St Stephen's Green () is a garden square and public park located in the city centre of Dublin, Ireland. The current landscape of the park was designed by William Sheppard. It was officially re-opened to the public on Tuesday, 27 July 1880 by Lord Ardilaun. The square is adjacent to one of Dublin's main shopping streets, Grafton Street, and to a shopping centre named after it, while on its surrounding streets are the offices of a number of public bodies as well as a stop on one of Dublin's Luas tram lines. It is often informally called Stephen's Green. At , it is the largest of the parks in Dublin's main Georgian garden squares. Others include nearby Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square. The park is rectangular, surrounded by streets that once formed major traffic arteries through Dublin city centre, although traffic management changes implemented in 2004 during the course of the Luas works have greatly reduced the volume of traffic. These four bordering streets are called, respectively, St Stephen's Green North, St Stephen's Green South, St Stephen's Green East and St Stephen's Green West. History The association with St Stephen has its origins in a medieval leper hospital, now Mercer's Hospital, dedicated to Saint Stephen on nearby Stephen Street. Until 1663, St Stephen's Green was a marshy common on the edge of Dublin of approximately 60 acres, used for grazing. In that year Dublin Corporation, seeing an opportunity to raise much-needed revenue, decided to enclose the centre of the common and to sell land around the perimeter for building. The area was surveyed by Robert Newcomen, with the land divided into 96 plots with a green of 27 acres in the centre. The park was enclosed with a wall in 1664. Early tenants built simple two-storey houses, with much of it undeveloped on the 1728 map. By the time of John Roque's map in 1756, the pace of building had accelerated rapidly. The houses built around the Green were rapidly replaced by new buildings in the Georgian style and by the end of the eighteenth century the Green was a place of resort for the better-off of the city. Most of the present-day landscape of the square comprises townhouses from the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1814 control of St Stephen's Green passed to Commissioners for the local householders, who redesigned its layout and replaced the walls with railings. After