New York Considered; No. 6; The Irish in New York

<v Speaker>[upbeat music] Two please. [ticket and train sounds] <v Marty Goldensohn>Good evening. I'm Marty Goldensohn. I'm Peter Freiberg and this is New York Considered, <v Marty Goldensohn>a program about neighborhoods. <v Marty Goldensohn>Tonight, to mark St. Patrick's Day, an all Irish program. <v Marty Goldensohn>We'll be going to St. Sebastian's Parish in Woodside, Queens. <v Peggy Burke>Woodside is so Irish. <v Marty Goldensohn>Then after a talk with Jim Miller, an authority on the Irish in New York to Inwood in <v Marty Goldensohn>Upper Manhattan for music and dancing at the Broadstone Bar. <v Speaker>Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling. [upbeat music continues] <v Marty Goldensohn>First Queen's. [organ music]

<v Peter Freiberg>If you take the number seven Flushing IRT elevated train to Sixty First Street, <v Peter Freiberg>about 15 minutes from Times Square. <v Peter Freiberg>You're in St. Sebastian's Parish, in the heart of Woodside, Queens. <v Peter Freiberg>Years ago, Catholics all over the city were so attached to the parishes <v Peter Freiberg>that if you asked where they lived, the answer might come. <v Peter Freiberg>OLA, Our Lady of Angels or Corpus Christi <v Peter Freiberg>or St. Sebastian's. <v Marty Goldensohn>Well, you don't get those kinds of answers anymore. <v Marty Goldensohn>But in a place like Woodside, St. Sebastian's continues to be a vital force in the <v Marty Goldensohn>community. It's important both to the Irish Americans who remain and to the new <v Marty Goldensohn>Catholic immigrants from Central and South America. <v Marty Goldensohn>Even more than in the past, the church has expanded its activities to meet the needs of <v Marty Goldensohn>its parishioners. [train noise] <v Peter Freiberg>In front of St. Sebastian's Parochial School, near the L, across from

<v Peter Freiberg>the church. This is Connie Donlin Prisco was waiting to pick up her kids. <v Peter Freiberg>Off the top of her head she was able to reel off the services St. Sebastian's <v Peter Freiberg>provides. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>We have a teen club for the teenagers. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>We have a group that meets in the church in the basement of the school for alcoholism. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>Another group meets here for dope. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>There's a group for separated and divorced Catholics. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>They have a group for them that meets her also. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>So they really geared to from the young to the old you might as well say. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>There's sen- two senior citizen groups in the parish center. <v Connie Donlin Prisco>So the center really is. <v Speaker>A center! <v Connie Donlin Prisco>A center. Yes. For everyone. <v Peter Freiberg>Father John Egan has been pastor of St. Sebastian's for six years. <v Peter Freiberg>He says the wide range of activities Mrs. Prisco told us about on some <v Peter Freiberg>newfangled departure. The Catholic Church has always been involved. <v Father John Egan>And I think it always has been a tradition of the church.

<v Father John Egan>If you went back to our Lord's time or to the whole of the Middle Ages and so forth, like <v Father John Egan>that, when the church was many more things than just purely offerign sacrifice. <v Father John Egan>When they were the centers of learning and they're the great hospitals and things like <v Father John Egan>that were built. We're carrying on I think hopefully. <v Peter Freiberg>In Woodside and other neighborhoods, the parish often acts as a major stabilizing <v Peter Freiberg>force, while crime and other problems drive some residents to the suburbs. <v Peter Freiberg>The parish says Father Egan offers reasons to stay. <v Father John Egan>And I think that somebody that is kind of teeter tottering between moving in, or roving <v Father John Egan>out is a little bit inclined just because the kids are on the swimming pool or somebody <v Father John Egan>else is playing basketball. The wife takes yoga, you know, or whatever, like <v Father John Egan>that that keeps them around. <v Marty Goldensohn>Ed Foley's family has stayed around Woodside since 1919. <v Ed Foley>My grandparents came from County Sligo and Ireland, and then my father <v Ed Foley>was born in the west side and their family moved out to what they <v Ed Foley>considered was an Irish town at the time, which was Woodside. <v Ed Foley>And of course, they wanted to be with their people, their own religious and national

