South Side Irish Parade Lives in Memory

South Side Irish Parade Lives in Memory

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If you found yourself wandering around the South Side this weekend, mourning the absence of a certain parade, you might take heart in its history. After all, the South Side Irish Parade was a reaction to another loss. In 1960, Mayor Richard J. Daley took a St. Patrick’s Day parade on the West Side, added another one from 79th Street and turned them into one big downtown parade.

Writer Bridget Houlihan Kennedy recounts those events in her book of photographs, Chicago’s South Side Irish Parade. As Kennedy told Richard Steele, the new south side parade was the work of one man, who decided he wanted his neighborhood parade back.