That building, Newtown Lodge, is gone now, demolished in 1835, and the ground it once occupied has long since been absorbed into the landscape of the Zoological Society. What lingers is the record of a place that quietly shaped the domestic and administrative life of one of Europe's great urban parks during its earliest years.

The lodge was built by Sir Henry Brouncker, who held the position of Ranger of Phoenix Park from 1672. The Ranger was the officer responsible for managing the park and its deer herds, a role that carried considerable prestige in Restoration-era Ireland. Brouncker erected his house on that part of Oxmantown Hill which had been added to the Newtown lands, positioning it so that it overlooked a pond. He named it Newtown Lodge. The historian C. Litton Falkiner, writing in 1904, noted that it was the first official residence built within the Park, the sole earlier exception being Phoenix House, erected by a man named Fisher. Newtown Lodge held that distinction as the principal official dwelling until around 1760, after which it was given over to the deer keepers who worked the park. It remained in that capacity until 1835, when the land surrounding it was granted to the Zoological Society and the building itself was pulled down. For much of its later life, locals had come to know it simply as the Ivy House.

There is nothing to see on the site today in the sense of standing fabric or visible remains. The interest here is largely one of historical layering: the area now associated with public leisure and zoological display was once home to a 17th-century brick residence that predates almost every other structure associated with the park's administration. Visitors to Phoenix Park who find themselves near the zoo's perimeter might pause to consider that the ground underfoot was once part of a walled enclosure surrounding a house that, for roughly a century and a half, was where the park's keepers lived and worked.