The Dublin City Sessions House, which was designed in the neoclassical style and built in ashlar stone, was completed in 1797, on part of the "Little Green", which had been owned by St. Mary's Abbey before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and was later used as a graveyard.

[3] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage facing Smithfield; the central section featured a large hexastyle portico with Doric order columns supporting an entablature and a modillioned pediment.

[8] Green Street Courthouse was the venue of trials of noted Irish republican rebels, including Robert Emmet in 1803,[9] John Mitchel in 1848,[10] and Fenian leaders later.

[12] The Special Criminal Court (SCC), for terrorism and organised crime, was revived in 1972 in response to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and thereafter sat in Green Street.

People convicted there include republicans Martin McGuinness in 1973, Colm Murphy in 2001, and Michael McKevitt in 2009; anarchists Marie and Noel Murray in 1976; and gangster John Gilligan in 2001.