To most people passing through today, it reads as a corridor of mid-20th century shopfronts and later infill, the kind of street that seems to have always looked roughly as it does now. But the street has an older grain, and early 18th century dwellings once defined its character in ways that the current built environment does little to suggest.

Maurice Craig, in his 1969 survey of Dublin's architectural history, notes the presence of early 18th century dwellings at Jervis Street, placing the street within the broader story of northside Dublin's development during that period. The north city was expanding rapidly in the early 1700s, as speculators and aldermen pushed the urban fabric outward from the old medieval core. Streets like Jervis Street, named after Sir Humphrey Jervis, the property developer and former Lord Mayor who laid out much of the area in the late 17th century, were among the first to be built up in a coherent, planned way on the north bank of the Liffey. The houses Craig refers to would have been typical of their moment, modest brick terraces in the vernacular Georgian manner, the sort of domestic urban architecture that Dublin once had in abundance and has lost in large quantities through a combination of neglect, wartime-equivalent clearances, and redevelopment pressure.

For anyone interested in early Dublin streetscapes, this part of the north inner city rewards slow walking and a degree of patience. The area around Jervis Street sits close to the former St Mary's Abbey quarter and within reasonable reach of several other early modern survivals. Physical remains from the early 18th century are not prominent here, and a visitor should not expect an intact period streetscape. The value is more in understanding the layering, standing on a street that was already built up three centuries ago, even if the fabric above ground has been repeatedly replaced. A detailed map from the early 18th century, consulted beforehand, helps considerably in reading what remains.