Irish on the move

Then there is survival and the first steps are made on the ladder of success and society. At some point, New York neighborhoods began to be recognized as Irish — Hell’s Kitchen, Inwood, Woodlawn, for example — and then, it’s farewell, and Irish and Irish-American families move to the suburbs, to other towns and cities.
It’s a pattern repeated over and over with most immigrant groups. Local historians speak with an element of profound sadness in their descriptions of the disappearing ethnic neighborhoods, of once-bustling streets now silent, or ringing to the sounds of another culture.
Where do the Irish go to when they leave New York City? While it’s rare — perhaps even impossible — for the old ethnic neighborhoods of Manhattan and the outer boroughs to pass the strength of their ethnic character on to the suburbs, some towns and cities beyond New York do reflect those characteristics — as much as, say, any other ethnic group, to be sure, but with unique strengths, such as the particularly strong and growing Ancient Order of Hibernian membership in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, realtors say, neighborhoods back in the city continue to transform and change with typical Big Apple dynamism, even if they no longer receive an injection of old world new life.
The overriding factor in people’s decision to leave the city for the surrounding commuter belt is the cost of living and just north of New York City are the cities of Yonkers and White Plains. A realty survey in Manhattan in April gave an average apartment cost of approximately $1 million. In White Plains, a city of about 50,000 people that boasts of its tree-lined streets with the nickname “Tree City, USA,” local realtors suggest starting prices of $260,000-$360,000 for a two- to three-bedroom homes.
Somewhat pricier but no less attractive to many Irish professionals is Fairfield County in Connecticut, with Stamford and, increasingly, the Bridgeport area serving as magnets for potential home and business owners.
Pricing alone, however, is rarely the sole determining factor. Recently married John Grogan, an anti-trust lawyer in Manhattan, commutes from Maplewood, N.J., where he and his wife have bought their first home as a married couple. Grogan, a third-generation Irish American, says Maplewood has not quite an Irish community but enough of a sprinkling of pubs and restaurants as well as locals involved in the community, to give the town the edge over other places he had looked.
Sometimes even tenuous connections, quite beyond the control of realtors, can establish enough of a “feel-good” factor between a potential buyer and one of the other parties in a residential real estate transaction, cinching a deal.
A buyer discovered that a seller had like himself honeymooned in Ireland, explained one realtor. The resulting conversations about Ireland and getting married and golfing in the Irish rain started an enthusiastic friendship — and a sale — in East Islip, L.I.
But more often there are ties linking people to shared growing up experiences — their church, memberships in organizations such as the AOH, for example — that have led towns and cities outside of New York to retain an Irish flavor. It’s an Irishness that is more than just nostalgia.
A case several realtors mentioned was how Huntington, L.I., made it into the news last year. The town, within commuting distance of the city and traditionally known to have been the settlement of English people who named it after the birthplace of their hero, Oliver Cromwell.
Cromwell, of course, was noted for his vicious military campaign through Ireland, slaughtering hundreds of Irish people in his path.
More recent immigrants, Irish Americans, discovered last year that the town’s coat of arms contains elements from Cromwell’s coat of arms.
“Oliver Cromwell was a mass murderer and the father of a system of institutionalized religious intolerance,” William C. Farrell, a Huntington resident, wrote in a March letter to the town supervisor, Frank P. Petrone. “He is clearly ineligible for such homage, and to pay it to him is to insult the memory of his many victims, the suffering of those who survived him by fleeing their homes, and the bravery of our founding fathers, who risked their lives to establish a country free of his legacy.”
The incident, galvanizing Irish Americans in the area as it did, proved the strength of such communities outside of the city itself to be considerable.
It’s not only 30, 50, 100 miles outside of New York that one will find new and thriving Irish communities. Realtors also cited Maspeth in Queens as an example of a thriving property market with an enduring ethnic identity.
A building contractor from Tyrone who recently was part of a team working in Times Square told of his continuing search for property of his own in Queens. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
“I started out when I got here in Woodside,” he said. “I’ve been in the States now 11 years.” When he started looking for a house to buy, all he heard from realtors and friends was lamentations about the disappearance of Irish neighborhoods in the city.
“You’d think a dinosaur was eating Woodside up in big chunks, to hear them tell it,” he said. “But I discovered everyone wasn’t leaving the city. They were just moving over to Maspeth.”
Maspeth, an area of Queens with tree-lined streets and through the leaves, new bars such as The Fenian on 69th Street, continues to be home to an Irish and Irish-American community as well as other ethnicities as well.
Said Grogan, musing on the Irish-American communities that are within striking distance of the city, “You go with what you can afford and with what you know. Our heritage, it’s very strong, but it can be very vague.”