Irish
visitors arriving in Boston for the
first time are quite often struck by the similarity
of our city to the old big cities of Europe.
It is a small town, really, the most intimate of
America's big cities-- and just coincidentally, the
Most Irish of American cities. Longtime Boston
Irish are fond of saying we're "the next parish
over from Galway Bay".
The city itself is only about the size of Dublin-
fewer than 50 square miles, with a booming downtown
which includes significant banking, insurance,
investment and law firms nestled cheek to jowl with
lively, livable neighborhoods.
By air, you will land at Boston's Logan Airport,
just across Boston Harbor less than three miles
from the city's nearby skyscrapers. A fifteen
minute cab ride through one of two under-harbor
tunnels can bring you right downtown- for under
$20.00. A subway system (The MBTA), similar to
Dublin's will get you there in 15 minutes as well-
for a fare about $1.00
Many Boston neighborhoods have significant Irish
populations: on the south side, there's South
Boston and Dorchester, and the near-in neighboring
city of Quincy, all neighborhoods which feature two
family and three decker homes, long favored for
their moderate apartment costs.To the west there's
the burgeoning Allston and Brighton neighborhoods,
home to any number of mid-century apartment blocks,
and the centre of Boston's estimable young college
population. On the city's northside, there's the
increasingly upscale Charlestown neighborhood, and
the nearby neighboring cities of Somerville and
Cambridge. All these residential neighborhoods are
within a $1.00 MBTA fare and a 20- 30 minute subway
ride to downtown.
There are
two important non-profit social agencies which
tailor their services to arriving Irish: downtown,
there's the Irish
Immigration Centre, just cross Tremont
Street from Boston Common 59 Temple Place, suite
#1105 (Phone: 617-542-7654.) The IIC also operates
a drop-in storefront in Allston a 171 Brighton
Avenue.
Boston's Irish Pastoral Centre, supported
and staffed by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of
Boston and the Irish Catholic church, operates from
offices at 953 Hancock Street, Quincy, MA 02170
(617) 479-7404 IPCBoston@aol.com
. The IPC offers resources and referrals
from its Quincy office (Sr. Veronica Dobson (617)
479-7404), as well as in Dorchester, Brighton and
South Boston .The IPC also offers such programs as
a toddler group at St. Anthony's Church hall in
Brighton. The IPC is widely known for its staff's
ability to help find housing, food and work for
arriving immigrants.
Boston is
one of a handful of American cities which hosts
a full-service Irish Consulate. The current Consul
General, Orla O'Hanrahan and her staff are
available 9 am-4:30 PM at their office at 535
Boylston Street, downtown at Copley Square
(617-267-9330). The Boston office of the British
Consulate, which represent the interests of
citizens of Northern Ireland, is located at One
Memorial Drive, Ste. 1500, Cambridge MA 02142,
(617-245-4500.)
The Boston you see before you today was built
largely by two groups: the Yankee descendants of
early English settlers, and the Irish, who first
arrived in large numbers during the famine years of
the 1840s. Boston was a firmly Yankee city until
the Irish arrived, and the remnants of that old
city can be seen in the famous historical sites on
the Freedom Trail.
But by the late 1800s the Irish outnumbered
every other ethnic group, and the face of the city
was changed. After decades of struggle, the Irish
eventually seized political power and began to
change the structure of the city to serve the new
population that was expanding out into the
'streetcar suburbs,' now Boston's residential
neighborhoods, including Dorchester, Roxbury, and
Brighton.
In the 20th century, Boston evolved under
largely Irish-American political leadership, as
waves of new immigrant groups arrived, and the
Yankees maintained their presence in the business
arena.
(For a detailed history of the Irish in
Boston, we recommend Thomas O'Connor's The Boston
Irish: A Political History. O'Connor is a South
Boston native and longtime Boston College professor
who is considered the dean of Boston
history.)
The impact of the Irish in Boston is
everywhere you look, from the rows of three-decker
houses in the neighborhoods to the hundreds of
Irish pubs and restaurants to the city government
buildings in the heart of downtown.
