Seventy years ago the British burnt down much of Cork city-centre.  Cash’s, Roches, the Munster Arcade and the City hall all went up in smoke.

Just before the anniversary in 1990 I met an old man who had seen the fire as a child.  He recalled mournfully, “They said if they’d burnt down both sides of Patrick Street they’d have made it a beautiful street when they rebuilt it after.”

That set me thinking.  In the years since the city has changed, system-built hillside residential projects, an invasion of killer carparks.  Thunderous traffic.

Sketch of a city: Dense-packed shop-fronts in Patrick Street, crowds of long-haired teenage women clonking around in heavy built-up shoes; the palatial dome of Roches Stores, the upper storeys of Keanes the jewellers; a cityscape of limestone and sandstone, largely ignored by inhabitants uninterested in the Vitruvian elements of commodity, firmness and delight.

Jewtown has vanished, Toytown is doomed.  In Carey’s Lane you will find the neogothic church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, work of the younger Pugin, who in 1836 published a book called Contrasts, claiming the state of architecture shows the state of society.  In the Coal Quay I encountered an acquaintance.  “Have you got a job yet?” I enquired.  “Have I on me fuck!” he retorted.

On Pope’s Quay Saint Mary’s Church looks as if it ought to have a statue of Zeus inside.  The view up Barrack Street is a smoggy jumble of chimneys and slate roofs. Two Office of Public Works erections catch the eye: the Babylonian splendour of Garda headquarters in Anglesey Street and the People’s Palace, the edifice built to express a Renaissance ideal of citizenship at Hanover Street where the city’s young and able-bodied go under the compulsory human set-aside scheme.  Looking northward the dominant feature is the broken-backed church on the smoky skyline of Knocknaheeny.

Those who think of Cork as populated by Cha and Miah clones need only turn to the Quay Co-Op on Sullivan’s Quay, that home of all things alternative.

Whither Cork?  An industrial city that has run out of industry.  Schoolboys burst through the gates as if they thought they were commandos coming out of a base: “My-kill! My-kill!  Ya fuckin langa!”  Children are our future - but what is the future for the city, genteel or ruffian?

In search of answers I met Neil Hegarty, City Architect, in his office near City Hall.  He was guarded in his comments, notably tight-lipped on the politics of the situation. The 1% scheme for artists is one subject on which he becomes more enthusiastic.

“I was trained in the Fifties and Sixties and that was when ‘less is more’ and the modern movement.  I can’t ever remember really a discussion about integrating art.”  The acknowledged masters then were Mies van der Rohe, Le Courbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, with their linear function-dictates-form style.

Cork escaped relatively unscathed from its brush with Sixties brutalism though: the FAS building and the Opera House are the most prominent ugly oblongs in the city-centre.  Since then says Neil Hegarty everyone has learned flat roofs let in the rain.

Victorian Cork still stands out.  The great architecture dates from the nineteenth century.  “That’s when the city was doing well.  The Church helped by the merchant princes. Unless you have that sort of economic activity you won’t get great building.”  Asked about the Church taste in building he replies diplomatically: “Certainly the ones in the last century were [in good taste].  I like all the old churches in Cork.  Saint Finbarre’s is a world-class building.”

“Where we lag behind Europe is that I don’t see much interest in good design in Cork and we’re not building buildings that evoke civic pride.  There seems to be little appreciation that good design can have an economic benefit.”  Cost-constraints creep in everywhere.  “The city really hasn’t been doing well almost since the Forties.  I don’t want to name particularly buildings but we do have an Opera House somebody said looks like a multi-storey carpark… I do believe that some of the original designs for that were absolutely beautiful.”

The 1% scheme is a timely form of modern-day artistic patronage.  The schemes are run separately by the Corporation and the OPW [Office of Public Works].

The Corporation limit is £20,000 per scheme.  “We have plenty of 1% money, because if we’re spending £20 million on refurbishment, 1% of that is £200,000.  We’ve done ten 1% schemes, six are complete, four are in progress, the value of them has been about £100,000.”