<v Ed Foley>backgrounds. So they chose this community. <v Ed Foley>And we've been here since. <v Marty Goldensohn>Foley, a co-owner of Shelley's Bar on Roosevelt Avenue, is a longtime community activist. <v Peter Freiberg>Kitty Trainer has been around Woodside a long time, too. <v Peter Freiberg>She immigrated from Ireland in 1930 and settled in Woodside. <v Peter Freiberg>What does St. Sebastian's mean to you? <v Kitty Trainer>It means an awful lot to me and I owe it an awful lot. <v Kitty Trainer>Four of my children won scholarships from this parish here. <v Kitty Trainer>Bishop Lawson and to to Bishop Macdonald. <v Peter Freiberg>And how about you? How do you- do come to the church alot? <v Peter Freiberg>Or what does it mean in your life? <v Kitty Trainer>Father Reagan would tell you that [laughs] I come every morning. <v Kitty Trainer>I go every morning. My husband goes to twelve o'clock mass every day. <v Kitty Trainer>I go to nine. He doesn't like to get up too early. <v Kitty Trainer>[laughs] <v Marty Goldensohn>Peggy Burke is a newcomer. She and her husband left Ireland for the United States just <v Marty Goldensohn>three years ago. They chose Woodside because they had relatives there. <v Peggy Burke>We had fallen in love with the place after we were here a year, you know?

<v Peggy Burke>We were fortunate. We moved in and we had an apartment in an Irish home, in an Irish <v Peggy Burke>family with an Irish family and um we just loved it. <v Marty Goldensohn>So it's not completely a foreign land because Woodside is so Irish. <v Peggy Burke>Woodside is so Irish. You know, you walk down the street and every other face you meet <v Peggy Burke>is Irish. You know, it's good. It's wonderful. <v Peggy Burke>Believe me it is. <v Marty Goldensohn>Mrs. Burky by the way, said she feels just about as comfortable <v Marty Goldensohn>speaking Gaelic as English. <v Peggy Burke>[Speaks in Gaelic]. <v Marty Goldensohn>What did you just tell me? <v Peggy Burke>You'd like a translation. Um I'm just after telling you that Woodside is <v Peggy Burke>absolutely beautiful. And the direct translation for Woodside is taobh na collie. <v Peter Freiberg>Across the street from St. Sebastian's rectory. <v Peter Freiberg>When we met with Mrs. Burke is the pride and joy of the parish. <v Peter Freiberg>The recreation center. Both kids and adults swim in the Olympic sized <v Peter Freiberg>pool, play basketball upstairs, watch movies and hold meetings. <v Peter Freiberg>St. Sebastian's parishioners contributed the 1.2 million dollars to

<v Peter Freiberg>build the center. We were told many times that the recreation center <v Peter Freiberg>reflects the generosity in a parish which is not wealthy, but mostly <v Peter Freiberg>working class. <v Marty Goldensohn>When we dropped by, the boys were playing basketball upstairs. <v Marty Goldensohn>It was the girls turn to use the pool downstairs. <v Marty Goldensohn>Mrs. Helen Coyne, a volunteer, was working the youngsters hard. <v Marty Goldensohn>She explains that she was one of the original contributors. <v Helen Coyne>The money was raised by the people of St. Sebastians. <v Helen Coyne>There was a drive and it took years. <v Helen Coyne>And as you can see outside, there are all plaques and that means <v Helen Coyne>equals donation. Like the pool, the um stands here, my <v Helen Coyne>mother, I donated in my mother's name, my father and I. <v Helen Coyne>It's in her name and it's outside it says Helen B. Barnett. We have been in competition <v Helen Coyne>for 15 years, and out of the 15 years we have won 10 <v Helen Coyne>going for our 10th diocesan championship. <v Marty Goldensohn>Thanks very much.

