Driving up Howth Road from Fairview Park, you meet, as you hit Raheny, examples of the 1930s buildings boom laid out on both sides of the road, heralding a time when Dublin stretched beyond its city boundaries.
Dotted among pitched-roof pared-back Edwardian style houses (typical of the trend at the time for machine-age aesthetic), there are braver buildings that fully embraced the international style.
These include a row of geometric white boxy homes on the right, rare enough examples of Irish modernism, and then, on the left, there’s a glorious row of Art Deco houses, gleaming white (except one in pale grey) with thin curved bays, lined up like ocean liners.
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This 188sq m (1,808sq ft) three-bedroom extended house at number 646 is one of them. The current owners have been here for more than 30 years and have extended to the rear and into the side garage, to create a bright flowing ground floor. Glass doors, pale tiled floors, rooflights, white walls and generous horizontal windows, typical of this style, add to the brightness.
To the right of the front door is the sitting room, formerly two rooms, which have been knocked into one. This runs through double doors (where the house used to end) to the kitchen extension with living/ dining area and large kitchen with Shaker-style beech units. Off the kitchen is a utility room.
Roof lights and glass double doors to the rear garden keep the natural light pouring through. The 21-metre garden is neatly landscaped and has a pretty green shed, clad in climbers, at the back.
In the former garage there is a study with shower room beside it – offering potential as a fourth bedroom.
Heading upstairs – a steel- rope banister references the nautical theme – the bedrooms and bathrooms are located around a central hall. There are two bedrooms to the front, overlooking the front garden (with drive, tree and lawn) and one to the rear, overlooking the back garden. One of the front bedrooms has the neat bay window: this was an era of machinery and industry with buildings taking on the curvaceous forms of aircraft and boats.
There is also a bathroom on this level – to the rear – continuing the seafaring theme of the home’s exterior, with its tongue-and-grooved blue timber panelling.
The house is for sale for €695,000 through Gunne (Fairview) and has a BER of D2.
