City Architect Horace T. O’Rourke volumes donated to Dublin City Library and Archive

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Published on 17th June 2025

A picture of H.T. O’Rourke.

Recently Dublin City Archives acquired two volumes that had belonged to Dublin City Architect Horace Tennyson O’Rourke. His granddaughters Madeleine and Veronica Cleary visited the Reading Room in Pearse Street on 17th May to donate the volumes to Dublin City Archivist Lorraine McLoughlin. The books had been in the family for many years but both granddaughters and the wider family were keen to keep them safe and to make them available to researchers so their grandfather’s legacy can be more widely known.

H.T. O’Rourke was City Architect from 1922 until his retirement in 1945 and was responsible for many schemes and works in Dublin including the rebuilding of Upper O’Connell street after the devastation caused by the revolutionary period from 1916 – 1923. He oversaw the design and development of many social housing schemes around the city. He was also responsible for remodelling Charlemont House on Parnell Square, now the Hugh Lane Gallery.

As a proponent of town planning, O’Rourke chaired and prepared the Dublin Civic Survey report of 1925, intended to form the basis for a city plan. For a few years in the 1910s, O’Rourke and his family lived in a house called Lytllholme on the Cabra Road, designed by him. It still stands today and is at the entrance to the Phibsborough Luas stop in Dublin 7.

Of the two volumes donated by the Clearys, one of them is called Building Construction and is described by them as an “aide memoire” and consists of O’Rourke’s handwritten notes complete with beautiful pen and ink drawings. On occasion, he won awards for such drawings. His granddaughters believe he may have lectured in Bolton Street College and used these notes. The other volume, inscribed by O’Rourke and including an article by him, is a book called The Voice of Ireland. In his article “Dublin: Its past, present and future” he expands on his vision for the city.

The family’s hope to allow others to know about their grandfather’s work for the city and his legacy is sure to come to fruition with these two books. You can contact Dublin City Archives if you would like to see them in the Reading Room: [email protected]

You can read more about H. T. O’Rourke here:

Entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography:

O'Rourke, Horace Tennyson | Dictionary of Irish Biography

Entry in the Dictionary of Irish Architects:

Dictionary of Irish Architects