The older houses in Rathgar are mainly late Georgian to early Victorian.

The Georgian houses tended to have a very opulent front door with a shoe scraper and a fan light which is a semi-circle of plain glass directly above a doorway, a Georgian house is typically very narrow and very tall, there can be two to three windows per floor visible from the outside of the house. The windows usually get smaller the higher up they are to give an effect of false height.

Victorian houses typically have slate roofs, some of the houses had running water and some even had gas to power ovens and lights, unlike the Georgian houses the Victorian houses were for upper and lower class alike.