NEW YORK — St. Patrick’s Day, the annual celebration of all things Irish, was marked across the United States on Monday with boisterous parades and festivities.
Across the pond, the Irish capital of Dublin culminated its three-day festival with a parade. Cities such as Liverpool, England, another city transformed by Irish immigration, also hosted celebrations on St. Patrick’s feast day.
School marching bands and traditional Irish pipe and drum ensembles ambled down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue with uniformed delegations from the police and fire departments in New York City, which hosts one of the nation’s largest and oldest parades.
As a light morning rain fell, the rolling celebration made its way north past designer shops and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a stunning Neo Gothic landmark that’s the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.
Mayor Eric Adams donned a green cap and scarf and waved an Irish flag while Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan greeted marchers wearing a green, white and orange sash — the national colors of the Emerald Isle.
“It’s fantastic to be here,” said Ryan Hanlon, vice chairman of the parade’s board of directors. “We’re getting a little bit of rain at the moment, but as we Irish call it, it’s just liquid sunshine.”
The New York celebration, now in its 264th year, date to 1762 — 14 years before the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The parade was scheduled to last through the afternoon, ending on the east side of Central Park, about 35 blocks from where it started.
That’s much, much longer than the 98-foot route in the resort town of Hot Springs, Arkansas, which claims it hosts the World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
And in Savannah, thousands of revelers in gaudy green costumes crowded sidewalks and oak-shaded squares as the South’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade wound through the historic Georgia city.
