An Irish lament: integrating spare architectural forms with pastoral elements transplanted from the Irish countryside, New York's newest memorial is dedicated to the victims of Ireland's Great Famine - On Site

Art in America, May, 2003 by David Ebony

1846 was the date, and not without reason Shall it be remembered until the end of time Scarcity, poverty, mouths without feeding There never has been so desperate a scourge.

--from "The White Potatoes" by Peatsai O Callanan

Written in the midst of the Great Famine that devastated Ireland from 1846 to 1850, Peatsai O Callanan's anguished Gaelic lament describes the ravages of hunger and disease in the Irish countryside. The catastrophe, brought about by blight in the potato crop, resulted in mass starvation, along with outbreaks of typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery, which together claimed more than a million lives. The situation was exacerbated by dubious political machinations between the Irish and British authorities. As landlords confiscated property from sick and impoverished farmers, many of those who survived fled abroad. By the end of 1850, the population of Ireland had shrunk from 8 million to approximately 5 million. The majority headed for the U.S., arriving at Ellis Island by the thousands. The flood of Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century changed the face of New York City and, eventually, the course of the entire nation.

Periodically throughout the 20th century, discussion arose regarding the creation of a New York memorial to victims of the Great Famine, which would also be a tribute to the vitality and fortitude of the Irish people. Serious talks over the past several decades led to a recent proposal by Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) president and chief executive Timothy S. Carey. On a 1999 trip to Ireland with New York governor George E. Pataki, Carey suggested such a memorial be sited in Lower Manhattan on a half-acre square along the Hudson River in Battery Park City at Vesey Street. With the governor's endorsement, a $5-million project was launched, financed by the BPCA. Carey hired art consultant Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz to organize the process of selecting an artist for the job. Among the 150 applicants, five finalists received $10,000 grants to create models and detailed plans for the memorial.

The winning submission was the Irish Hunger Memorial by Brian Tolle, a New York artist known for large sculptures and installations that often incorporate bold architectonic forms. Working with New York designers Juergen Riehm and David Piscuskas of 1100 Architects, and landscape architect Gail Wittwer-Laird, Tolle created an imaginative and evocative monument. He also enlisted the help of historian Maureen O'Rourke-Murphy and Irish cultural liaison Adrian P. Flannelly to guide the work's historical accuracy in its various references to the Great Famine.

The memorial features two distinct yet interrelated elements. Raised above street level, a large, sloping concrete platform with a scalloped edge is covered with earth, vegetation and fragments of stone structures, including walls and a roofless cottage. It re-creates a plot of farmland in rural Ireland. Most visitors enter the memorial from North End Avenue, near the World Financial Center's Winter Garden. At present, a narrow gravel pathway leads from the sidewalk to the highest point of the platform, offering a panoramic view of the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and New Jersey.

The second element of the memorial, constituting the base of the platform, is a rather severe geometric enclosure with a street-level entrance at River Terrace. The base structure's walls, both inside and out, are made of narrow, horizontal strips of polished Kilkenny limestone imported from Ireland; the dark green-gray stone is punctuated with white circular fossils. These strips alternate with long, backlit bands of thick glass several inches high. Lines of blocky text mounted on thin bands of Plexiglas, which are inserted behind each glass slat, can be changed or removed.

Intended to address general issues related to world hunger, as well as those specific to the Great Famine, the texts include old Irish proverbs, such as "Hunger will break through a stone wall" and "The well-fed does not understand the lean." Others are quotes from U.S. presidents: "Hunger does not breed reform, it breeds madness and all the angry distempers that make an ordered life impossible"--Woodrow Wilson, 1918; and "Every day 25 percent of our food supply is wasted"--Bill Clinton, 1998. The prominence of text in Tolle's design recalls Maya Lin's 1982 Vietnam War Memorial.

The crisp, clean lines of the base counterpoint the gently undulating curves of the upper area. A corridor, outfitted with speakers issuing audio versions of the wall texts, leads from the riverside street level to the grassy slope. The passageway effects a transition from an enclosed, tomblike space to an open, gracefully articulated pastoral landscape. Key to the success of Tolle's design is the surprising harmony he establishes as geometric abstraction melds with the landscape.

Everything on the verdant platform relates directly to Ireland and to the Great Famine. Its 96-by-170-foot area equals the maximum size plot farmers could hold in order to qualify for British government aid during the Famine. All of the 62 types of flowers, plants and shrubs used in the work, such as ling heather, bearberry, foxglove and gorse, come from County Mayo, which was hit particularly hard by the Famine. A number of the species, unable to withstand New York winters, are to be replanted each spring. The cottage itself, dating from the 1820s, was removed from the county stone-by-stone and reconstructed on the site. Tom Slack, a cousin of Tolle's longtime partner Brian Clyne, donated the structure to the city. Slack had inherited the ruins on a disused property; they are typical of those abandoned by victims of the Famine.