Sites of Irish and Irish-American historical
interest in Boston are dispersed throughout the
city, but all are easily reachable by the T
(www.mbta.org). Here are some of the most
prominent:
• When you arrive at Faneuil Hall and
Quincy Market, as all visitors to Boston eventually
do, you don't have to look far for a symbol of
Boston's Irish past. Check out the statue(s) of
legendary mayor, governor, congressman James
Michael Curley on Congress Street, next to the
Holocaust Memorial. Seated like a friendly old man
on a bench, and standing in welcome, the statues
capture the essence of what made Curley perhaps the
best-loved leader in Boston's history.
Mayor Curley was born to a poor Irish family in
Roxbury; during the early years of the last
century, the "Mayor of the Poor" transformed the
City by building hospitals, libraries, bath houses,
and other necessities. He also did two jail terms,
one for taking a postal exam for a friend, the
other for misusing federal funds, and he never
ceased to infuriate the Yankee elite, the Good
Government Association, and those Irish who wished
they didn't have to be associated with the muddy
reputations of their leaders.
While you're there, you are within walking
distance of dozens of Boston's Irish pubs, which
offer hearty lunch and dinner menus as well as good
music and good fun every night. If you can resist
popping over to an Italian restaurant in the North
End, you can find several famous Irish pubs at
Quincy Market, down Congress Street at North
Station, or scattered throughout the financial
district.
If you want to get an even better sense of what
James Michael Curley meant to the power structure
of the city, visit the house he had built, with
mysteriously hard to trace funds, on the elegant
Jamaicaway in Jamaica Plain.
• The John F. Kennedy Library and
Museum, Columbia Point, Dorchester.
Irish-American residents of Dorchester, the
birthplace of Rose (Fitzgerald) Kennedy, fought
hard in the 1970s to have the JFK library and
papers located there, after Harvard University
demanded the president's papers but eschewed the
library. The library is regularly visited by
foreign dignitaries and is known the world over as
the leading repository of information on one of the
most captivating periods in the 20th century. It
also houses other objects of interest, such as the
manuscripts of Ernest Hemingway. JFK's birthplace
is a T-ride away in Brookline.
• The Irish Famine Memorial.
Downtown, at the corner of Washington and
School Streets, on the Freedom Trail. Installed in
1998 by a group of philanthropists led by local
Irish businessman Thomas Flatley, the plaintive
statues evoke both the suffering of the famine
victims and the hope of those who fled by boat to
Boston and began the city's Irish
transformation.
• Cathedral of the Holy Cross, South
End. The original Holy Cross church, on Franklin
Street downtown, was built by Irish immigrants and
was the first Catholic church erected in
Boston.
• Statue of Patrick Collins on the
Mall, Commonwealth Ave., Back Bay. Collins was The
first Irish mayor of Boston.
• Boston College, Chestnut Hill, on
the Brighton-Newton border. Founded in 1863 with
the help of Irish-born philanthropists and still
run by the Jesuit order, it was the first
institution of higher learning to which Boston's
Irish had full access. BC's Irish Studies Program,
covering everything from poetry to history to
music, is one of the leading centers of research
and artifacts relating to Ireland and the Irish in
America.
• The Bunker Hill Museum,
Charlestown. While the monument and Museum is
primarily a Revolutionary War site, Charlestown has
been one of Boston's most Irish neighborhoods. In
2000 local Irish residents got together to install
an exhibit in the museum explaining the history of
the Irish in Charlestown.
Sites of interest outside the city:
• The Irish Cultural Centre, 200
Boston Drive, Canton
On The Web: Visit the Boston
Irish Heritage Trail and the new Boston
Family History site. For more information
about Boston and its visitor's resources, contact
the Greater
Boston Visitor's and Convention bureau. For
more general information, you are invited to send
an email request to the Boston
Irish Reporter. For current daily
news, visit the Boston
Globe site.
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