
Ely Place, Dublin
Foremost in his writings, therefore first, Ely Place—a short street ending in a cul-de-sac, just up from Merrion Square and the National Gallery, south of the Liffey in Dublin. The houses are in the Georgian style, dark brick, tall and reserved. In the centre of the row, looking down Hume Street is Ely House. Bram Stoker's brother Dr. Thornley Stoker lived there. Oliver St. John Gogarty came to live across the street, on part of the site now occupied by the Royal Hibernian Academy.
At the cul-de-sac end there is a terrace of five houses, sometimes called Smith’s Buildings, dated 1820, modest in size and uniform in design—long narrow windows of the later 18th century. Until quite recently high iron gates and railings divided the terrace from the abutting street. No.4, the second house from the end, was George Moore’s home during his ten years’ residence in Dublin.
The front windows faced west and then overlooked, opposite, a garden railed in by iron palings, covering the length of the terrace. Moore rented the garden, where he hosted Douglas Hyde's play The Tinker and the Fairy. Here in spring the apple trees, thorn, laburnum, and lilac made a profusion of blossom. There was a little slum at the back of the house, and from the drawing-room level on the second floor, there was an oblique view into the high-walled enclosure of a convent. Rent was £100 a year and a few pounds extra for the garden with the largest apple tree in Ireland. Moore had the door painted a controversially nationalist green.