The Gresham Hotel commission of 1926 represents one of the most ambitious and publicly visible architectural sculpture projects of Power’s career. Tasked with the decorative facade of the newly rebuilt hotel on O’Connell Street — Dublin’s principal thoroughfare, still bearing the scars of the 1916 Rising and the Civil War — Power produced an extraordinary programme of carved ornament.
The commission comprised: urns, a Coat of Arms, Ionic capitals, six panels of festoons of flowers, and two sphinxes flanking either side of the facade. Each element was carved in stone and required a different technical register — the sphinxes monumental and classical, the flower festoons delicate and almost botanical in their precision, the Coat of Arms heraldically exact.
The Gresham sits at the heart of a rebuilt Dublin, its facade a statement of civic confidence in the new Free State. That Power was chosen for this public-facing commission — visible to everyone who walked O’Connell Street — reflects both his technical reputation and his standing in the cultural life of the city.
Significance: One of the most prominent examples of Power’s architectural sculpture, visible daily on Dublin’s main street since 1926.
The sphinxes, festoons, and Coat of Arms remain in situ on the Gresham Hotel facade today.