch and double ramped steps up to the front door. You would feel good walking up to the front door of the house, if it was yours, and once it had been improved!  The plain stone quoins at the corners and the basement wall survive from the house before it got all these additions.
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ULSARA 50: Christ Church Leeson Park Boy Scouts

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One ULSARA resident has already responded to our request for old photos and stories to support our 50th birthday publication. Christ Church, Leeson Park's Boy Scout Troop outside the south porch of the church Baden Powell founded the Scouting movement in 1908 and to judge from the dress of these young Dubliners, or indeed and that of the Church of Ireland Rector - what a wonderful flat hat -  this picture must have been taken  before the 1st World War got going.  A troop of 35 boy with their Scout Master (I think he is the self-confident chap with his hands on the top of his stick) and the rector suggests both the size of the congregation at that time and the enthusiasm that Scouting evoked in its early years.  The staff held by each scout was a bit of kit that had been dispensed with when our member was a cub and then a scout in the later 1940s.  Today the congregation of the church is merged with St. Bartholomew's Clyde Road and this building, leased from the Chu
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ULSARA 50: Planned Publication

ULSARA’s 50th Birthday is in 2018, and our thoughts are turning to plans for marking this milestone.  It was in 1968 that Carmencita Hederman and several other concerned local residents established the association as a pressure group to protect the residential character of the neighbourhood from commercial development and the conversion of family homes to offices. The result is that fifty years on we have a generally pleasant and well-protected area. Not all battles ended in victory, but the overall result its there for all to see. Preparations are already underway to celebrate the occasion.  
We plan a publication on the architecture of the area, based on the main “estate” developments – Darley, Molyneux, Pembroke etc – and a garden party for members on Bloomsday. Those with longer memories recall epic battles, on Leeson Park in the 1980s for instance, and more recently with Dartmouth Square and the oral hearing on the planning appeal against certain developments in the Ballsbr
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Chairman’s Message Spring 2017

From the ULSARA 2017 Newsletter and  www.ulsara.ie It is hard to believe that ULSARA will be celebrating its 50th Anniversary in 2018. We hope to mark this milestone in a number of ways, including a publication on the development of the various 'estates' in our area. Our founders perceived a threat to the residential character of the ULSARA quarter if the commercial centre of the city was allowed to encroach. Whatever the problems we now face from development, they pale when compared to the ignorance and hostility faced by our founders. Their foresight has allowed us to continue to maintain and enjoy this beautiful area, containing a large number of houses that are of architectural importance, within easy reach of the city. We feel an obligation to help to perserve the Georgian and Victorian heritage of the city and do our best to meet it. ULSARA’s activities rely on the annual membership fees. Thus the support of existing and new members is essential  for our future. The a
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Dublin and the Bolsheviks and Dr Kathleen Lynn

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From the ULSARA 2017 Newsletter and www.ulsara.ie Following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, representatives from Ireland and Russia met in New York, where the Irish delegation agreed to advance a loan of $20,000 to the new Soviet government. The collateral for this transaction was a cache of confiscated tsarist jewels which was brought to Ireland and hidden in the Dublin family home of Harry Boland during the Civil War. In 1949, the treasures were returned to the Soviet Union. Apart from such high-level dealings, there were other early links between Ireland and the Bolsheviks. While living in New York, the Irish poet Padraic Colum met the Russian revolutionary, Platon Lebedev, who is said to have helped Colum travel to Ireland at the time of the Easter Rising. Using the pseudonym Kerzhenets, Lebedev published numerous works about Ireland in Russian, including ‘Ireland in the Fight for Independence’ (1936). On a more literary note, ‘The Gadfly’ a revolutionary tale written by Co
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AGM 2017 5th April

Please join us at our AGM on Weds 5 April 2017 at 7.30 pm at Litton Hall, Wesley House, Leeson Park. Litton Hall is just south of the large church on the corner of Dartmouth Road and Upper Leeson Street We urge you to attend, to meet your neighbours and the committee, and discuss local issues. GUEST SPEAKERS  20  years after he last spoke at our AGM!, Frank McDonald, author, columnist and former Environment Editor of The Irish Times will speak on 'The Future of Dublin'. and, Michael Noonan, Senior Executive Parks Superintendent, Dublin City Council City Council will talk about the Council's Tree Strategy.
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Embassy Residences vs Embassy Offices

The Upper Leeson St Area Residents Association was founded over 40 years ago with the aim of preserving the residential nature of the neighbourhood at a time when office use was beginning to dominate our area and houses were being converted to commercial usage. Great efforts were made by the Association to reverse this trend and fortunately met with much success as can be seen by the numbers of families who have moved back into the area in recent years. We welcome embassy residences in our area but are increasingly alarmed by the trend for embassy offices moving into the area at the expense of residential amenities. Embassy offices are offices. They bring with them all the negative connotations of increased traffic, conversion of gardens into parking areas, signage, flagpoles, security kiosks as well as the additional problem of demonstrations and the potential risk of terrorism to our neighbourhood. In addition the privilege of diplomatic immunity enjoyed by embassies can lead to
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