Overview
The CHQ Building was put up in 1820 without a single piece of wood in it. To make a tobacco and spirits warehouse fireproof, the Scottish engineer John Rennie hung a slate roof on a cast-iron frame over brick walls, and the result was the largest clear-span interior in pre-20th-century Dublin – more than 8,000 square metres under one roof, 155m by 55m. It’s free to walk in off Custom House Quay, and worth doing just to stand under that ironwork. The ticketed draw is downstairs: EPIC, the Irish emigration museum, in the old bonded wine vaults.
If you only have an hour here, spend it in EPIC. Outside the museum and the food hall, the building is more handsome thoroughfare than attraction – a place to eat, meet or pass through rather than tour at length.
The building
Known to dockers as the Tobacco Store, and on the port plans as Stack A, the warehouse kept tobacco, tea, grain and flour in compartments above ground and wine and spirit casks in nine vaults below. Half a vault was lost in 1884 when the quay was widened, leaving eight and a half of the original nine still running the length of the floor.
Its single great room made it the obvious venue for Dublin’s set-piece occasions. On 22 October 1856 it hosted the Great National Banquet for the Irish veterans of the Crimean War – some 3,600 soldiers sat down to dinner, with around a thousand other guests, and were addressed by the MP Isaac Butt. After the port modernised and the warehouse fell empty, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority restored the protected structure in the early 2000s. Neville Isdell, the Coca-Cola chairman who grew up in County Down, bought it with Mervyn Greene in late 2013 and turned the shell into what’s there now.
EPIC – the Irish emigration museum
EPIC fills the vaults with an interactive walk through the story of the ten million people who left Ireland, and the mark they made abroad – no artefacts as such, but galleries you move through and respond to. It has been voted Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction at the World Travel Awards three years running, the first attraction to manage the hat-trick. Allow around 90 minutes. On the same level, the Irish Family History Centre puts professional genealogists at the disposal of anyone trying to trace an Irish line.
The museum is open daily from 10am to 6.45pm, last admission 5pm, and closed 24–26 December – separate hours to the building above it. Book online and you’ll pay a little less than at the door.
Food and drink
The ground floor runs as a food hall: TOSS’D for noodles and salads, Upshoots for burritos and bowls, Seven Wonders for made-to-order healthy plates, The Bakehouse for Irish baking, and a Starbucks. The standout is Urban Brewing, a microbrewery pouring its own beer fresh from the tank alongside a list of more than 200 others, with tours if you want to see the kit.
Other tenants
Beyond the museum and the food, the building is home to Dogpatch Labs, one of Ireland’s leading startup hubs, and the FLYEfit gym, which runs free classes. The event spaces – the Galleria, the Annie Moore Room and Liffey Corner among them – take everything from 50-person gatherings to functions of up to 800.
Practical information
Getting there
CHQ sits on Custom House Quay beside George’s Dock, an 8-minute walk east along the Liffey from O’Connell Bridge and 5 minutes from Connolly Station. The LUAS Red Line stops at George’s Dock right outside; buses 14, 15 and 27 run to Amiens Street/Connolly nearby.
Parking
There’s pay-and-display on North Wall Quay, and the Park Rite IFSC car park is the handiest off-street option (it’s the one by the Hilton Garden Inn off Common Street). EPIC and Jeanie Johnston visitors can pre-book a parking special there – 3 hours for €6, seven days a week.
Admission
The building itself is free. EPIC charges (at the time of writing) €21 online or €23 on the door, with the online ticket including a free return visit within ten days. Pre-book for weekends and school holidays to skip the desk queue.
Nearby
You’re a two-minute walk from the Jeanie Johnston, the replica famine ship moored just upriver, and from the Famine Memorial figures on the quay – the natural pairing with EPIC for an afternoon on Ireland’s emigration story. The Abbey Theatre and the city centre are within a short walk west.