Finally! A write-up in this series that isn't a club. Despite that, this hotel was a core part of the cities nightlife, in it's past, which is one of the more storied pasts of a suburban hotel.
Built as the Intercontinental Hotel in 1962/3, for the "Irish and Intercontinental Hotels" joint venture between Aer Rianta and Pan Am Airlines; the hotel was built on the original site of the Trinity College Botanical Gardens. Much less well known than the main Botanical Gardens in Glasnevin, these moved out to Dartry when the old site was sold, and are still open to this day.
The Intercontinental brand didn't have as much longevity in Ballsbridge, at least the first time around - it has returned in recent years on what was originally the Four Seasons a good distance further out of the city. The hotel was placed for sale in Summer 1972.
In January 1973, the premises became the main Jurys Hotel after the closure of their city centre branch, sited on Dame Street where the Central Bank building was built.
As Jurys, the hotel became know for its cabaret sessions - famed enough to have had a Smithsonian recording in the late 70s, its in-house barbers and its open-23-hours (the one hour off to clear people out and clean the place up, at least unofficially) coffee dock cafe.
The hotel was sold (for €260m!) to developer Sean Dunne in 2005, and closed in 2007 for redevelopment, with the interior stripped out and auctioned off.
However, his redevelopment plans faltered, and the hotel was reopened in 2009, and operated as part of his accidentally assembled "D4 Hotels" chain, as the "D4 Inn". This included, for a time, a discount supermarket in the hotel - "D4 Stores", operated by his then wife Gayle.
Ownership of the hotel passed on, through receivership, to Chartered Land who had it operated by Dalata on a management contract as the Ballsbridge Hotel in its latter years, and it was during these that I finally ticked it off the list, with a few visits for various reasons.
The hotel closed during the pandemic; with the site now going to be the new US Embassy - proof that some hotels do actually close, when it seems that they're being built on every other available site in the city.
