Home ⋅ Published Books ⋅ Flats and Cottages: Herbert Simms and the Housing of Dublin’s Working Class 1932–1948

Flats and Cottages: Herbert Simms and the Housing of Dublin’s Working Class 1932–1948
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By: Eoin O Broin
Publisher: Merrion Press
Published: November 2025
Pages: 224
Categories: Humanities, Non-Fiction
Language: English
Available as: Hardback
On sale at:
ISBN-13: 9781785375736

A city gripped by an ever-worsening housing crisis. An expensive and insecure private rental sector. Rogue landlords running overcrowded and poorly maintained flats. Central and local government struggling to keep up with population growth and ever-rising housing need. This is not Dublin in 2025 but in 1932, the year Herbert Simms was appointed the capital’s first dedicated housing architect. Over the next sixteen years, he spearheaded one of the most ambitious public housing programmes in the history of the state, delivering 17,000 flats and cottages in the inner-city and emerging suburbs. Clearing some of Dublin’s worst tenements, Simms and his team gave modern homes to generations of working-class Dubliners, transforming not only their lives but the urban fabric of the city. In this visually striking book, Eoin Ó Broin and Mal McCann utilise prose, urban photography, interviews and portraits to tell the story of Herbert Simms’ work during these tumultuous years and give voice to the history and experiences of today’s residents of his buildings. Flats and Cottages also examines the lessons that can be applied to our own contemporary housing crisis from Herbert Simms’ trailblazing career.

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