The New York Saint Patrick’s Day parade has a long, fascinating history. Boston claims the oldest celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day dating from 1724, but without a parade. The New York parade, the country’s oldest, began in 1762, 14 years before the new country declared its independence from Britain. So, who were those first celebrants of March 17th? They were Irish-born soldiers serving in the British army and most of whom were Protestants. The parades were marches through the streets which ended at the taverns where the marchers feasted. Marchers wore green, which they were forbidden to do on the feast back in Ireland.
Those first parades were probably as informal as the one mentioned in a Philadelphia lady’s diary on March 17, 1778: “A crowd of Irish soldiers went by this afternoon, with one on horseback representing St. Patrick.” A more splendid parade, with the music of a British army band, was held in British-occupied Manhattan during the Revolution in 1779. Lord Rawdon, an Irish-born colonel fighting for the redcoats, led a march of his 400 Irish soldiers from lower Broadway to the Bowery, where they crowded into a tavern for a Saint Patrick’s Day dinner. Rawdon’s hospitality failed to pay off, however. Many of the volunteers later deserted and joined Washington’s army, enraging Rawdon who offered a bounty of 10 guineas for each deserter’s head, or five guineas for a turncoat brought back to him alive. General George Washington issued general orders on March 16, 1780, proclaiming St. Patrick’s Day a holiday for his troops.
The 2019 grand marshal Brian O’Dwyer greeting Gov. Kathy Hochul at the 2024 parade.
Post revolutionary New York City had a tiny Irish Catholic population and New York’s law banning Catholic priests from even entering the state had only been repealed in 1784. In 1785, the parade route incorporated the newly opened Saint Peter’s church on Barclay Street, New York’s first Catholic Church. Some New Yorkers maliciously taunted the parading Irish by dragging comic effigies of Saint Patrick made of straw and rags and hung with potatoes and codfish through the streets. Brawls caused by the effigies became so violent that in 1803 the city passed an ordinance imposing a $10 fine on anybody dragging an effigy of the saint through the streets.
The Irish Catholic population of the city soon outgrew Saint Peter’s and in 1809 the cornerstone on the first Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, now known as Saint Patrick’s Basilica, was laid and it was opened in 1815. For many years the parade ended at old Saint Patrick’s on Mulberry Street, which became the target of Nativist violence. So, a wall was built around the church property with slits so that defenders could shoot attacking mobs.
A big change took place in 1832. The Irish population had grown and formed militia groups who marched and transformed the parade into a long, impressive march of well-drilled, smartly uniformed state guard regiments and volunteer companies. The route was moved uptown; the hour-and-a-half procession crossed Twenty-third Street from Third Avenue to Eighth Avenue and circled back to City Hall, where it was reviewed by Mayor Ambrose C. Kingsbury and the City Council before its end where Archbishop John Hughes greeted the marchers at the cathedral on Prince Street. In response to threats of Nativist violence, Irish Catholics formed the Ancient Order of Hibernians in 1836 to defend both the church and the parade. The group’s headquarters was placed just across the street from old Saint Patrick’s. The Hibernians in 1838 took over the management of the parade and converted it from an informal social outing to a large, well-organized civil rights demonstration. In 1851 The legendary “Fighting 69th” Regiment led the Parade as they have every year since.
In 1932, Mayor Jimmy Walker became the first grand marshal who did not ride a horse in the parade.
By 1855, Irish-born New Yorkers comprised almost one third of the city's total population and Old Saint Paint Patrick’s was far too small to meet the needs of the mushrooming Catholic population. Archbishop Hughes laid the cornerstone for the New Saint Patrick’s Cathedral 1858, and the parade route moved to midtown in 1879 so parade participants could march by the stately new gothic cathedral. The first Irish mayor of New York City, William Grace, reviewed the parade in its new location the year after his election in 1880. One of the new features of the parade was the emergence in the 1890s of county associations, whose members marched behind splendid banners. Today each of Ireland’s 32 counties proudly march in the parade.
By the end of the 19th century, New York was the largest urban Irish settlement in the world and the Irish-dominated political organization Tammany Hall amassed great power and influence. Tammany members considered appearing at the parade as a sacred duty and many of the parade’s grand marshals were Tammany Sachems. In fact, in 1888, when Mayor Abram S. Hewitt, Peter Cooper’s son-in-law, refused to review the parade because Irish politicians had tried to pressure him into appearing, his refusal to attend was regarded as a rare act of political courage. In 1925, the grand marshal of the parade was the Tammany-backed Al Smith, the first Catholic governor of New York and the first Catholic Presidential nominee. In 1932, Smith’s hand-picked candidate to be mayor of New York, Jimmy Walker, broke tradition by becoming the first grand marshal who did not ride a horse in the parade. Walker became mired in scandal, and he had to resign, which also helped to end Tammany men’s presence as grand marshals.
Though Tammany Hall’s power faded, the parade continued to be a huge event with at least a 150,000 marchers and perhaps two million spectators. In 1948, President Harry Truman became the first and only serving American president in the parade. The following year, WPIX first broadcast the parade, but only for an hour. The TV station was flooded with complaints from Irish Americans who demanded the parade be covered in its entirety. Jack McCarthy was born in Manhattan to Irish parents, but his broadcasts replete with a brogue became a staple of the TV parade coverage for many years.
In 1961, the parade chairman, Judge James Comerford created scandal by barring Dublin playwright Brendan Behan from the parade. The judge labeled Behan, “a common drunk.” Behan not to be outdone responded that he had always wondered what happened to the snakes when Patrick drove them from Ireland, but he was now sure that they had come to America and become judges. Comerford defended the parade route in 1969 against Mayor John Lindsay’s plans to reroute the parade in Central Park.
Time moved on and the parade also slowly changed. In 1988, Albert Reynolds became the first Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland to be chosen grand marshal. The following year Dorothy Cudahy became the first female grand marshal. Beginning in the late 1990s Irish gays and lesbians demanded a place in the parade, but the traditionalist organizers continued to exclude them creating great controversy. Finally in 2014 gays and lesbians were allowed to march in the parade. In 2016, the parade was televised live on Irish television.
The parade has changed dramatically since those first marchers paraded through the streets of Lower Manhattan in 1762, but the spirit and the celebration of Irishness remains the same year after year.
