St. Brigid’s Celebration

We received the following update about St. Brigid’s Church from Karen Daly–

 

Come celebrate the good news with a special evening

filled with great writers & musicians.

Funds are still needed to help us finish our mission!

Hosted by Black 47’s LARRY KIRWAN

 

with readings by

PETE HAMILL • MALACHY McCOURT •

PETER QUINN

COLUM McCANN • THOMAS KELLY

MICHAEL PATRICK McDONALD •

CHRIS KELLY

& many more, with music by

JOE HURLEY & a special guest

THE RUFFIANS • EAMONN RYAN

 

Suggested donation $20.00

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Doors open @ 6:30 PM

 

CONNOLLY’S 45 

121 W. 45th Street, 3rd Floor,

NYC

 

For more info, visit: www.SaveStBrigid.com

 

St. Brigid’s Church is Saved!

St. Brigid’s, the Irish Famine church located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan has been saved by an anonymous donor! For more details on the story, see:

http://www.irishecho.com/newspaper/story.cfm?id=18729

This is wonderful news for the St. Brigid’s Community, and we would like to say CONGRATULATIONS to our friends and members on The Committee to Save St. Brigid’s.

More on St. Brigid’s

A few weeks ago we had an entry here about St. Brigid’s in Manhattan. At the New York Irish History Roundtable’s program today I met Sheila Houlihan, who is involved with the Committee to Save St. Brigid’s Church, at 8th St and Ave. B on the Lower East Side.  She told me some of the fascinating history of the buiding that has become known as the Famine Church because it welcomed many of the Irish who came to the city during the Great Hunger. 

Sheila reported that the committee will be running a fundraiser on Thursday, June 12.  We will supply details about the event as they become available.

Roundtable May 3rd Program Reminder

 

Just wanted to remind readers about the Roundtable’s upcoming program on Saturday, May 3.  Christopher Finan will speak about the role of noted New York Irish Americans in the struggle for free speech in the United States.  Full information is available at the earlier blog entry.

Forgotten New York

Anyone who loves New York City  history should check out the webpage for Forgotten New York.  It has wonderful pictures and descriptions of sites throughout the five boroughs.  One way to get started would be to click on search, and then enter the word Irish.  If you are planning to go to this site, make sure to set aside an hour or more, because time seems to melt away at Forgotten New York.  Enjoy!

Controversy Within Irish Government About Fees Charged by Online Genealogical Service

In an article published in The Irish Times on March 13th, 2008, it appears that there is a controversy within the Irish government about the fees that the Irish Family History Foundation is charging for access to databases containing Irish genealogical records.

Fine Gael spokeswoman for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Olivia Mitchell, stated that “The gathering and digitalisation of the parish records was done at public expense and it was always envisaged that this kind of public information should be made freely available to the public.”

To read the complete article, go to: http://www.cigo.ie/IrishTimes13March2008.html

The fees being charged for each viewed record was initially set at 10 Euros, but it was temporarily lowered to 5 Euros in order to attract attention within the genealogical community. It definitely has attracted attention, but not all of the attention has been favorable. A search of the Irish-oriented genealogical mailing lists hosted by Rootsweb reveals quite a few gripes about the services being offered by IFHF, and the total costs involved in trying to gather meaningful genealogical data from the service provider.

Lower East Side Tenement Museum Readies Irish Immigrant Apartment for June 12th Opening

(Courtesy of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum)

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is getting ready to unveil a new apartment later this spring, and for the first time, an Irish immigrant family’s living conditions in the late 1860s will be featured.

On June 12 the Museum will unveil its first restored apartment since 2002. The new tour tells the story of the Moores, immigrants from Ireland, and explores themes such as public health and sanitation on the Lower East Side.

Uninhabited for the past 50 years, this apartment on the 4th floor of the tenement building will become the 1869 home of the Moore family. To recreate the 1860s, walls have to be moved, doors must be replaced and windows covered. Check the Tenement Museum’s webpage next month to see their progress.

Coincidentally, this very same Moore Family were parishioners at Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, where the New York Irish History Roundtable held several very popular tours back in 2006, and where the Roundtable co-sponsored an Irish language Mass this past March 14th to celebrate the Feast of Saint Patrick.

Hope for St. Brigid’s Famine Irish Church?

(This article courtesy of Sheila Houlihan Fee and Edwin Torres, board members of the Committee to Save St. Brigid.)

The Committee to Save St. Brigid is happy to announce a major legal breakthrough. The New York State Court of Appeals in Albany has agreed to review the profoundly important legal issues raised by the Archdiocese of New York’s decision to demolish St. Brigid’s Church. The Court of Appeals is New York State’s highest court and generally, it takes on very few cases. It is enormously significant that they thought that the legal issues in this case have sufficient merit to warrant a review.

This beautiful old church was designed by Patrick Keely, an architect from Tipperary who built 600 churches in the USA. He employed local craftsmen from the nearby East River shipyards. One of the distinctive features of the church is its vaulted ceiling, crafted to resemble an upside down sailing vessel; unusual for a consecrated building, the shipwrights sculpted many of their own likenesses into the corbels. The impressive stained glass windows are steeped in history, too, for they were donated by parishioners in memory of relatives who had perished in the famine. The building was financed by public subscription, mostly on the nickels and dimes of those lucky enough to escape the Great Hunger. Construction was completed in an astonishing fifteen months and, in1848, St Brigid’s was dedicated by Archbishop “Dagger John” Hughes. So great was the crowd at the opening that some of the surrounding walls collapsed from the weight of onlookers; miraculously, no one was injured.

Will this lovely old church building be destroyed by the wrecking ball? Lawyers for the Committee to Save St. Brigid and the Archdiocese are in the process of presenting their arguments to the Court of Appeals in Albany. St. Brigid supporters hope this latest development leads to direct negotiations between the Committee and the Archdiocese.

For the latest news updates on this case, go to www.savestbrigid.com . You can demonstrate your solidarity with the St. Brigid’s community by expressing your written opinions to the Archdiocese of New York.

N. Y. Times Profile of Woodside, Queens

Those of you who are not regular readers of the Sunday N. Y. Times real estate section may have missed the recent profile of Woodside, Queens, “Cheap, Convenient and Teeming.” The article notes the substantial if dwindling Irish community there, and goes on to tell about new immigrants from all over the world who now make the neighborhood their home.

As this is in the real estate section, the article devotes space to the prices of houses, co-ops, and rental apartments—which are affordable, at least when compared to those in nearby Manhattan. The piece also talks about the abundant public transportation, including subway lines and the Long Island Railroad. Among the “things to do” in Woodside the article gives a favorable mention to the burgers at Donovan’s Pub on Roosevelt Avenue.

Gravestone Unveiling for Civil War Brigadier General Thomas Meagher (1823-1867)

Saturday, April 19, 2008, at one p.m. at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Meet at the Main Gates of the cemetery inside the 25th Street and Fifth Avenue entrance.

In 1848, Thomas Meagher, an Irish patriot, was convicted of sedition for urging armed rebellion against the British. Meagher was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but his sentence was commuted by Queen Victoria and he was sent to the penal colony in Australia. In 1852, he escaped and came to America. During the Civil War, he commanded the Irish Brigade of the Army of the Potomac. In 1867, he disappeared on the Missouri River, and his body was never found. His wife, Elizabeth Townsend Meagher (1840-1906) is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, and his gravestone will be placed next to hers.

The unveiling will be followed by a trolley tour of Green-Wood Cemetery, featuring monuments and gravesites of Irish-Americans. The trolley tour is $10.00 per person.

For further information, please call Mike Burke at 718 344-2771.