A plea to save the American Irish Historical Society
Jonathan Smyth's Times Past column recalls the work of the American Irish Historical Society which was recently put up for sale...
The largest and most complete archival collection relating to the Irish in America is held by the American Irish Historical Society (AIHS), an organisation tasked with the responsibility of safeguarding the irreplaceable works of Irish and Irish American interest. The society started in Boston on January 20, 1897, and maintains an outlook that remains non-partisan and non-sectarian in nature and has stayed in continuous operation to the present day, aside from a change of location to New York in 1904 where its headquarters were to be established. In the early years, the society moved around several different buildings before settling into a more prestigious and permanent property, worthy of the society’s eminent position and its invaluable records, and as Edward Leamy recalled in 1941: ‘on April 14, 1940, it (the society) moved into its handsome new home at 991 Fifth Avenue, opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art.’
The American Irish Historical Society is a focal point and a visible representation of the home of the Irish American community (including the women and men of Cavan) who came to the United States as immigrants. In recent times, controversy came to the fore when the society put the historical building up for sale. I would like to acknowledge Councillor T.P. O’Reilly who informed me about the American Irish Historical Society.
Collections
The Society holds the ‘most complete’ private collection of Irish material in the United States. Its library possesses the rarest collections of letters from eminent figures like Charles Stewart Parnell and Patrick Pearse; and artworks by famous artists like Nathanel Hone, John Butler Yeats, Aloysius O’Kelly, George Russell (A.E.), Augustus St. Gaudens, and Aloysius O’Kelly. Indeed, there are so many rare Irish artefacts, including further examples such as a tricolour from the GPO in 1916, a copy of the Proclamation of Independence, and the largest and most complete private library of Irish and Irish American historical literature in the United States containing many thousands of volumes. Cultural programmes are organised regularly by the centre, and they publish a journal called the Recorder.
In Leamy’s account on the society, written in 1941, he wrote: ‘The townhouse in which the Society currently resides is a beautiful five-story limestone building entered through wrought iron grille doors. In the entrance hall there are busts of Charles O’Connor, the famous lawyer, by Augustus St Gaudens; Justice John W. Goff, the noted jurist, by Ordway; and Thomas Davis, the Irish poet, by Albert Power, R.H.A., a gift of the Irish Government. Before the most recent renovations of the building, the first floor constituted the main section of the Society’s library of over fifty thousand volumes … The library contains many priceless and exceedingly rare books such as the famous Bedell Bible published in the seventeenth century; a first edition of Geoffrey Keating’s History of Ireland and a rare set of the Annals of the Four Masters.’
Saving the property
Between 2006 and 2008, the Society reportedly spent millions on a restoration project to improve the building’s safety going into the future. However, this project was believed to have proven a heavy financial burden on the organisation. Then, the Historical Society suffered further by the effects of the recent pandemic having to cancel its enormously successful black-tie dinner at the end of the year, adding to its financial woes. In 2021, the American Irish Historical Society put up for sale its prestigious institution on 991 Fifth Avenue, New York for $50 million. It was an unprecedented move, said to be allegedly due to financial mismanagement. To keep the building, a rescue mission was formed by a group called the Liberandum Collegium (www.liberandumcollegium.org) of which the ‘Royal Court of East Breifne O’Reilly’ became a founding member along with other Irish Diaspora individuals and groups in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States with the common goal to rescue the Historical Society from potentially having the collections dispersed and losing its home, which is the heart and soul of the Irish-American community on Fifth Ave, New York.
The Rescue Mission’s concern was two-pronged, firstly, intending to raise $50million to save the Society’s building for the diaspora and secondly, to form a new board comprised of a broad church of the Irish Diaspora and to breathe new life into the society so that this treasured asset can best service the Irish American community and the wider diaspora.
The strong support of the global Irish Diaspora, was noted by Liberandum Collegium on their website which stated: ‘All of this was caveated with ‘Yes, you have our full support, and we want to be involved.’
Saving the AIHS
Should the sale proceed, the society intended to move the entire library and artifacts to a remote location in upstate New York. In response, Liberandum Collegium instigated legal action requesting the New York Courts to grant an injunction to prevent the society moving from its home of some eighty years.
The well-known and respected New York Lawyer, John J. Reilly (himself of Cavan descent), from the global law firm Squire Patton Boggs, in Manhattan, was tasked to lead the legal action intended by the rescue mission. Within the past few years, the Irish Government carried out an audit of the association and put on record their concerns. Liberandum Collegium are currently seeking additional donors and sponsors to step up and join in the rescue mission and to add their names to the legal action for the injunction. They state that the legal injunction is the only proposal out there to stop the removal of the Society's rare artefacts and prevent them getting lost or damaged. Furthermore, there is reportedly no public register, or even an inventory of the collections inside the AIHS building, making it difficult to know what is there.
Liberandum Collegium are continuing to seek all sponsors and donors to come forward and help prevent the relocation of the American Irish History Society and its priceless artefacts.
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