<v Helen Coyne>OK. I hope- <v Marty Goldensohn>Bye Bye. [Group of children saying Bye in unison] <v Marty Goldensohn>[train sounds] Walking beneath the noisy L along Roosevelt Avenue, we entered Donovan's <v Marty Goldensohn>Pub. Against the advice of business people. <v Marty Goldensohn>Joe Donovan and his father opened the restaurant at Roosevelt Avenue and 58th Street. <v Marty Goldensohn>A corner, where a previous bar had failed. <v Marty Goldensohn>That was 12 years ago. Today, Donovan's is a booming success. <v Marty Goldensohn>Open 20 hours a day from 8 a.m. <v Marty Goldensohn>to 4 a.m., it attracts not only Woodsiders, but people from Manhattan, Long Island, <v Marty Goldensohn>even Westchester. Donovan's is famous for its hamburgers and its Irish coffee. <v Marty Goldensohn>So famous that there are always 86 Irish coffee glasses pre-whiskeyed and <v Marty Goldensohn>pre-sugared ready to be filled with fresh coffee. <v Marty Goldensohn>Donovan says that despite ethnic changes in the neighborhood, Woodside retains a strong <v Marty Goldensohn>Irish flavor. <v Joe Donovan>You ever go in and go between here and 61st street and you have you have nine bars. <v Joe Donovan>And they're all Irish and they're all Irish own. <v Peter Freiberg>Joe stresses that other groups and institutions like the Protestant churches

<v Peter Freiberg>and the local synagogue are important to the area. <v Peter Freiberg>But he believes that. <v Joe Donovan>St. Sebatsians parish is the center of Woodside. <v Joe Donovan>As goes St. Sebastians so does Woodside. <v Peter Freiberg>Joe is convinced that things are going well. <v Peter Freiberg>He showed confidence in the neighborhood when he reopened his restaurant three years ago <v Peter Freiberg>after a disastrous fire. <v Peter Freiberg>He could have taken his insurance money and closed up shop, but he decided <v Peter Freiberg>to stay right where he is. <v Joe Donovan>And I'd done a lot of soul searching. And I really feel that the neighborhood <v Joe Donovan>is solid. It's a blue collar neighborhood. <v Joe Donovan>It's it's a real, real good neighborhood. <v Joe Donovan>And I I put a lot of effort into the preservation of Woodside <v Joe Donovan>and the people in Woodside really pull together. <v Marty Goldensohn>Woodside doesn't have the devastating problems plaguing some of the neighborhoods we've <v Marty Goldensohn>looked at on New York Considered in the past few weeks. <v Marty Goldensohn>It's private homes and small apartment buildings are in good shape.

<v Marty Goldensohn>There are virtually no boarded up stores along Roosevelt Avenue. <v Marty Goldensohn>The main street under the L. Crime is worrisome everywhere in the city, but <v Marty Goldensohn>its relatively low in Woodside. <v Marty Goldensohn>Nevertheless, Woodside has its troubles and neighborhood activists are proposing <v Marty Goldensohn>solutions. Auxiliary police are working out of a neighborhood substation paid for <v Marty Goldensohn>entirely with donations from merchants and residents. <v Marty Goldensohn>And people like Ed Foley and Joe Donovan are working to organize a citizen's patrol <v Marty Goldensohn>that would pick up after 11 p.m. <v Marty Goldensohn>when the auxiliary police go off duty. <v Peter Freiberg>A particularly effective self-help group which one city planner called a <v Peter Freiberg>model for other neighborhoods has emerged. <v Peter Freiberg>It's called Woodside On the Move, and it was formed five years ago to improve <v Peter Freiberg>the Roosevelt Avenue Shopping Street. <v Peter Freiberg>With some small grants from the State Council on the Arts, banks and other businesses, <v Peter Freiberg>Woodside On the Move highered architectural firm. <v Peter Freiberg>They drew up a beautification plan for Roosevelt Avenue between 15th and 17th <v Peter Freiberg>Streets. Walter Mann, a member of the board of Woodside On the Move,

<v Peter Freiberg>and Eleanor Danker, its full time director, told us how the city was <v Peter Freiberg>impressed with the plan. <v Eleanor Danker>It's got benches and trees and lights and curb cuts and mini <v Eleanor Danker>plazas and new curbs <v Eleanor Danker>and. <v Speaker>Cleaner air and soundproofing from the old structure. <v Speaker>That kind of thing. <v Eleanor Danker>And what in that plan enabled us to do it was <v Eleanor Danker>drawn up on a map and what it enabled us to do was to go to the city and say we have a <v Eleanor Danker>very concrete suggestion. This is what we think needs to be done in our community. <v Eleanor Danker>We need your help and th-the city was very receptive. <v Eleanor Danker>They agreed that it was a very doable plan, that it <v Eleanor Danker>was reasonably reasonably priced, and <v Eleanor Danker>they allocated community development block grant monies to it. <v Eleanor Danker>The first year we got 545,000.

