This was developed by the Dominick family in the 1750s and for a time was very fashionable with some fine house being developed. The street went into terminal decline after the Act of Union and most of the houses had become slums before Dublin Corporation flats replaced them. William Rowan Hamilton (1805-65), the mathematician and inventor of quaternions was born in No.36, while the writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73) was born at No.45, and Arthur Griffith (1871-1922) was born in No.4.