The chq BuildingCustom House Quay · Dublin 1
The chq Building lit up at night on Custom House Quay
Custom House Quay · Dublin Docklands · Est. 1820

Two centuries of brick, iron and good company

A grade one listed Georgian warehouse on the River Liffey, now home to EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, Dogpatch Labs, great food and drink, and one of Dublin's most striking event spaces.

1820Built as the Tobacco Store, later Stack A
8,000m²Largest pre-20th-century clear floor in Dublin
155 × 55mGeorgian brick around a cast-iron frame
9Original stone and brick vaults below
3,000Soldiers feasted here at the 1856 Crimean War Banquet
Engraving of the Crimean War Banquet held in Stack A in 1856
History

Designed by John Rennie. Fireproof by design.

Built in 1820 to store tobacco, tea and spirits, Stack A was made entirely without wood so it could never burn. In 1856 it hosted a banquet for 3,000 soldiers returning from the Crimea — 250 hams, 200 turkeys, a ton and a half of plum pudding and 8,500 quart bottles of port.

Restored in the early 2000s with a glass façade by Peter Rice, it's possibly the finest example of nineteenth-century industrial architecture in Dublin.

Read the history