It was for a while the only St. Patrick’s Day parade in New Jersey, organizers say.
Now the 89-year-old Newark St. Patrick’s Day parade, which takes place Friday, is competing with more than 30 others in New Jersey, spread over four weekends in March.
The crowds may be smaller and Newark’s Irish community is not the force it was when the parade began in 1936 with Charles Patrick Gillen, an immigrant from Ireland and the city’s mayor from 1917 to 1921, serving as grand marshal.
Yet it retains a loyal fan base, with support from many living outside of Newark but with ties to the state’s largest city.
“We get a lot of people who come back to the parade, to go walk in the footsteps of their families,” said Karen Golding, a parade trustee and regular attendee since the 1970s.
Friday’s parade will get underway at 1 p.m., at the corner of Mulberry Street and Raymond Boulevard. The route passes the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and onto Central Avenue before concluding on Washington Street.
St. Patrick’s Day parades stretch across New Jersey and occupy so much of the calendar that it is easy to forgot the actual holiday, March 17, is but a single day.
“It’s not St. Patrick’s Day. It’s St. Patrick’s month,” said former Assemblyman Thomas Giblin, son of the late State Sen. John Giblin, an Irish immigrant, and grand marshal of the 1975 Newark parade.
Irish remains the second most common ancestry in New Jersey, after Italian, though the percentage has fallen in recent years. Approximately 1.1 million residents, or 11.9%, reported a familial connection to Ireland in 2020 U.S. Census data, down from 14% in 2016.
Newark, along with Paterson, Trenton, Jersey City and other locations, drew large numbers of Irish immigrants starting around the mid-19th Century.
The Ironbound Irish-American Association, founded in 1934, played a key role in starting Newark’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, which initially was on Broad Street. The route was changed years later, followed by what the organization describes on its website as a “period of inactivity.”
“By 1985, the ‘Ironbound Irish’ had become an organization on paper only, most of the members had moved away, died, or lost interest,” it states on its website.
However, the association regrouped, with the children and grandchildren of founding members taking the lead. Members march under the group’s banner in the Newark parade, and elsewhere, while sponsoring local groups such as the Ironbound Little League.
The statewide growth of the parades owes something to the foundation laid in Newark.
Frank O’Hara was among the founders of the Newark parade, about a decade after arriving in the city from Ireland, the Star-Ledger reported in 2016. He later moved to West Orange and helped launch its parade, which began in 1951 and this year was held on Sunday, March 10.
The Belmar-Lake Como St. Patrick’s Day parade, among the largest in New Jersey, was started in the early 1970s by Jerry Lynch, a hotel owner and singer who, in his 30s, was in the choir of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark.
Golding attended that parade, now in its 51st year, on March 3, and marveled at the crowds while acknowledging the contrast with Newark.
“It was at least 10 deep on both sides,” she said, referring to spectators gathered on each side of the parade route.
Organizers did not have a crowd estimate for Newark’s parade, though Golding said turnout generally is “weather-dependent.”
Newark is unique among New Jersey’s parades in that it is held on a weekday — typically, the last Friday before St. Patrick’s Day.
While the parade dates to 1936, Giblin said an earlier version took place annually in the latter part of the 19th century before coming to a halt in 1892.
Newark’s parade has been interrupted only three times. It halted from 1943 to 1946 due to World War II, was undone by a snowstorm in the late 1960s and cancelled in 2021 and 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers say.
Last year’s parade included a performance by the Castlerea Brass and Reed Band, founded in 1892 and the second-oldest brass band in Ireland.
This year’s parade is dedicated to the memory of Robert Lynch, who died last year. He did not live in Newark but ran the city’s Kilkenny Alehouse for 17 years.
Former Caldwell Mayor Susan Gartland, who worked in Newark for 26 years, is chairing this year’s parade.
“The parade has a lot of following by the corporations and some of the organizations in Newark. Its a nice way of bringing their Irish heritage, which goes a long way back in Newark, and finding a way to keep it alive,” Gartland said.
Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.
Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com.
