PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE
By the Civil War many of the Irish of Corktown moved on and were replaced by German immigrants, the other major US immigrant group in those times. Nonetheless the author has fond memories of visiting the Irish Club, adjacent to the old Detroit Tiger Baseball Stadium in Corktown, Detroit in 1968-69, when working in Michigan and when Detroit won the World Series. Unlike our forbearers, the author arrived a century later with a group of friends to New York from Ireland during the 1960s, all of us young, educated, healthy, almost without a care, and with little to nothing in our pockets but, as has been said, never destitute, being that we were full of ideas and optimism. Some stayed in New York, but the rest of us were gone in 24-48 hours, scattered across the country. Contrary to the prior century, many had homes they could return to in Ireland, and some eventually did so.
Fig. 33.
Port of New York, South Street from Maiden Lane circa 1850 Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum.
Maiden Lane at Intersection of Wards 1 & 2. View toward the south and the Battery. New York was the main 19 th century port of entry for Irish and European immigrants. ***********************
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