<v Eleanor Danker>The second year we got 650,000. <v Eleanor Danker>The full plan will probably cost about 3 million dollars and construction should <v Eleanor Danker>start this spring. <v Speaker>And we're hoping that the merchants are going to get involved personally and make <v Speaker>personal commitments to the upgrading of their stores and the upgrading of their <v Speaker>inventory. And we're hoping that people are going to come back to <v Speaker>Roosevelt Avenue to do their shopping. <v Peter Freiberg>Roosevelt Avenue looks more attractive already. <v Peter Freiberg>The L's been painted in bright colors. <v Peter Freiberg>Also a project of Woodside on the move. <v Marty Goldensohn>The group intends to widen its focus from the shopping street. <v Marty Goldensohn>It wants to develop programs to keep industry in the area, expand cultural opportunities, <v Marty Goldensohn>work on any housing problems that may develop. <v Marty Goldensohn>And it seeks to involve all the neighborhood's ethnic groups in the improvement effort. <v Marty Goldensohn>Woodside's newer residents, Hispanics, Asians and Greek seem to be predominantly working <v Marty Goldensohn>class and middle class. Walter Mann says they have already proven a community asset. <v Walter Mann>We see it on our block. On the streets, some of the neighbors we have more conscientious

<v Walter Mann>than some of the neighbors who left, strangely enough. <v Walter Mann>The merchants from what I gather <v Walter Mann>from them, it appears that the people who are coming into Woodside have more money than <v Walter Mann>the people who left. Now, that seems a little bit strange, but those are the <v Walter Mann>kinds of comments that I hear from the merchants. <v Peter Freiberg>So St. Sebastian's Parish and Woodside are in fairly <v Peter Freiberg>good shape with groups like Woodside on the move, providing big doses <v Peter Freiberg>of preventive medicine. Change for the area hopefully won't mean decline. <v Peter Freiberg>Woodside is no longer the Irish town it was when Ed Foley's family <v Peter Freiberg>moved from Manhattan's West Side after World War One. <v Peter Freiberg>But while many Irish residents are elderly and Woodside's Irish population <v Peter Freiberg>is slowly declining there, there's no mass exodus of Irish from Woodside. <v Marty Goldensohn>With St. Sebastian's as a stabilizing force in the community, St. Patrick's Day will <v Marty Goldensohn>be a big event in Woodside for years to come. <v Marty Goldensohn>For this year's celebration Donovan's pub has ordered a thousand pounds of corned beef.

<v Marty Goldensohn>[organ music] <v Marty Goldensohn>You're listening to New York Considered. <v Marty Goldensohn>Earlier, we promised you an interview with Jim Miller, who's an expert on the Irish in <v Marty Goldensohn>America. Jim is a native of Queens. <v Marty Goldensohn>He has worked for the federal government, the Ford Foundation, and private groups as a <v Marty Goldensohn>consultant and Irish American affairs. <v Marty Goldensohn>He graduated from Fordham University, studied international relations at Oxford, got his <v Marty Goldensohn>doctorate from Trinity College in Dublin. <v Marty Goldensohn>When he returned, Jim Miller served for a while as director of an Irish studies program <v Marty Goldensohn>at Queens College. We talked to him recently and asked him about the history of the <v Marty Goldensohn>Irish in this country and particularly in New York City. <v Peter Freiberg>Jim, What was the heaviest Irish emigration to New York City? <v Jim Miller>The heaviest would have been the period from about 40- 1843 to 48

