The Irish Hunger Memorial - Battery Park City

Hello everyone! I am sorry that I have been away so long, but between work and dissertation, that sometimes happens.

I promise that I have many museum adventures to share with you, but I thought that I would start out with a short post on a memorial close to my research heart: the Irish Hunger Memorial in New York City.

Located on the Battery Park City, only a few blocks away from the 9/11 Memorial, the Irish Hunger Memorial is a truly unique memorial. The memorial was built in 2002 and was designed to raise awareness about the events surrounding the Irish Famine.

I first heard about the memorial on a travel show about New York City a few years ago. The host was exploring some of the lesser known museums and memorials around NYC, including the Hunger Memorial. I remember being extremely interested in this memorial that juxtaposed the busy urban landscape of New York with the quite and empty landscape surrounding many of Ireland's clearance houses.

So, upon my most recent trip to New York, I made sure to make time for this museum between the city's bigger players, like the Met and the American Museum of Natural History. And it was worth it!

Walking to the memorial, the grassy knoll is the first thing that indicates that you have arrived. But to get onto the pathway, you must first go around the the memorial's entrance, which is a stark modern contrast to the memorial's grassy top.

All around the base are quotes and statistics about the Famine, reminding visitors of the shear numbers associated with the Famine.

As you make your way up to the grassy top, you walk through a traditional Irish cottage from the Famine era, brought over from County Mayo and painstakingly reconstructed for this memorial.

And as you walk along the meandering path, you notice that some of the stones have the names of the Irish counties carved into them. These stone were brought over from each of the 32 counties as a reminder the Famine's impact on Ireland.

It is a beautiful memorial, although vastly different from the majority of Famine memorials around the United States and Ireland. Most memorials focus on the imagery of the people, starving and weak, leaving their homeland in hopes of finding something better. But this memorial is different. It focuses on the impact the Famine had on the country. The loss of the people from both death and emigration had a long lasting effect on Ireland. And that loss is what seems to be echoed here in Battery Park City.

To learn more about the Irish Hunger Memorial, click here to visit the website.