Pearse Square
Overview
Pearse Square is a small Victorian garden square in Dublin 2, set among 48 terraced houses just off Pearse Street, between Trinity College and Grand Canal Dock. It was laid out in 1838 as Queen's Square, opened to the public as a park in 1889, and was restored by Dublin City Council in the 1990s to the original design shown on an 1838 Ordnance Survey map.
Today it is a quiet, free-to-enter green with a sunken cruciform path of Wicklow granite, restored Victorian benches and, at its centre, Harmony, a 3.5-metre bronze sculpture by Sandra Bell. The park is wheelchair accessible and makes an easy stop on a walk between the city centre and the docklands.
History of Pearse Square
The square owes its origins to the builder and carpenter Peter Martin, who began developing it as a residential square in 1838. It was named Queen's Square after the newly crowned Queen Victoria, and its 48 two-storey-over-basement houses were built between 1838 and 1855. The street it opens off was then Great Brunswick Street.
The central garden stayed in private hands until the late 1880s, when Dublin Corporation bought it for £200, added a bandstand and opened it to the public as a Victorian pleasure garden on 23 April 1889. With several theatres close by, the square was a popular address for actors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Great Brunswick Street was renamed Pearse Street in the 1920s after Patrick and Willie Pearse, executed for their part in the 1916 Rising, who were born at number 27, now the Pearse Centre. The square followed in 1926, renamed in honour of Patrick Pearse.
A Victorian layout, restored
In the 1940s the park was remodelled with a playground and a tarmac sports area. Between 1996 and 1998 Dublin City Council restored it to its first design, taken from an 1838 Ordnance Survey map: a cruciform parterre whose paths meet at a circular centre, with cast-iron railings and double gates hung on fluted pink granite piers. The original cast-iron benches, with their fruit and rabbit motifs, were repaired, and the square reopened on 2 July 1998.
The new centrepiece is Harmony (1998), a semi-abstract bronze sculpture by Sandra Bell that stands 3.5 metres high where the paths meet. The park covers about half a hectare.
Opening hours
Pearse Square is a Dublin City Council park and opens daily at 10am. Closing time follows the daylight through the year:
- January: 10am to 5pm
- February: 10am to 5.30pm
- March: 10am to 6.30pm, then 7.30pm once the clocks go forward
- April: 10am to 8.30pm
- May: 10am to 9.30pm
- June and July: 10am to 10pm
- August: 10am to 9.30pm
- September: 10am to 8.30pm
- October: 10am to 7.30pm, then 6.30pm once the clocks go back
- November: 10am to 5.30pm
- December: 10am to 5pm
Gates may begin closing up to half an hour before these times. Entry is free.
Getting there
The square sits just off Pearse Street, towards its eastern end. Pearse and Grand Canal Dock DART stations are both a short walk away, and Pearse Street is served by several Dublin Bus routes from the city centre.
Nearby, Pearse Street Library houses Dublin City Library and Archive, and Merrion Square Park, Dublin's best-known Georgian square, is about 15 minutes' walk west.
Upcoming events at Pearse Square
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