Bowery – Visiting the Relatives

Towering Over Pearl Street

The Verizon Building at 375 Pearl Street, NYC, was once referred to as the ugliest tower in Manhattan. At 32 stories tall, it’s a dramatic change from when James O’Day and Ellen Shea, along with their three adult children, lived here in 1905. The O’Days’s residence was a two-story, two-family house, which remarkably, I foundContinue reading “Towering Over Pearl Street”

Lost Pearl

There were no Corinthian columns in here when my great-great-grandfather James O’Day and his wife, Ellen Shea, lived here on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan. They lived on the street for decades—from around 1875 to 1910, and at 497 Pearl Street from 1884 until around 1910. I believe the house was small, as there wereContinue reading “Lost Pearl”

Old Church, New Church

The Church of St. Andrew in Lower Manhattan has changed dramatically over the years. It was originally built in 1818 as a Unitarian Church. In 1842, it was converted to a Catholic church. The ceiling collapsed in 1875 during a Lenten service when a storm caused the building next door to come crashing down. ManyContinue reading “Old Church, New Church”

Urban Renewal

The Alfred E. Smith Houses were built in the early 1950s. They replaced an entire neighborhood that housed my immigrant ancestors a century before. The area now known as “Two Bridges” in the Lower East Side of Manhattan had no bridges back then (neither the Brooklyn Bridge nor the Williamsburg Bridges had been built yet).Continue reading “Urban Renewal”

Pearl Street

Both the accused billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and my great-great-great-grandmother Ellen (O’Connell) O’Day died at the same place. It’s true! In 1881, Ellen died from a fall down the steps. She was very old, 93, and lived with her son James and his family at 479 1/2 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, near the BrooklynContinue reading “Pearl Street”

Old Guard

The second oldest Catholic Church in Manhattan is where my earliest Irish immigrant ancestors were married in 1866. Ellen Shea, who had escaped the Irish Potato Famine in Kilgarvan, Kerry, with her mother and sister, arrived in 1851 with many of her extended family and neighbors. James O’Dea came around 1865, but I’m not ableContinue reading “Old Guard”

Paupers Landing

The Lynches walked through this big doorway uninvited and poor on June 7, 1884. Before them, other ancestors, the O’Days, did the same in the spring of 1865. Millions of Americans can trace their families to this doorway at the southern tip of Manhattan. Built as a fort in 1811, Castle Clinton (named in 1815Continue reading “Paupers Landing”