Dunleary, a small creek, was to change beyond recognition when the new harbour was built 1817-1842. Kingstown Harbour became the centre for yachting, a sport that was spreading around the Irish coast in the nineteenth century. A newspaper article from 1898 described how during yachting season, “Kingstown is conceded to be the most charming and prosperous suburban place in Ireland”: Throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, Kingstown was the chosen place of arrival and departure for royal visits. These royal visits attracted enormous public interest with their aura of pageantry and spectacle. Queen Victoria visited Kingstown on no less than four occasions in 1849, 1853, 1861 and 1900.

The Pavilion & Gardens Kingstown Ltd. was officially opened on 22 June 1903. From the time of its construction, the Pavilion Theatre was advertised as providing “first class entertainments” in Kingstown. It housed a selection of rooms including tearooms, a smoking room, ladies’ and gentlemen’s reading rooms. In addition, there were promenades, a roof top garden, a shooting gallery and a skating rink. The ladies and gentlemen of Kingstown and Dublin could meet and enjoy a drink, a concert, dance, a smoke, a game of billiards in surroundings befitting their place in society. Concerts were held in the early afternoon and Viennese balls in the evenings. This grand hall was capable of holding 1,000 seats. Early events included a 1904 Viennese evening of music and fireworks. It was a lavish event and approximately 4,000 attended. On 31 August 1908, there was a special performance from the famous Irish tenor John McCormack.

The Royal Marine Hotel opened its doors in 1865. It quickly became a stopping-off point on the journey to and from London, and also helped to establish Kingstown as a major holiday centre. The luxurious hotel attracted many aristocratic and royal guests. In 1900, when Queen Victoria visited Ireland, she apparently enjoyed a 16-course breakfast in the hotel shortly after arriving in Kingstown. The Royal Marine Hotel has also hosted many Heads of State, Kings, Queens and celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Laurel & Hardy and Charlie Chaplin, to name a few. The Irish freedom fighter Michael Collins is believed to have hidden out in Room 210 with his partner Kitty Kiernan.

The Dublin Riviera and the former seafront hotels on Marine Terrace and Victoria Terrace

In the 1990s, both the Carney Arms and the Carlisle became the Kingston Hotel at numbers 9-12 Haddington terrace. In 2015, the team at Oliveto’s restaurant took over the hotel and beautifully restored and refurbished the four Victorian townhouses. They renamed the hotel Haddington House.

In 1843, John Crosthwaite built baths in the corner of Scotsman’s Bay. These were rebuilt in 1864 at a cost of £4,000. Originally known as the Royal Victorian Baths, Kingstown Urban District Council bought the baths in the late 1890s. Between 1905 and 1908, the baths were moved to a site nearby and extensively remodelled to the designs of W Kaye Parry (same architect as Pavilion) at a cost of £10,200. This is when they became known as Kingstown Baths, and later Dún Laoghaire Baths In the late 1920s lots of improvements to the baths and Dún Laoghaire was advertised as a centre for “luxurious sea bathing”, “the fines and best equipped baths in all Ireland”. Ladies, Gentlemen and Children’s pool. Slipper baths took place in a roll-top bathtub which had one higher end that curved up like the end of a slipper, hence the name. Needle baths directed jets of water around the torso. Also heated seaweed baths, saltwater baths. These baths were examples of luxurious bathing at its finest.