Home > School/Educational Facility > Irish American Heritage Center

In 1987, a man named Hughie O'Hara, who was president of an Irish heritage society called the Shamrock American Club, decided that Chicago's Irish deserved a building all their own. So O'Hara raised enough money to buy the old Mayfair College, on the corner of Wilson and Knox, and named it the Irish American Heritage Center. In the last decade, the converted school has been filled from basement to rafters with all things Irish. On the ground floor, the walls are painted with snaky Celtic designs, the bathrooms are labeled in English (Men) and Gaelic (Fir), and the gymnasium echoes with the clomping heels of children learning traditional Irish dances. At the far end of the floor is the Fifth Province, the center's own pub, which brings in Irish folksingers on Friday and Saturday night, and serves Guinness from the tap. The pub got its name from a remark Irish President Mary Robinson made when she visited the center in 1991. The Irish in America, she said, are the country's "Fifth Province." Next to the pub is a meeting room, where the center offers lessons in Gaelic, and where the senior citizens group Tir Na Nog ("land of perpetual youth") meets. On the second floor is a 680-seat auditorium with seats upholstered in deep green (look close enough at the brass plates on the front row seats and you'll see a familiar name among those who helped pay for the renovation: Richard M. Daley.) Plays by the great Irish dramatists, including Sean O'Casey and J.M. Synge, have been performed here. Also up on the second floor is the museum, which has a collection of Belleeck Irish porcelain -- donated by a Chicago priest -- as well as a copy of the Book of Kells. A library devoted to Irish history and literature is on the 2nd FLoor. The center also hosts two annual events -- the Irish American Heritage Festival in July and its annual St. Patrick's Day Celebration in March.

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