When the City of Dublin Electricity Works founded the Pigeon House Power Station in 1903, an industrial unit on the Poolbeg peninsula in Ringsend, they couldn’t have imagined how deeply seated in the hearts of famously sceptical Dubliners the plant would become. But when the candy striped Poolbeg Towers were built in 1969 and 1977 respectively they fast became an indelible landmark on the city’s coastline, remarkable for their height at 207 metres tall in a city that favours low rise buildings. More unlikely still, it seemed, that these towers, industrial and purely functional, specifically designed to limit atmospheric pollution, would become quite so iconic and offer quite so much happiness to homesick Dubliners at the mere sight of them. For illustrator Karen Harte, they represent all of the ideas and emotions that we associate with ‘home’.
“When I was really young my mam would point at the red and white chimneys and say, ‘that’s where your daddy works’ and so they immediately became a reassuring landmark. He worked as a metal fabricator on ships in the dry docks in the Alexander Basin so looking at the Poolbeg Towers from the Northside of the city, I guess he was off in that general direction, but they provided a sense of comfort none the less”. Now she says, they accompany her wherever she goes in the city, “going for a walk on the seafront in Clontarf, walking up the Dublin mountains, outside work on Grand Canal Dock – they follow me around. They are the first thing I see when I fly in to Dublin and the last thing I see when I fly out, always catching a glimpse of them from the aeroplane window. London has Big Ben, Paris has the Eiffel Tower and we have these redundant chimneys”, relics of a dirty old town.
Now decommissioned, the towers remain amongst the tallest structures in the state. The oil burning plant that produced the vapour emitted by the chimneys was finally closed in 2010 and the ESB announced that they planned to demolish the chimneys, pointing to their expensive upkeep in the long term. Panic and the sound of sentimental hearts breaking spread rapidly through out the city as Dubliners derided and debated the icons they were given, most notably the Spire, in favour of the somewhat unlovable icons they so desperately loved. Dublin City Councillor Dermot Lacey sought to have the towers permanently preserved as part of Dublin’s cultural heritage by having them listed in the Record of Protected Structures, a move that was rejected by Dublin City Council but the ESB have now ensured that the will remain on site following the public outcry.
For Karen, “Dublin’s history of tearing down or building over its historical sites can be depressing so this is a bit of a victory. Almost every contemporary Irish based illustrator has incorporated them in to their work. I use them regularly in images I create of the city. I even bought some Poolbeg laser cut tree decorations for Christmas. There’s been talk of making a ‘sky bridge’ between the two chimneys or even lighting them up like the Eiffel Tower, I don’t mind what they do as long as the structure remains intact, following me around.” To think of all the elegant landmarks there are knocking around the city, yet it’s this one, built to supply the city with electricity, two spikes in our horseshoe bay, that represents us the best.
Karen Harte is a graphic designer and illustrator from Dublin. Her personal illustration work hinges around humour, popular culture and feminism. In 2016 she created her first comic about the life of Delia Derbyshire and in 2017 created the Mine Anthology, a collection of work from comic artists and illustrators, in support of the Repeal the 8th movement. A recent addition to the Blind Elephant illustration collective, she is looking forward to lots of future collaboration and exciting projects.
Words: Jeanette Farrell
