Daly's had its origins in a Chocolate House, established in about 1750 at numbers 1–3 Dame Street, Dublin, later described as "the only society, in the nature of club, then existing in the Irish metropolis".

In the 1760s, a group of gentlemen who met there constituted themselves as a club,[2] which was said to be named after Henry Grattan's friend Denis Daly (1748–1791).

[3] The new premises, designed by Francis Johnston, stretched from Anglesea Street to Foster Place and were opened with a grand dinner on 16 February 1791.

With marble chimneypieces, white and gold chairs and sofas covered with aurora silk, the new clubhouse was superbly furnished.

In Charles O'Malley, Lever gives an impression of the impact of the Club's closure: To describe the consternation the intelligence caused on every side is impossible; nothing in history equals it – except, perhaps, the entrance of the French army into Moscow, deserted and forsaken by its former inhabitants.

Flood with "his broken beak," and Mr. Curran, and those brilliant but guerilla debaters, whose encounters both of wit and logic make our modern parliamentary contests sound tame and languid.

The Eastern wing of the clubhouse at 1 College Green was replaced in 1867 with the offices of the Liverpool and London Globe Insurance Company to a design by Thomas Newenham Deane.