Tourism Group is Adding New Landmarks to Boston’s Irish Heritage Trail

The Boston Irish Heritage Trail, a three mile walk covering 20 public landmarks and depicting three centuries of Irish-American history, is expanding to include more sites in 2025.

Stretching from the city’s waterfront through downtown and Back Bay and over to Fenway Park, the Irish Heritage Trail features some of Boston’s finest public art and open spaces, including statues and monuments, public buildings and historic graveyards and state and city parks, along with the nation’s first public library and its most historic baseball park. 

Among the news sites being added this year:

Kip Tiernan Memorial on Dartmouth Street, Back Bay, a homage to Boston’s leading homeless and hunger advocate for half a century;

The Swan Boats in the Public Garden Lagoon, created in 1877 by an Irish immigrant couple and today an iconic visitors destination; 

Edgar Allan Poe Statue outside the Transportation Building at 10 Park Plaza honors the Boston-born gothic writer whose ancestors emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland.

G. P. A. Healy, son of an Irish ship captain from Dublin, was America’s most prominent 19^th century portrait painter, as seen by his masterpiece, ‘Webster Replying to Hayne’ at Faneuil Hall.

St. Stephen’s Church, founded in 1862 for Irish immigrants settling on Hanover Street, North End, has two plaques honoring political matriarch Rose Kennedy & accused witch Ann ‘Goody’ Glover.

“By exploring  this specific slice of the city’s history, the Irish Trail adds a significant chapter about Boston from an immigrant and ethnic perspective,” says Michael Quinlin, who created the trail in summer 1994 when working at the Boston Parks & Recreation Department. 

“The Irish Heritage Trail intersects and complements the city’s other important history walks – the Freedom Trail, Black Heritage Trail and Women’s Heritage Trail – underscoring universal themes that help knit the city’s history together,” Quinlin says.  “And It helps to highlight the tragedy-to-triumph theme so common in immigrant journeys that are still taking place today.”

Managed by Boston Irish Tourism Association (BITA) since 2000, the Irish Heritage Trail is a self-guided walk for residents and visitors to enjoy.  Copies of the map with site descriptions are available in BITA’s Travel & Culture magazine, available for free at Boston Common Visitor Information Center, and at tourist centers, museums, cultural venues and gift shops in Massachusetts.   Guided tours, which stopped during COVID, are starting up later this year.  

In the months ahead, BITA is planning to expand the Irish Heritage trail even further, adding new sites in Boston’s neighborhoods and greater Boston, and eventually producing an Irish heritage map of the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Still the largest ethnic group in Massachusetts, with nearly 20% of residents claiming Irish ancestry, Quinlin says the Irish have made enormous contributions to Massachusetts, as artists and writers, politicians and war heroes, architects and builders, and as advocates for the poor and underserved.  The Irish Heritage Trail celebrates those contributions.

Read more about additional landmarks being added to the Irish Heritage Trail.