New park celebrates Irish contributions to New Orleans

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald

Irish eyes and the sun were smiling May 12 for the dedication and blessing of Hibernian Memorial Park along a four-acre neutral ground stretch of Pontchartrain Boulevard.

Kicking off the celebration was the Marine Forces Reserve Band, directed by Sgt. Hannah Ford, performing the national anthems of Ireland and the United States.

Father Patrick Collum, state chaplain of the Ancient Order of Hibernians who is originally from Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim, Ireland, offered the invocation and park blessing.

Father Collum believes the memorial park will be a sacred setting to honor the Irish who “labored tirelessly to build the projects that made our nation great, including this New Basin Canal, above which we now gather.” His prayer was for those who visit the site to have “health in body and protection of soul.”

In place for 33 years
The memorial park dates to 1990, when a 7-foot-tall Celtic cross of Kilkenny marble was installed by the Irish Cultural Society. Members Dermot and Ellen McGlinchey were instrumental in raising $25,000 for the cross that sits atop a pedestal inscribed in the English and Gaelic languages to honor the Irish laborers who built the canal.

Since that time, the members of the Louisiana Hibernian Charity, a division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Louisiana, and many people of Irish descent, including the Ransone and Kerrigan families, have worked tirelessly to build an appropriate Irish memorial around the cross. Jimmy Moriarty is president of the Louisiana Hibernian Charity.

The new park will be built in four phases, said Terri Landry, a historian and producer of an upcoming WYES documentary, “They Swung Their Picks: The Irish and the New Basin Canal,” on the digging of the canal. Landry also is archivist, writer and grant writer for the Louisiana Hibernian Charity.

The initial phase included park infrastructure; raising and stabilizing the Celtic cross; paving of the main walkway and building a 283-foot bluestone walkway with Celtic knot inlays; constructing six, semicircular brick benches flanking the cross; landscaping; lighting; and creating a bermed-earth replica of the New Basin Canal.

This phase will conclude later this summer with the installation of six, 42-by-28-inch interpretive panels with high-quality photographs obtained from local repositories and private collections called the “Irish History Walk.”


The panel themes are: Ireland and New Orleans – 300 Years of Shared History; They Swung Their Picks; The New Basin Canal; Establishing a Community; Shaping History; and Festivity and Flavor, Landry said.

The second phase will have a berm on the south side of the sidewalk from the cross with a sidewalk and pavers and “statuary of canal diggers so people will actually get a sense of what it was like,” Landry said.

Other planned beautifications will include historic markers and panels.

Helped local commerce
Work to build the canal began in 1832, a year after the Louisiana Legislature granted a charter to the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company to create the six-mile, commercial waterway from Lake Pontchartrain to South Rampart Street near the current-day Union Passenger Terminal.

Thousands of Irishmen used “axes and shovels to clear 75 acres of timber and excavate 557,401 yards of muck, hauling a wheelbarrow load at a time up wooden planks out of the ditch,” as reported on the Louisiana Hibernian Charity website (www.nolahibernianpark.org). The dangers surrounding the construction of the 60-foot wide, 7-foot deep canal, along with yellow fever and cholera outbreaks, claimed Irish immigrant lives. The waterway opened in 1838.   

By the 1950s, the canal was completely filled in as shipping, rail and road transportation developed, obliterating the viability of the canal.

“This is a beautiful community space,” said Geraldine Byrne Nason, the ambassador of Ireland to the United States, “and will serve both as a symbol and legacy of the significance of the New Basin Canal but, very importantly, as the legacy of the Irish who labored in its creation.”

Nason touted the contributions of the modern-day Irish government to the city of New Orleans and the United States, including a capital grant totalling $249,180 from the Emigrant Support Programme of Ireland and smaller “Heritage” grants. The state of Louisiana also contributed $250,000 in capital outlay funding, as did other private contributors.

The support is a tangible expression of Ireland’s interest in its Irish communities “off the island,” Nason said.

“This significant investment by the Irish government reflects the importance by which we view our relationships here in New Orleans and Louisiana,” Nason said. “It says something about our desire to remain deeply connected to what the 1916 proclamation called ‘Ireland’s exiled children,’ which, in modern parlance, we call our ‘diaspora.’”

Nason recounted Irish-Americans’ trek to America and Louisiana after the 1798 uprising in Ireland, which produced “wind in the sails” of the first Irish coming here. The growth of the Irish in New Orleans was so rapid that the first St. Patrick’s Day here was in 1809.

Many lives lost
Construction of the 19th- century New Basin Canal project did not come without cost, especially in the lives of the Irish community, she said. But, when she reflects on the memorial project, “I’m really struck by the incredible resilience of individuals and so many families as they built their lives here. … It is tinged with sadness, but also reflective of the Irish spirit – the determined, industrious working collectively to take action. That speaks so much to us as Irish people.”

Nason hopes to advance the relationship between New Orleans and Ireland in economic trade, academic partnerships with local universities and in arts and culture.

Past national president of the Hibernians, retired Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jim F. McKay III, whose ancestors are from Galway, Ireland, was recognized at the ribbon cutting for his contribution to the park. He said the park sits on the last section of the former six-mile New Basin Canal.

“Considered the greatest work project of the 19th century here in New Orleans, the canal contributed to our economic vitality for nearly 100 years,” he said.

In addition to the canal, he mentioned St. Joseph Church on Tulane Avenue being built by the Irish.

“The Irish played a big role in building New Orleans, not only in infrastructure and leadership but as citizens who stayed here, adding to our diversity,” McKay said. “The Irish never forget our own, and we wanted to remind the city how this canal carried goods down to New Orleans.”

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