After the Act of Union in 1801, middle-class professionals abandoned Georgian mansions on the northside, and moved to places with smaller, more manageable houses in new southside suburbs such as Rathmines and Ranelagh.

As Susan Roundtree notes: “The first suburban boom accelerated during subsequent generations and established the pattern of city centre migration to the suburbs.”[1] According to a January 2015 article in the English Daily Telegraph, Mount Pleasant in London, which presumably inspired the usage in Dublin, "was the tongue-in-cheek name for the medieval dumping ground of household refuse, ashes, and other trash, along the banks of the woefully polluted Fleet River in Clerkenwell (before the river was buried underground).

On the first plot of land – on the south side of what is now the square – Dolan built eight houses (Nos 36–43).

His son, Henry Joseph Dolan, became President of Mount Pleasant Lawn Tennis Club in the centre of the square, when it was established in 1893.

[5][6] Of the 387 people who lived on the square that year, there were 149 Catholics, 177 Church of Ireland, 20 Presbyterian, 10 Methodist and 7 Baptists.

There is something elegant, if slightly bashful, about the whole effect: drooping trees, little traffic, gentle plop of tennis balls.

[1] At one point it seemed inevitable that the thin sliver of land would be given over to a garage, but a well-orchestrated outcry ensured its survival as a public amenity.

His son, Terence T. Dolan, a solicitor, was one of the key motivators in establishing the Rathmines Township in 1847 and was one of its first commissioners.

Ivory designed a number of significant surviving buildings in the city including the Blue Coat School (now the Law Society Headquarters in Blackhall Place) and Newcomen Bank in Castle Street (now the Rates Office).

From its source near Kimmage Manor it flows through Rathmines and Ranelagh and joins the River Dodder below Ballsbridge.

This RIAI Gold Medal award-winning school was designed by O'Donnell & Tuomey Architects and opened in 1998 (subsequently extended).

The Hill Pub occupies a prominent position at the south-east corner of Mount Pleasant Square.

Membership stands at around 1,000 with about 700 tennis members and the rest more or less equally divided between squash and badminton.

The cover of John McGahern's novel, The Pornographer, features the curved north terrace of Mount Pleasant Square.