The Boston Irish Famine Memorial is a memorial park located on a plaza between
Washington Street and
School Street
School Street is a short but significant street in the center of Boston, Massachusetts. It is so named for being the site of the first public school in the United States (the Boston Latin School, since relocated). The school operated at various ...
in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
. The park contains two groups of statues to contrast an Irish family suffering during the
Great Famine of 1845–1852 with a prosperous family that had immigrated to America. Funded by a trust led by Boston businessman
Thomas Flatley, the park was opened in 1998. It has received contrasting reviews and has since been called "the most mocked and reviled public sculpture in Boston". The memorial received praise from many newspapers, including the Quincy Patriot Ledger, which wrote, "There are religious and secular monuments to the influence of the Irish all around Boston, but nothing that marks the Gaelic contribution to the city and to this state the way the Irish Famine Memorial will."
Development
The land for the memorial park was leased to the memorial trust by the
Boston Redevelopment Authority
The Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA), formerly the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), is a Massachusetts public agency that serves as the municipal planning and development agency for Boston, working on both housing and commercial de ...
in 1998.
The $1 million trust was led by Thomas Flatley, an Irish-American real estate tycoon based in Boston, and was supported by
Peter Lynch
Peter Lynch (born January 19, 1944) is an American investor, mutual fund manager, and philanthropist. As the manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments between 1977 and 1990, Lynch averaged a 29.2% annual return, consistently more th ...
and others, particularly from Boston's Irish-American community.
[
]
Description
The statues are the centerpiece of the park and were sculpted by Robert Shure. The two groups represent two families, one starved and ragged owing to the deprivations of the famine, the other well-fed having found prosperity in America.[ It is said to emphasize the transformation from an "anxious immigrant" to a "future of freedom and opportunity" in America for the Irish, the first of a long line of immigrants to Boston and America.] The sculptures are accompanied by eight narrative plaques.[ The memorial lies on Boston's ]Freedom Trail
The Freedom Trail is a path through Boston, Massachusetts, that passes by 16 locations significant to the history of the United States. Marked largely with brick, it winds from Boston Common in downtown Boston through the North End to the Bu ...
(across from the Old South Meeting House)and is visited by more than 3 million people per year.[
]
History
The statues and park were unveiled on June 28, 1998, to mark 150 years since the height of the Great Famine. Although well received in Boston at the time, the statues were criticized by Fintan O'Toole
Fintan O'Toole (born 16 February 1958) is a polemicist, literary editor, journalist and drama critic for ''The Irish Times'', for which he has written since 1988. O'Toole was drama critic for the '' New York Daily News'' from 1997 to 2001 and ...
of the ''Irish Times
''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...
'' who said they represented "pious cliches and dead conventions".[ In 2013, ]Sebastian Smee
Sebastian Smee is an Australian-born Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for the ''Washington Post''.
Education and career
Educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide, Smee graduated from the University of Sydney with an Honours degree in fine arts ...
, art critic for ''The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'', called it "the most mocked and reviled public sculpture in Boston".[ Others have decried the monument as a commemoration of the accomplishments of ]Irish Americans
, image = Irish ancestry in the USA 2018; Where Irish eyes are Smiling.png
, image_caption = Irish Americans, % of population by state
, caption = Notable Irish Americans
, population =
36,115,472 (10.9%) alone ...
rather than a memorial to the Famine.[
The Irish American community and immigrant groups in general remain strong supporters and advocates of the memorial, accusing art critics of being elitists. Despite the negativity of a handful or art critics, the Memorial continues to receive positive reviews on TripAdvisor and has become an important stop for tourists, school groups and others visiting Boston. As a stop along Boston's Irish Heritage Trail, the Memorial attracts many visitors from Ireland as well as Irish-Americans from across the United States.
Maintenance work has been cut back since Flatley's death in 2008. The Downtown Boston Business Improvement District and a nearby ]Walgreens
Walgreen Company, d/b/a Walgreens, is an American company that operates the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States behind CVS Health. It specializes in filling prescriptions, health and wellness products, health information, a ...
pharmacy help with cleaning the park area, but the site was described in 2013 as a "magnet for vagrants and pigeons".
The memorial was the site of a July 2014 rally in support of the sheltering of immigrant children in Boston. It was also the site, in January 2017, of a protest against a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
See also
* List of memorials to the Great Famine
*The Irish Famine Memorial is part of the Irish Heritage Trai
* History of Irish Americans in Boston
References
External links
*
{{Public art in Boston
1998 establishments in Massachusetts
1998 sculptures
Monuments and memorials in Boston
Outdoor sculptures in Boston
Sculptures of children in the United States
Sculptures of men in Massachusetts
Sculptures of women in Massachusetts
Statues in Boston