<v Jim Miller>during what they call the famine, when you probably had maybe up to half a million <v Jim Miller>people coming in at one time. <v Jim Miller>It was probably the heaviest concentration of people coming from Europe <v Jim Miller>ever seen in American history. You know, they went into Manhattan. <v Jim Miller>The slums that have been written about in Manhattan by people like Dickens indicate there <v Jim Miller>may have been the worst ever seen in east in Western Europe or the United States. <v Jim Miller>Uh, 20 - 30 people in a room. <v Jim Miller>The basic concentration was in a place called 5 Points, which is now what is known as <v Jim Miller>Chinatown. And there were just it was a horrible period. <v Jim Miller>You know, we had hundreds of thousands of people destitute. <v Jim Miller>You didn't have social programs that you have today and they had to make it on their own. <v Jim Miller>And a lot of them didn't make it. <v Jim Miller>But I mean, you know, what happened was there was a scaling down starting, oh from the <v Jim Miller>civil war you'd have maybe 200,000 coming in a year and it would tone-tone down <v Jim Miller>in the 1870s, 1880s and right into the 20th century. <v Jim Miller>So, you know, when you talk about New York City and you talk about Irish people and

<v Jim Miller>people who live here, most of the people live here are not immigrant or first generation. <v Jim Miller>It is third, fourth, fifth, sixth generation. <v Jim Miller>I'd say like out of maybe say 700,000 Irish in the city, maybe 200,000 <v Jim Miller>are immigrant or first generation. <v Jim Miller>That's yeah, roughly about 8 percent, 8 to 9 percent. <v Jim Miller>If that number sounds high, it's only because the people who have stayed don't have kids. <v Jim Miller>It's an older population. <v Jim Miller>I would even guess in a place like Woodside, you have a lot of older people. <v Jim Miller>You go to churches on a Sunday you'll see a lot of old people. <v Jim Miller>You know, in their 60s, 70s, senior citizens, Irish population, the city's heavily senior <v Jim Miller>citizens. And it's not concentrated in one place. <v Jim Miller>It's not, you know, the Woodside's or the Bay Ridges or Norwood's. <v Jim Miller>They're not overly Irish anymore. They've become multi-ethnic. <v Jim Miller>But the Irish are basically everywhere. <v Speaker>What did the Irish do to pull themselves up by the bootstraps? <v Jim Miller>You know, they got into two things. <v Jim Miller>First of all, they took over the Catholic Church, which is maybe the single most <v Jim Miller>important thing they did because it gave me an institution up.

<v Jim Miller>It enabled them to have their own schools, which is very important. <v Jim Miller>And the second thing, along with the Catholic Church is that, you know, the Democratic <v Jim Miller>Party. The politics was extremely important. <v Jim Miller>The Democratic Party in New York City, in Boston and Chicago <v Jim Miller>was basically put together along lines of an Irish family. <v Jim Miller>In other words, like you can call it, forcism. <v Jim Miller>But, you know, a guy would go out at Christmas with a turkey, and if you were hungry, <v Jim Miller>he'd give you a turkey. Now, that may be whatever you may call it buyin' votes, but if <v Jim Miller>you're hungry, you know, your vote isn't worth a lot. <v Jim Miller>So they tended to form the Democratic Party along family lines and they got into things <v Jim Miller>that function along the lines of politics, you know, insurance <v Jim Miller>and such. They never went in for things like manufacturing. <v Peter Freiberg>When did the Irish population peak in New York City? <v Jim Miller>Peak? I don't know. <v Peter Freiberg>End of World War II? <v Jim Miller>Now. It would have been well before that uh-. <v Peter Freiberg>Immigration. <v Jim Miller>No the population probably would have peaked early 1930s. <v Jim Miller>I think what happened was a combination of two things stopped the population and began to

<v Jim Miller>drop. First of all, there was legislation passed in the early 60s <v Jim Miller>that focused American immigration policy into Eastern European countries and stopped <v Jim Miller>northern European immigration. <v Jim Miller>That was a factor. Became very difficult for anybody Irish to come here. <v Jim Miller>You had to have a sponsor and it was very difficult. <v Jim Miller>And the second thing was the Irish, because they'd been here for so long, had tremendous <v Jim Miller>mobility. And they were really one of the first groups to go to the suburbs. <v Peter Freiberg>Jim, one of the stereotypes of the Irish is still kind of a very working-class population <v Peter Freiberg>yet, recently, I think I saw a poll saying that the Irish are one of the better educated <v Peter Freiberg>groups and also the relatively high income. <v Jim Miller>In the United States, um, Irish Catholics <v Jim Miller>runs slightly below Jews nationally as the most economically <v Jim Miller>successful ethnic group. <v Jim Miller>I think the stereotype is based on the Irish who were left in the cities <v Jim Miller>are tend to be poor. On the other hand, you know, almost any ethnic group is left in

