Renovated Victorian red brick just a stone’s throw from Croke Park

589 North Circular Road, Dublin 1 €550,000

When 27-year-old Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in April 1961, he electrified the world with a few short but long-remembered words. “I see Earth,” he announced as he gazed out the window of his spacecraft. “It is so beautiful.”

At an exhibition of his sculptural work at VISUAL Carlow in 2022, architect Tom de Paor named his acclaimed installation I See Earth, after the immortal quote from the original Rocketman.

The architect’s own eye for space is evident, for example, in this end terrace house at the intersection of Mountjoy Parade and North Circular Road.

For decades it was a classic corner shop with accommodation on the upper floor for “living above the shop”.

At first glance, that was all, but when de Paor got his hands on it in the early noughties, he imagined the building very differently.

He embarked on a major redesign that transformed the Victorian red brick into a 21st-century home. What was originally a two-story basement and corner shop is now something special.

When the current owners bought the house from de Paor in 2008, they couldn’t believe their luck.

From the entrance hall an open staircase leads below street level to an open plan kitchen/living/dining room with recessed lighting, Carrera marble flooring and floors opening onto a walled back courtyard.