97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman Page A

purpose of his trip was to hawk his masterpiece, a history of Ireland written in epic verse, a kind of Irish Aeneid with O’Donovan cast in the role of Virgil. O’Donovan kept a detailed travel log, and in 1864 it was published as a book. A Brief Account of the Author’s Interview with His Countrymen is essentially a glorified record of every Irishman he meets on his American wanderings, with special attention given to those who bought his book. Like the well-bred host at a dinner party, he is gracious to a fault. O’Donovan cites every customer by name (there are thousands of them), describing each with a thumbnail dossier, complete with occupation and place of birth, followed by a long-winded account of the customer’s most outstanding virtues. A Brief Account is exceedingly repetitive, but O’Donovan’s intention is more than mere entertainment. Aside from confirming his own reputation, O’Donovan is engaged in a public relations campaign on behalf of Irish-Americans, his attempt to counter negative attitudes directed at the immigrant community.
    Buried in O’Donovan’s flood of adjectives are valuable kernels of information. For example, O’Donovan describes an extensive network of Irish “boardinghouses” and “hotels” (the distinction between the two is not always clear) that was already in place by the mid-nineteenth century. It covered the major East Coast cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, extended west to Cincinnati and south to St. Louis, but also reached into more out-of-the-way places like Kittanning, Pennsylvania, and Lawrence, Massachusetts. O’Donovan also tells us something about the boarders. They included seamstresses, bakers, priests, medicine salesmen, boot-makers—all of them Irish. Finally, the author imparts a clear sense of the pressing need for room and board among a foreign population that was unusually young, most of the immigrants single and alone in a foreign country. Every boardinghouse along his winding itinerary is filled to capacity, the guests “as thick in numbers as swallows in a sand bank.” 16 At many, O’Donovan is turned away for lack of space; others manage to shoehorn him in even if it means sharing a bed.
    Many of the immigrant boardinghouses in New York had been carved from the city’s most venerable old homes. Sturdy brick structures with sloping tiled roofs, they were built in the mid-eighteenth century by the merchant princes who dominated the colonial economy. Many had names familiar to us today: Rutgers, Monroe, Crosby, Roosevelt are just a few. Around 1750, one of those merchants, William Walton, started construction on a fabulous new estate along the East River. Built from the most expensive materials—English timber, German tiles, Italian marble, and rare tropical woods for its interior—the structure stood three stories tall with views of the water. The house remained in the Walton family for several generations, but over time the wide-open expanse that once surrounded it was filled in with warehouses, factories, and other commercial structures. The neighborhood lost its cachet, and Walton’s descendants moved uptown to join the rest of fashionable New York. The once-grand interior was pillaged down to its shell. The ground floor was leased out to a German saloon-keeper, a plate-glass distributor, and a manufacturer of election flags. The main tenant, however, was Mrs. Connors, an Irish boardinghouse-keeper who rented the two upper floors.
    A reporter who toured the old mansion in 1872 offers a quick glimpse into her kitchen, now housed in the former bedroom of the first Mrs. Walton. The original fireplace, he tells us, was ripped out and replaced with a monstrous black stove. Covered with various-size kettles and saucepans, it was presided over by the boardinghouse cook and her ever-bustling assistants. On the reporter’s visit, the kitchen was redolent with the smell of boiling cabbage and burned ham, both typically Irish