We recently visited the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City. For those of you who haven’t visited yet, it's the perfect stopping point if you are strolling along the Battery Park waters edge. It's also a great way to connect with your Irish heritage and learn more about The Great Famine.
The Memorial, designed collaboratively by artist Brian Tolle, landscape architect Gail Wittwer-Laird, and architecture firm 1100 Architect, is located on a 0.5-acre site at the corner of Vesey Street and North End Avenue in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, and is dedicated to raising awareness of the Great Irish Famine.
Referred to by the Irish as, “An Gorta Mor” in Irish Gaelic or "The Great Hunger" in English, the Famine killed over a million people in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. Construction of the memorial began in March 2001, and despite the September 11 attacks on the nearby World Trade Center, which also affected surrounding areas, the memorial was completed and dedicated on July 16, 2002.
The memorial is a uniquely landscaped plot, which utilizes stones, soil, and native vegetation brought in from the western coast of Ireland and contains stones from all of the different counties of Ireland. The memorial also incorporates an authentic rebuilt Irish cottage of the 19th century. The cottage at the memorial is from Carradoogan in the parish of Attymass in County Mayo. The cottage belonged to the Slack family but was deserted in the 1960s. The Slack family donated the cottage to the memorial in "memory of all the Slack family members of previous generations who emigrated to America and fared well there."
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