A new RTE radio documentary explores how Kenmare Street in lower
Manhattan was named in memory of an Irish immigrant. The RTE
radio doc ‘Kenmare Street’ tells the story of famine, enforced
emigration, New York tenements, politics, and how a kid from the
slums of the 'Five Points' got to name a street in Manhattan
after his mother's home town of Kenmare. In 1849, the agent for
the Lord Lansdowne landlord of the Kenmare Estate recommended
the estate could cut costs if they sent a portion of the
destitute population to the US and Canada. Read more Irish news
here The cost of the trip would cost less than food and lodgings
for one year in a Kenmare workhouse. Thousands of Kenmare
residents took up the offer and immigrated to New York, settling
in the notorious Five Points neighborhood, made up of Baxter
Street, Orange Street and Worth Street. Living in one of the
most notorious slums in NYC the Kenmare Irish found work in
tanneries, taverns and selling food on the streets. One of the
residents, Tim Sullivan, was