That is a pity, because No. 70 quietly preserves the ghost of an architectural type that once defined the city's skyline and has since almost entirely vanished from it. The steep roof with its ridge running perpendicular to the street, the large central chimney stack, and the traces of corner chimneys all point toward what historians of Irish vernacular architecture call a 'Dutch Billy', a tall, gabled urban house form that became fashionable in Dublin during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, associated with the influx of Dutch and Flemish craftsmen and merchants who followed William III's court connections to Ireland.

The building as it stands today is a mid-terrace, two-bay, four-storey brick house, roughly seven metres wide and eleven metres to the parapet, with a modern timber shopfront and a carriage arch surviving at ground level. The estimated date given for the structure is the mid-eighteenth century, but that dating sits in tension with the physical fabric. The reconstructed third floor and the roof geometry suggest something older beneath the surface, a building that was updated, altered, and brought forward in time while retaining the skeleton of an earlier form. The 'Dutch Billy' type was gradually superseded in Dublin by the flatter, more classically influenced Georgian terrace, and most examples were demolished or so thoroughly remodelled that the original profile disappeared entirely. No. 70 is unusual precisely because enough structural evidence survived the various rounds of alteration to make the earlier typology legible.

Thomas Street is a busy commercial thoroughfare, and No. 70 sits within an active streetscape rather than any kind of preserved quarter. The carriage arch at ground level is worth noting as you pass; such arches once allowed access to yards and stables behind urban plots, a reminder of the working, mercantile character the street has held for centuries. The upper floors and roofline are best observed from a slight distance, stepping back from the pavement if the traffic allows. There is no formal access to the interior, and the building functions as commercial premises at street level, but the exterior alone rewards a careful look upward at what the roofline is still quietly trying to tell you.