The Irish Hunger Memorial, designed collaboratively by artist Brian Tolle, landscape architect Gail Wittwer-Laird, and architecture firm 1100 Architect, is located on a 0.5-acre (0.20 ha) 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 Mór in Irish 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 plot landscaped with stones, soil, and native vegetation transported from the western coast of Ireland. It contains stones from all of the counties of Ireland.
The memorial also incorporates a reconstruction of an authentic 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."
As of August 2016, the memorial is temporarily closed for waterproofing work. It is scheduled to reopen in the late spring of 2017.
Gallery
See also
- List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
References
External links
- Architectural Record Magazine Between Two Worlds: Remembering the Hungry By Roger Shepherd
- Jane Holtz Kay Hunger for Memorials: Article from Landscape Architecture, March 2003
- New York City Walk Photo Tour of Irish Hunger Memorial
- New York's garden monument to the Irish Famine Tourist Information Site
- Official website
- Irish Hunger Memorial brochure