When it’s St. Patrick’s Day in New Orleans, get ready to catch a cabbage

NEW ORLEANS– The large old town hall with colonnade was designed by an Irish architect. A neighborhood near the wharves is still known as the Irish Channel. Recognizable towers and spiers of Catholic churches built for Irish immigrants adorn the skyline.

New Orleans is known for a culture that emerged from early French and Spanish colonization, Caribbean trade, and the legacy of enslaved Africans. But immigrants from various countries also influenced the art, architecture, food and music of New Orleans. March annually focuses on the Irish, with St. Patrick’s Day celebrations including shamrock-themed block parties and neighborhood parades.

“If you look back at Irish history in New Orleans or Irish politics in New Orleans, many of our mayors, representatives and city council members were of Irish descent,” said Ronnie Burke, the grand marshal of this weekend’s Irish Channel parade.

He picked up a string of rosary beads made of marble from Connemara in County Galway, Ireland. His family emigrated there five generations ago to escape the Great Hunger, which caused a wave of Irish migration in the 19th century.

He was one of dozens of New Orleans residents dressed in green who gathered Thursday in a park near the Mississippi River during an Irish-themed party and fundraiser for St. Michael, a school for students with learning disabilities. The event also served as a reunion of sorts for former Irish Channel residents who attended a Catholic school in the area. And it was a prelude to this weekend’s parades in and around New Orleans.

Irish lore abounds in the city, especially at this time of year.

Much of it focuses on the work of Irish immigrants in digging the New Basin Canal in the early 19th century, part of a national wave of infrastructure improvements that attracted Irish immigrant workers. The hardships faced by New Basin workers – in addition to the grueling work, there was a deadly cholera outbreak – are points of pride among the city’s Irish.

The canal eventually became obsolete and was filled in decades ago, but a park on a piece of reclaimed land, marked by a 7-foot marble Celtic cross, honors the memory of the workers.

The hard lives of Irish workers led to a St. Patrick’s Day tradition unique to New Orleans: float riders in the annual Irish Channel parade throw cabbage and potatoes to people on the streets, an Irish-American twist on the Mardi Grass practice of throwing strings of beads and other favors for celebrants.

“It’s unique to New Orleans, and it’s unique within New Orleans,” said Laura Kelley, an adjunct professor in Tulane University’s history department and author of the book “The Irish in New Orleans.” The tradition dates back to the 1940s, she said.

“The Irish Channel was a real working class area. And there were hard times – we’re coming out of the Great Depression,” she said. “It’s a way that you can give food to the people in your neighborhood and give it freely and equally, and, well, it’s a face-saving solution. measuring unit.”

Irish immigration to New Orleans has occurred since the city’s early days as a French and later Spanish colony, Kelley said. Improvements in infrastructure and the famine brought new waves of immigrants who strengthened the Irish presence. In 1850, about a quarter of the city’s population was Irish, she said.

“On a per capita basis, New Orleans’ Irish population was larger than that of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago and Boston,” Kelley said. “It was higher than any other place except New York City.”

Yet even the Irish are sometimes surprised at the strength of Irish-American culture in New Orleans. Sean Kennedy, an accountant by profession, arrived from Ireland in 1991. He had no intention of staying, but has lived in New Orleans ever since. He now has an Irish bar.

Kelley, who has Irish roots, had no idea about the city’s Irish heritage when she arrived in town about 30 years ago to work on a doctorate. She struck up a conversation with a taxi driver and mistook him for a New Yorker because of his accent, without realizing that the port city’s patois – influenced by Irish, Italian and German immigrants, among others – often resembles the Northeast. then the Old South.

“I was completely confused because he sounded like he came straight from New York City,” said Kelley. “And here he is telling me he never left New Orleans. And it was the first time I heard about the Irish Channel.”

But the Irish influence has long been cherished by Bethany Brinkman. At St. Michael’s Street Festival on Thursday, she said her great-grandparents had immigrated to New Orleans from Ireland. And she remembered her grandfather singing Irish lullabies.

“He had put on an Irish brogue,” she said, “which he sort of picked up from his grandparents.”