Right in the middle of Battery Park City in Manhattan, is the Irish Famine memorial. It’s just a few minutes walk from Wall St., or the World Trade Centre Site, and it’s just about the last place you would expect to find a cottage from Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, but there it is.
I remember seeing this very cottage in its original location, in Mayo, as a teenager and being told there was a crazy plan to move it stone by stone to the US. Walking around it in New York was one of my most surreal experiences there, but it’s definitely worth the visit. The grounds are kept very well, and the grasses and peat are authentic, although the weather isn’t.
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