"Elvery's Elephant house" refers to John W. Elvery and Co., a
sporting goods and rubber products merchant. The company also
had stores on Nassau Street and in Cork and London, but the
one on Sackville Street was called the Elephant House because
a large elephant stood over its main entrance.
In Hades the funeral cortège passes by this
establishment on its way up Sackville (now O'Connell)
Street. In the late afternoon, Blazes Boylan's
jaunting car retraces part
of the course of the carriage that Bloom's fourwheeler took in
the late morning, as he travels north from the quays to
Bloom's house on Eccles
Street. Sirens notes Boylan's passage by some
of the same landmarks, including Sir John Gray's statue, the Elephant
house, Nelson's pillar,
Father Mathew's statue,
and the Rotunda.
Elvery's was located at 46-47 Sackville Street Lower, at the
corner of Prince's Street. I have not yet located any
photographs of the building ca. 1904 or earlier, which is
unfortunate because the establishment stood less than a block
south of the General Post Office and was badly damaged in the
1916 Easter Rising. The site from which the photograph at
right is taken also features a photo of a cricket bat from the
Elvery's display windows, now held in the National Museum of
Ireland. It has a .303 shell lodged in the hitting face. That
caliber was used in British troops' Lewis machine guns and
their Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifles. For more information
see thecricketbatthatdiedforireland.com. The photograph
displayed here comes from about 1950, but there are others
dating to ca. 1920, showing the store soon after its 1917
rebuild.
Elvery's was the oldest sporting goods store in Ireland. It
advertised an assortment of "waterproofing" services,
reflecting its capacity as a rubber merchant. It is still in
business today, but not on O'Connell Street. The main store
(still proudly displaying the elephant) is on Suffolk Street,
and there are several branch establishments throughout the
city. The building on O'Connell Street now houses a
Supermac's, shown in the photograph at right. The plinth that
held the elephant remains, sans elephant.