The lifesize bull and drover sculpted by Kevin Holland at Madden’s Buildings in Blackpool commemorates the cattle market that was there before the terraces.  Russell Barrett’s mural incorporates the former grotto at Corporation Buildings off the Coal Quay.  Friedrike Lenzing worked on mosaics for the Bakers Road Flats and Liam Lavery on plaques for the houses in the Green Street development.

It’s too late for William Morris fantasies about working class life.  “we have consulted in nearly all cases with the local people and that’s essential if you’re to have the piece accepted.  It may not be very easy for the artist.  It may dilute what one would call ‘ART!!’ with capital letters and exclamation marks - but it’s good, the involvement between people and the artist.  We usually consult the chairperson of the local committee.”

James Scanlon’s colourful stained-glass in the Share Buildings at Grattan Street is one of the earliest and best-known 1% schemes in Cork.  The building was Neil Hegarty’s first as City Architect: “during the design process I became interested in art as part of buildings… I think I just thought stained glass provided art for the people inside during the day and for the public at night - also helped to keep the rain out.”  He downplays postmodern influence on the building in favour of Victorian.

The choice was between James Scanlon and Maud Cotter.  “I said if James gets this one I’m sure Maud will get one in the future.  And all the other 1% schemes have been done in a similar way.  Two artists might want to work on the one site, but nearly always we have another site available to accommodate whoever wants to do 1% work.”

“We found it difficult to get the scheme off the ground.  I think maybe artists are not very pushy in marketing their skills and looking for work.”  Artistic in-put during design is “the next stage”.  In 1992 Crawford College and Neil Hegarty secured the appointment of Helen Farrell to help advise and administer 1% schemes from the Cork Artists’ Collective in Dean Street.

In similar vein the Action Plan for the Historic Centre has set up shop in the house where Jack Lynch was born in the very shadow of the goldfish and campanile of Shandon Church.  The six-month study funded by the European Cities Programme covers Cork’s medieval heart: Shandon Street, North/South Main Street(s), Cornmarket, Grand Parade and Barrack Street.  Ann Bogan and a Planning Department team are working with British consultants Urban Initiative

Issues tackled include the “revitalisation” of the Bachelor’s Quay waterfronts, “resolution” of the Grattan Street Scheme, “rehabilitation” of the Coal Quay, access, e.g. up Widderling’s Lane from Pope’s Quay to the Firkin Crane and Urban Pilot Project money from the EC [European Community] for a demonstration project for upper floor refurbishment for ‘Living over the Shop’ in areas such as North Main Street.  They fret over the fate of buildings such as the quaint wreck of Saint Peter’s Church in North Main Street, the semi-derelict terrace of shops on Sheares Street, the city’s oldest, dating from 1720, and Christ Church on South Main Street, one of Cork’s most historic, possible future site for the Triskel Arts Centre.

As I walked down by Kinlay House I observed a gentleman raising a litre bottle of cider to his lips through the broken ground-floor windows of the North Infirmary.

Cork is not a sprawl, a megalopolis, an Arndale Centre surrounded by flyovers - yet.  Where would you put the black ghetto?  The gap-toothed look is disappearing, tumbledown buildings at the top of Patrick Street replaced by the brick bulk of Merchant’s Quay, floating on the waters as massively as the Peter-Paul Fortress in Leningrad harbour.  Infilling is at work at the bottom of Shandon Street and in Crosses Green.  Housing Protection Areas and fights like that of the people of the Middle Parish have prevented residents being priced out of the inner city.  Now the biggest task is to do something to reach the necrotic areas of the Northside.

The Festival City, the southern capital, the City Hall quite grand enough to be a seat of regional government for the whole of Munster.  Cork is unique in somehow combining the character of a small town and a great city.  Yet many people keep their civic pride for the sports field rather than caring for the city as a work of art.

When I asked  the Cork-born film-maker Louis Marcus to sum up Cork character a couple of years ago he said, “That’s a very difficult question and a very contentious one. There are so many characteristics of Cork people.  Sean O Faolain, a very famous Corkman, said, ‘All are cynics and the smilers are the worst,’” underlining the sentiment with a ghastly forced smile.  But is cynicism enough?

18th November 1993