<v Jim Miller>a city or is poor. <v Peter Freiberg>We found that the parish priest in a lot of neighborhoods like the Northwest Bronx, <v Peter Freiberg>or Woodside have become almost neighborhood activists. <v Jim Miller>I think one of the reasons this is that, you know, you have a major change in our <v Jim Miller>society. Roles have changed tremendously. <v Jim Miller>I think young priests looking to find a role for themselves <v Jim Miller>and having to wait maybe 20 years before they can get a parish. <v Jim Miller>So they got a 20 year gap. They got a lot of time in their hands. <v Jim Miller>And getting involved in neighborhood problems is obviously a way of not only working for <v Jim Miller>the Catholic Church, for working for the good of people that they have to serve. <v Marty Goldensohn>Jim Miller on the Irish in New York. <v Marty Goldensohn>On to music and dance on New York Considered. <v Peter Freiberg>Irish bars are known mostly as good drinking places, but some of them are famous <v Peter Freiberg>for their music too. Traditional Irish instrumental music and <v Peter Freiberg>folk songs, some of which have become popular in this country. <v Peter Freiberg>You can find these bars featuring live music scattered throughout the city <v Peter Freiberg>in Woodside, Queens, the Northwest Bronx and Inwood in Upper Manhattan.

<v Peter Freiberg>Often the owners hire a band, but sometimes people just drift <v Peter Freiberg>in and play for the fun of it. <v Peter Freiberg>We visited Tommy Ryan's Broadstone Inn on West 207th <v Peter Freiberg>Street in Inwood last Sunday night. <v Peter Freiberg>The crowd had come to hear a professional group, The Black Waterboys, <v Peter Freiberg>and listened to youngsters from an Irish-American organization called [inaudible] <v Peter Freiberg>the Music of Ireland. The American youngsters, some of whom dance <v Peter Freiberg>jigs, reels and horn pipes, had beaten out other teenagers <v Peter Freiberg>from England and Ireland in musical competitions two years running. <v Peter Freiberg>[Irish music] <v Speaker>To go back to the history of Ireland, say in the late, you know, in the 1840s,

<v Speaker>1850s, there was famine time. We, you know, we were suppressed a lot. <v Speaker>You know, we were under English rule for 1800 years. <v Speaker>And as I said, a lot of people were coming out in the coffin ships. <v Speaker>These wasn't good type of ships, you know, about people or people, people that were <v Speaker>drowned and alot of the music as such didn't have a great beat to it. <v Speaker>You know, it was kind of a wailing type of a tune, a mourning type, you know, about <v Speaker>people that died, people that went away. <v Speaker>They say the group you're going to hear tonight now they are more of a they will play <v Speaker>both that. But they'll also have you'll notice it could beat. <v Speaker>There'll be a good beat to their music. And, you know, even the listener that wouldn't be <v Speaker>say wouldn't be oh, how would I put it <v Speaker>born into Irish music and that would still be able to enjoy this kind of music because <v Speaker>they could be tapping their foot. [Irish music continues] [Songs include: On the One Road; Oh, Danny Boy] <v Marty Goldensohn>Is it a tradition in Ireland that you bring an instrument wherever you go and it's

<v Marty Goldensohn>welcome at the bar? <v Speaker>Yeah, but only certain bars will sort of like where the feeling is just right. <v Speaker>[music] <v Speaker>How about Moving back to Jimmy ? <v Speaker>for a solo? [music] <v Peter Freiberg>A visit to the Broadstone in Inwood.

<v Peter Freiberg>[music] <v Marty Goldensohn>And that's New York Considered for tonight. <v Marty Goldensohn>Drop us a line if you have a suggestion where we should take our microphones next. <v Peter Freiberg>The address, WNYC Municipal Building. <v Peter Freiberg>New York. New York. 10007. <v Peter Freiberg>Technical direction. David Rapkin. <v Peter Freiberg>I'm Peter Freiberg. <v Marty Goldensohn>I'm Marty Goldensohn.