The name itself belongs to a type once common in British and Irish urban geography, applied to rows of dilapidated or low-status housing, and its presence in south Dublin hints at layers of the city that have since been absorbed, renamed, or simply forgotten.

The sole documentary trace here comes from Maurice Craig's 1969 survey of Dublin's architectural history, which notes a building site at Rotten Row on page 75. Craig was one of the foremost chroniclers of Irish architecture in the twentieth century, and his references, even passing ones, tend to point toward something worth accounting for. The mention is brief, almost incidental, which is itself telling. A building site recorded in that context suggests activity during a period of urban development or redevelopment in the south city, though the specific nature of the structure, its date of construction, and its eventual fate are not elaborated upon in that source.

For anyone interested in tracing this corner of Dublin's past, the challenge is that Rotten Row as a named street or locality is no longer easy to identify on the ground. Researching it would likely involve cross-referencing Craig's work with historical Ordnance Survey maps of Dublin, particularly the mid to late nineteenth century editions held at institutions such as the National Library of Ireland. The south city area underwent considerable change across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with older street patterns frequently altered or erased. What the site became, whether residential, commercial, or institutional, remains an open question that local history collections or the Irish Architectural Archive might help to answer.