Nostalgia: De Valera visits Cork to open new City Hall

CORK’S new City Hall was opened 87 years ago this month, and The Echo was there to report the big day.

“PRESIDENT DE VALERA IN THE SOUTH” reads the main headline on the Evening Echo of Tuesday, September 8, 1936, and the subheading is “Ceremonial Opening Of Cork’s New City Hall”.

The main story is headlined “AN IMPRESSIVE CIVIC RECEPTION” and begins: “PRESIDENT de Valera, accompanied by Mr Aiken, Minister for Defence, arrived in Cork today, for the purpose of formally opening the new City Hall.”

The previous city hall had been destroyed in the 1920 Burning of Cork, and de Valera, then President of the executive council, effectively the Taoiseach of the day, had laid the foundation stone for its replacement in 1932.

The cost of the new building would be paid by the British government, in a gesture of reconciliation.

“The President was met by the Lord Mayor (Ald French), members of the City Council and Harbour Board at the city boundary at Tivoli. A mounted guard of honour accompanied the party into the city,” continues the Evening Echo.

“Subsequently, the President, Mr Aiken, and a number of guests were entertained at luncheon by the Lord Mayor, after which a procession was formed to the City Hall, where the official opening ceremony took place.”

At the Lord Mayor’s luncheon in the Victoria Hotel on Patrick’s St, Dev, Aiken, and 130 fellow guests chose from a menu of hors d’oeuvre, turtle, grouse, turbot, and braised ham, washed down with sherry, vintage Moët-Chandon champagne and a selection of whiskeys.

Three toasts were offered at the lunch — ‘Éire’ by the Lord Mayor, ‘The City of Cork’ by TD William T Cosgrave, and ‘Our Visiting Guests’ by TD Hugo Flinn.

In the Concert Hall of the new City Hall, some 3,000 honoured guests gathered as Dev officially opened; “This noble building, raised in a spot made sacred by the devotion and the sacrifices of the great public men who laboured here, [which] cannot fail to be an inspiration to the young people of Cork”.

de Valera’s Leeside visit wasn’t all plain sailing, and the Evening Echo reports that one of the horses in the guard of honour slipped and threw its rider, while an eye-catching headline reads “WOMAN MAKES A SCENE”.

“WHILE President de Valera was delivering his address at the official opening of the Cork City Hall this afternoon, a young woman in the audience created a scene by attempting to address the gathering.”

When Dev had said that the murder of Lord Mayor Tomás Mac Curtain, and the death on hunger strike of his successor, Terence McSwiney, had united the Irish people as never before, the woman began to protest it was “an insult to the memory of the Lord Mayor”, the paper reported.

“She was quickly removed, vigorously protesting, by the Civic Guards.”

After de Valera’s speech, another woman began to protest, and she too was carried out by the guards.

The official opening of City Hall is covered in greater detail in the forthcoming book, First Citizen: Sean French, Cork’s Longest Serving Lord Mayor (November 2023), by Aodh Quinlivan and John Ger O’Riordan.