A crowd of more than 60 people gathered recently for a special St. Patrick’s Day tour of Dublin, or Little Dublin as many call it. The West Rye neighborhood (Maple Avenue and High Street between North Street and Locust Avenue) was home to Irish and then Italian immigrants for decades around the turn of the 19th century. With many of the original buildings still standing, it is steeped in history, which Rye Historical Society tour guide Joie Cooney brought to life on a walking tour.

Blending her deep knowledge of the neighborhood with her own half-Irish humor, Cooney relied on Rye Historical Society records as well as primary documents from local churches and the Westchester Historical Society to paint a picture of the neighborhood. While the local history reflects national trends in immigration, it is not a neighborhood that people from other parts of town travel through regularly. One attendee noted, “I grew up in Rye and I don’t think I’ve ever been to Dublin!” Other attendees live in the neighborhood and enjoyed seeing it through a historic lens.

The 1840s potato famine in Ireland was the impetus for many to emigrate to the U.S., Cooney said, and opportunities for work abounded from the Erie Canal to the Croton Reservoir. In Rye, the Irish were welcomed as laborers, but they needed a place to live. They set up makeshift wood dwellings in the area between North Street and Locust Avenue on land that was swampy, rocky, and considered undesirable at the time. The railroad was built in 1848, around the same time that the first Irish families arrived. This area, while separated from downtown by the railroad, was an easy walk to town and the train and to places of employment throughout town. Soon more permanent, multifamily homes were built, and the neighborhood took shape. There were pubs on every corner and families ran businesses out of their homes. Dublin has historically been one of the only mixed-use neighborhoods in Rye, and this continues today.

As those on the tour traveled up High Street toward Maple Avenue, they learned how Dublin transitioned from being a predominantly Irish neighborhood to an Italian neighborhood by the turn of the 20th century. Many of the Italians who came to Dublin had been stone workers in Italy, and they began building stone buildings and churches as soon as they arrived. Many of those structures can still be seen on Maple Avenue, including two original chapels that are now private residences. Laura Iorillo Pellegrini, the great-granddaughter of one of the Italian church builders, stepped out on her front porch to say hello and tell some family stories to the gathered crowd. She lives next door to the chapel her great-grandfather built more than 130 years ago.