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Nelson's Pillar was a controversial large granite pillar topped by a statue of Horatio, Lord Nelson , located in the centre of O'Connell Street in Dublin . It was erected in 1808 upon the instructions of the British Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Richmond, to honour Admiral Lord Nelson and the Battle Of Trafalgar , three years after his death, and before the similar Nelson's Column was erected in London in 1849 . The pillar became both a tram terminus and a common meeting place for Dubliners and offered the city's best public viewing platform, reached by spiral stairway inside the column. It was destroyed in 1966 . DESCRIPTION The pillar was a Doric column that rose 121 ft (36.8 m) from the ground and was topped by a 13 ft (3.9 m) tall statue in Portland stone by Cork sculptor Thomas Kirk, RHA (1781-1845), giving it a total height of 134 ft (40.8 m) – some 20 metres shorter than the more famous Nelson's Column in London. It was designed by Francis Johnson (1760-1829), the architect who built the General Post Office (to the left of the picture opposite). Johnson and later architects laid out Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) so that the buildings, the GPO and the Pillar were in scale to the size and length of the street and to each other. The original entrance to the pillar was underground but G. P. Baxter designed a porch in 1894 which was added to allow direct access from the street. DESTRUCTION OF THE PILLAR |
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