Irish Hunger Memorial

Irish Hunger Memorial

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[1] 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.[2]

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.[2] 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."[2][3]

Brian Tolle also designed the site-specific sculpture "Outfall, 2015"[4] along the Bow River in Calgary, Alberta — an inverted, computer-generated scale-model of Mount Peechee — representing the glacial origins of the Bow River — which acts as a functional retention pond to hold excess water during heavy rainstorms.[5]

See also

References

  1. "Brian Tolle Irish Hunger Memorial, 2002". Battery Park City. 2002. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 Smith, Roberta (July 16, 2002). "A Memorial Remembers The Hungry". The New York Times. Retrieved July 10, 2010.
  3. "Slack History". carradoogan.com. Retrieved July 10, 2010.
  4. Olafson, Karin (August 14, 2015). "Here's the Deal with the Concrete Sculpture Along the Bow River Parkdale Plaza is a new public space that's part of the Landscape of Memory corridor along Memorial Drive. It officially opened on June 27. BY". Avenue Calgary. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
  5. "Storm drainage recovery and resiliency projects". City of Calgary. 2015. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
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Coordinates: 40°42′54.5″N 74°00′59.5″W / 40.715139°N 74.016528°W / 40.715139; -74.016528

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