Downtown Pittsburgh will turn green on Saturday, March 14. Tens of thousands will line Grant Street for the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, one of the largest celebrations of its kind in the country.

In Pittsburgh, one of the nation’s most Irish cities, the holiday is less a performance of ethnic nostalgia than a genuine sense of homecoming for many residents. The story of how so many Irish came to call this corner of Pennsylvania their own stretches back nearly three centuries, shaped by famine and faith, hard labor and hard politics, and a tenacity that left its mark on nearly every institution the city holds dear.

As professor of religious studies and chair of Catholic studies at the University of Pittsburgh, my work focuses on American religious history and the history of Catholicism.

Irish foundation

Some Scotch-Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics came to the Pittsburgh region in the 18th century, drawn by economic opportunity and the desire to escape British Anglican religious tyranny. In the first U.S. census of 1790, the population of Pittsburgh was already 19% Irish, with over 250,000 having emigrated from Ulster alone in the previous century. Both Presbyterians and Catholics made the journey across the Atlantic.

An even larger wave of Irish immigration, however, came with the Catholic exodus during the potato blight that triggered the Great Famine of 1845-51, in which an estimated 1 million people died. Irish Catholics were disproportionately affected by the blight, having been forced onto marginal land where they relied mostly on potatoes for survival. Centuries of penal laws had left Catholics as impoverished tenant farmers, while Protestants – wealthier and less reliant on the crop – had greater resources to survive. By 1900, more Irish lived in the United States than in Ireland itself. Today, between 11% and 16% of Pittsburgh’s population claims Irish ancestry.

Neighborhoods and parish life

The Irish settled throughout Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. The Hill District, Lawrenceville, Homewood and Hazelwood all had significant Irish populations. On the South Side of the Monongahela River, one neighborhood was called Limerick, named after the county in Ireland. From the 1840s through the 1880s, the Point – today’s downtown area – was so densely populated with Irish immigrants it was known as Little Ireland.

On the city’s North Side, then called Allegheny City, the immigrant community was similarly Irish. Women worked as domestics; men served as unskilled laborers, canal diggers and later as mill workers across the river. As in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, they dug canals and fell victim to cholera in large numbers, many buried in mass graves along the canal routes.

Parish life formed the backbone of the community. The first Catholic church in Pittsburgh was St. Patrick’s in the Strip District, built in 1808. It houses a replica of the Holy Stairs, 28 white marble steps in Rome that many Christians believe Jesus Christ climbed in Jerusalem before his crucifixion, and a piece of the Blarney Stone, a famous block of limestone built into the battlements of Blarney Castle in County Cork, Ireland. In Allegheny City, St. Peter’s was established in 1848 to serve the Irish, while Germans, Italians, Poles and Eastern Europeans attended their own parishes.

As was typical of the national pattern in the United States, the diocesan bishops and local clergy in Pittsburgh were dominated by the Irish. From Michael O’Connor, born in County Cork and named the first bishop in 1843, to subsequent bishops, clergy and sisters – primarily the Sisters of Mercy, who founded Mercy Hospital in 1847 – Irish roots ran deep in the church. The Sisters of St. Joseph also maintained a strong presence. Notable clergy included the Rev. Charles Owen Rice, a prominent labor activist.

Orders of nursing sisters treated the sick during fierce outbreaks of epidemic disease, often for free at Mercy Hospital. Irish fraternal organizations, including the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Catholic Sacred Heart Society, also contributed to community welfare in an era of high child mortality from cholera, diphtheria, measles and smallpox.

From the mill to the mayor’s office and more

As Pittsburgh grew into the nation’s steel capital in the late 19th century, Irish immigrants and their families became an integral part of its working-class communities and labor movements. A majority of Irish immigrants worked as unskilled laborers during this time, though many advanced into skilled metal trades in iron mills. Irish workers also labored in rail yards and mines in the area.

Construction of the Pennsylvania Canal system, which connected Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in the 1830s, relied on Irish laborers to perform grueling excavation work. Many of them transitioned into industrial employment as the city’s iron and steel industries expanded.

The Irish were also central to Pittsburgh’s labor movement. Philip Murray, who came from a coal mining background, rose to become president of both the United Steelworkers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The Homestead Strike of 1892 drew in members of the Irish community as workers pushed back against the industrial order that had built the city’s wealth on their labor.

Several Irish mayors were elected in the 20th century, including David Lawrence, Pete Flaherty, Tom Murphy and Bob O’Connor, whose son Corey O’Connor is mayor today.

Lawrence served as mayor from 1946 until 1959, when he became the only Pittsburgh mayor ever elected governor of Pennsylvania.

And a more modern Pittsburgh professional, Dan Rooney, served the Obama administration as ambassador to Ireland. Locally, he is better known as the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and son of the Steelers’ founder, Art Rooney.

Pittsburgh Irish today

The Irish cultural presence in Pittsburgh remains vibrant. The city hosts a very large St. Patrick’s Day Parade each March, drawing 200,000 to 350,000 spectators from across the region. In September, there’s an annual Irish festival where roughly 25,000 attendees gather to celebrate their Irish heritage through music, dance and food.

Year-round, the community sustains Pittsburgh Irish Classical Theater, the Irish Rowing Club, the Gaelic Arts Society and the Ceili Club.

Each June, Bloomsday is celebrated with readings from James Joyce’s fiction at locations across the city. Numerous Irish pubs and at least one Irish import shop keep the connection to the old country alive for generations that have never left Pennsylvania. Three major Irish dancing companies operate around the Pittsburgh area and perform at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

The industries that once drew Irish immigrants to Pittsburgh may have largely disappeared, but their legacy remains visible in the city’s Irish culture and celebrations.

Paula Kane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.