Why Phibsborough

People ask why a hotel would open in Phibsborough rather than on the quays, and the honest answer is that we were looking for somewhere that already worked without us.

Phibsborough has a butcher, a hardware shop, three good pubs and a library. It has a canal towpath that carries commuters on bicycles at eight and swimmers in July. It has a football club owned by its own supporters, playing on a ground surrounded by terraced houses, and a matchday that spills out into every street around it.

And it has the tower. Fifty years of letters to the newspaper have called it a mistake, a carbuncle, a blight on a Victorian village. We think it is the most interesting building for a mile in any direction, and that the argument about it is itself part of what makes the place worth being in.

Those are not amenities we could build. They are the reason to be there at all. Our job is to add a good room, a good bed and a good ground floor, and otherwise to get out of the way.