☞ REMEMBER: When Harlem was Irish

Everyone is celebrating St. Patrick's Day and that inspired some research on the history of the Irish population that used to inhabit Harlem.  East Harlem first comes to mind since the tenements in the late 19th and early part of the 20th century attracted many of the poor working class from Europe. An article from the History Box talks about one woman's tenement building at 1791 Lexington Avenue (center photo) which still had a mix of Irish and Italian neighbors during her childhood: LINK.  By that time,  Italians started becoming the largest group but East Harlem's Little Italy would eventually shift into El Barrio by the 1950's as the area became predominantly Puerto Rican (East Harlem is now predominantly Mexican as of recent).

The Church of the Annunciation (last photo) was founded at Convent Avenue and 131st Street by the Irish community in West Harlem that came to work on the Hudson River Railroad back in the 1850's but only small pockets of that demographic would remain up into the mid 20th century. Over in Hamilton Heights, there existed micro-neighborhoods of Irish with the Vinegar Hill neighborhood being the most notable.  We mentioned in our past post that street signs and buildings still have the Vinegar Hill moniker in the mid West 130's and Amsterdam today even though that population moved out decades ago: LINK.  An archival 1950's photo of the Annunciation basketball team from the Vinegar Hill blog also shows some of the Irish boys that grew up in that neighborhood: LINK.

There's not too much out there on Harlem's distant and more recent Irish population but it seems like everyone is Irish uptown on St. Patrick's day no matter what background they come from.