Your city's Irish community?

St. Patrick's Day is this week. Many cities in the nation have large and/or visible Irish populations. Does your city have an Irish neighborhood? Does your city have a big St. Patrick's Day parade or have a large Irish festival at some time in the year? Forty Acres is Wilmington's historically Irish neighborhood. As you might find with Irish in any part of the country, they are proud of their heritage. irish flags fly next to American flags at some houses, Ntore Dame gear can be seen being worn by people, and cultural events are scheduled on occasion. Forty Acres got it's name back when it was still farmland in the mid-1800's. It was said that one acre of land in this area produced as much goods as forty acres of land somewhere else outside of Wilmington. General boundaries of Forty Acres: Pictures from Forty Acres: An Irish flag flies at a house on Shallcross Avenue. A duplex on Grant Avenue. Sweeney's, a store that specializes in Irish products at the corner of Union Steet and Gilpin Avenue. Some houses on Gilpin Avenue. The building on the right is the old Number 5 Firehouse, dating from 1893. It is the oldest continuously-used firehouse in Wilmington. Some rowhouses on Lincoln Street. More rowhouses in Forty Acres. The old Delaware Academy of Medicine building on Lovering Avenue. Some new houses in Forty Acres. These houses were built on the site of a convent. The nuns moved into the suburbs because it became too expensive to live in the city. The building was destroyed, and the only thing saved from the convent was the wall. You can see where the wall was knocked down to make way for a little street opening. St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church on Union Street near Gilpin Avenue. St. Ann's is the center of the neighborhood, being the common link for all the Irish in the neighborhood when people started moving into the surrounding area. >