From the beginning of the city's history as the western bank of Springfield, Irish families have resided in and contributed to the development of the civics and culture of Holyoke, Massachusetts.

[2] During that period Irish immigrants and their descendants comprised the largest demographic in Holyoke and built much of the early city's infrastructure, including the dams, canals, and factories.

From these arrivals there formed three small villages, the abodes of the Hadley Falls Company Housing, otherwise known as the "North Flats" at the time, designed by mill engineer John Chase, and built by one Charles MacClellan.

[13] Long lost to history there existed two smaller shanty villages, "The Patch", lying where Pulaski Park stands today,[8]: 41  and "The Bush", a series of dwellings in the fields of South Holyoke.

[15]: 7 In contrast with the skilled-labor class and the rowhouses of the Hadley Falls Company in The Flats, the early dwellings of The Patch were primitive, ephemeral, and described as shanties.

[2] Although many of Holyoke's earliest arrivals would be farmers, these would-be laborers included a number of tradesmen such as carpenters, masons, and blacksmiths, some of the industrial city's workers who would construct its dam, canals, and factories in subsequent decades.

By the time he would arrive in Holyoke in April 1849,[23] Delaney had previously worked on the Croton Water-works supplying the City of New York, Fort Warren in Boston, and the Lowell Canal System.

"[25] Unfortunately Delaney's monument to Holyoke's tradesmen would succumb to the wrecking ball after 65 years, for by 1950 its tenant the W. T. Grant Department Store sought a more modern building.

DuBois Library at UMass Amherst, Springfield's Monarch Place, Interstate 391, Steven Holl's Simmons Hall for MIT, as well as the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts of Bard College.

Ultimately representing workers of all backgrounds, it first began as a social club within the city's Irish trade unionists known as the Eagle Lodge, receiving charter as Local 1 from the American Federation of Labor in May 1883.

Even as the organization grew, it would remain tied to the community through the 20th century, among other occasions, the city would host the International Brotherhood's president in 1913, and during Holyoke's centennial in 1973, the union, then a member of the AFL-CIO, would be one of the ceremonies sponsors.

By the end of the 1920s, the urgency of additional work for the same wages as well as a practice of fining workers for flaws made in satins were part of the impetus which led to unionization at Skinner's mills in the next decade.

During her campaign she gathered more than 1000 signatures in a petition to President Truman stating in part that "we pledge ourselves to support our soldiers, in Korea by refusing to hoard foodstuffs ... We earnestly petition you to request the Congress to roll back prices to their levels of June 15, 1950, and to request the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice to investigate whether a conspiracy exists to profiteer in food in violation of our laws.

Boss Bob Ferguson, of Springfield, Massachusetts, took notice of the young Connor in Holyoke, and signed him on to the majors in the Troy Trojans, launching a long baseball career.

With the exception of the earliest Yankee Protestants, Holyoke's political history encompasses an exhaustive list of Irish and Irish-American figures represented in all years of the city's civic operation, even during those times where it has not been the largest voting bloc, in offices too numerous to name in entirety.

A son of John Delaney, he was born in Lowell during his father's work on that city's canals, came to Holyoke at the age of one, and eventually graduated from Eastman Business College.

[73] In the wake of a crisis, wherein an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 students were not receiving education in a language they understood, Bartley and Daly also passed the nation's first bilingual state education law, mandating transitional bilingual programs in districts with 20 or more students of inadequate English proficiency, and temporarily waiving certain teacher certification requirements to encourage more with necessary Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese skills to enter the workforce.

Hosted annually the day before the parade since 1975, it has been called by Olympian John Treacy "a miniature Boston", had a record 6,800 contestants complete the course in 2014, and was placed among the best St. Patrick's runs in the nation by Runner's World in 2019.

[80][81][82] In addition to the role played by labor unions, soon after the arrival of Holyoke's Irish workers many of the city's earliest immigrants would organize cultural institutions.

Judge in 1895,[88] who sought to make it "the banner society" among those in America studying the language and literature, offering free courses to all Irish men and women.

[92] A similar praise came from New York's Irish World,[a] which lauded Holyoke's Philo-Celtics as "probably ahead of any other societies in the United States in having [their] own rooms and in meeting three times a week.

In a speech at the Roger Smith Hotel in 1951 to alumni of Elms College, the Irish consul at Boston, Joseph F. Shields would describe Holyoke as "very well known among the people of Ireland," especially for its support of The Cause.

"[117] In November 1881, Irish republican John Devoy would make a speech before Holyoke's Fenians, predicting the Easter Rising of World War I, stating "Ireland's opportunity will come when England is engaged in a desperate struggle with some great European power.

[122] On November 26, 1911, Michael O'Flanagan and Shane Leslie gave speeches at Holyoke's Empire Theater at the behest of the local Ladies' Division of the Hibernians as envoys of the Gaelic League.

In 1966, Seán Flanagan, minister of health in the Irish government, would be an honored guest among those marching in the St. Patrick's Day Parade,[124] and in recent years the city would twice host Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

Adams would march in the parade in 2006 and 2015, giving a press conference at City Hall at his first appearance, as a guest of honor by Congressman Richard Neal, a Holyoke Community College alumnus,[125] who worked with both the IRA and Ulster loyalists and members of Congress to ensure an American role in Irish peace after the Good Friday Agreement.

At the conclusion of the performance, a group of the church's deacons walked in and "were not a little shocked to see a man wearing a Roman collar energetically thumping away on the keys of their organ.

Presiding over the ceremony were Mayor Daniel F. Dibble, Bishop Christopher Joseph Weldon, Maurice J. Ferriter, and William Rogers, who all played active roles in fundraising for the monument.

[146] Curran's poetry was featured in the Boston literary journal Ploughshares in 1979, and posthumously her unpublished anthology The Paper City has been featured in MELUS, the journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, for early portrayals of the uneasy interethnic relations between early Irish and French immigrant arrivals as well as attitudes toward an indifferent Yankee upper class.

[147][148] Toward the end of her career Curran would head the Irish Studies department at UMass Boston, today the university offers a need-based creative writing scholarship to both graduate and undergraduate students in her name.