In 1908, acclaimed photographer Lewis W. Hine snapped a simple portrait titled “Irish Steel Worker.”

The aged laborer has a weathered face and sad eyes. A pipe sprouts from his mouth. He sports suspenders, a thick handkerchief in his front pocket, and a woolen cap atop his head.

Hine, born in Wisconsin in 1874, would go on to become one of the great photographers of the Progressive Era. As Jacob Riis did a generation earlier, Hine used the camera to document social inequities and spur reform.

The same year he snapped the Irish steelworker, Lewis W.  Hine also created one of his more famous series of photographs, entitled “Child Labor: Girls in Factories.”

But it was a decade and a half later that Hine would find his true muse. Hine’s most famous subject was not even a person. It was, instead, the tallest building in the world, a monument to enormity and audacity that just so happened to begin rising as the nation sank into a deep depression.

Construction of the Empire State Building began in March 1930 on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at 350 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. It was completed 14 months later and opened on May 1, 1931.

At 102 stories, it was, at the time, the tallest building in the world. It is presently the ninth-tallest building in America.

Hine’s photographs of the building’s construction capture the wonder, romance, and artistry of the skyscraper and its builders.

Almost as an afterthought, though no less important, the photos also capture a project on which Irish Americans played a central role, from the power brokers who envisioned this unprecedented undertaking to the laborers who built the Empire State Building in just over one year.

Hine captured the determination of the men who stirred the concrete and stacked the steel. But it’s important to note that Irish-American power brokers also played a key part in the Empire State Building’s rise.

First, there was Al Smith. A child of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Smith often claimed that the only degree he ever earned was an FFM degree, as he had to go to work at the Fulton Fish Market after his father died. Smith emerged from Tammany Hall in an unlikely fashion: without the whiff of corruption. He served as a popular, progressive New York governor in the 1920s, but then made a doomed run for the presidency in 1928.

Smith was the first Catholic candidate to run for the White House, and many in middle America considered him an agent of Rome who hailed from the mongrelized metropolis. The Ku Klux Klan burned crosses on the campaign trail. Even Smith’s opposition to prohibition was seen as deeply unsavory. Add in the fact that the economy was booming, and you get the picture. Herbert Hoover trounced Smith.

Though it devastated him, Smith did not vanish into obscurity after this loss. He was named president of the Empire State Building Corporation, whose job it was to erect a towering new building on the former site of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Another important figure in the Empire State Building’s planning stages was John J. Raskob. Raskob’s father was of Alsatian descent, but his mother was of Irish Catholic heritage. The self-made man from Lockport, New York, first got a job with the Du Pont family in the early 1900s and made enough money to invest in Manhattan real estate just in time for the roaring 1920s.

On August 29, 1929, Raskob, Smith, and a group of investors took aim at the biggest real estate investment New York had ever seen: The Empire State Building.

Less than two months after this announcement, the stock market experienced a significant crash. Raskob, Smith, and the other bigwigs who saw dollar signs at the vast corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue would have to adjust their vision. The Empire State Building would still go up. The problem? It might turn out to be the biggest real estate boondoggle in American history.

Still, the project was good news for at least one group of people: Irish American laborers, who were desperate for work, men like Irish immigrant Michael Briody.

Laborer Michael Briody would probably be forgotten had he not been New York Irish novelist Tom Kelly’s great-uncle. Kelly had heard family stories about his uncle. Briody got mixed up in some shady business, was murdered, and buried in the Bronx. Kelly decided to look more deeply not only into his uncle’s past but into the celebrated skyscraper he helped build. The result was his thrilling 2005 novel, Empire Rising. Although it is a work of fiction, Empire Rising offers a rich and informative look at how the Irish contributed to the construction of the Empire State Building.

There are no hard statistics on exactly how many Irish immigrants and Irish Americans contributed to the construction of the Empire State Building. But it is generally accepted that Irishmen, as well as Scandinavian Americans, were the dominant group at the worksite.

One reason for this is that a new wave of Irish immigrants had swept into New York City. As with the Irish immigrants (such as Mike Quill) who founded the Transit Workers Union (TWU) in 1934, more than a handful of Empire State laborers were Irish republicans on the run from the grueling civil war that broke out in Ireland in the 1920s, following the Easter Rising and partition.

For these Irish immigrants, who fled a war-ravaged land just in time to hit the Great Depression in the US, a job on a project such as the Empire State Building seemed a blessing from the sky. It was a chance to put the past behind them and help create an American icon.

Unbeknownst to all the men working on the Empire State Building, a man with a camera was documenting their work. Just as he’d been documenting laborers and immigrants for the previous 30 years.

Lewis Hine was in his late 20s and had been in New York City for only a few years when he and his camera were drawn to Ellis Island in the early 1900s. The Irish were still coming (such as the laborer whose memorable portrait he took in 1908), but these were also the days of the so-called “new” immigration. Waves of Italians and Jews from Eastern Europe were arriving every day at Ellis Island, along with Finns, Germans, Poles, and Hungarians. From 1904 to 1909, Hine documented the hardships as well as the happiness, mystery, and daily grind of the Ellis Island immigration process.

It was the first of many progressive photographic projects for Hine. Born in the progressive hotbed of Wisconsin, Hines’ political outlook was further honed at the University of Chicago. He brought this belief in progress and reform to New York in 1901. He became a teacher at the Ethical Culture School and, according to biographies, took up the camera around this time, believing that images could be as powerful, if not more so, than words.

Following his Ellis Island series, Hine’s photos of child laborers opened many eyes and were part of a broader movement to expose and put an end to the use of child labor. By this point, Hine’s work was coming to be considered not just crusading but sociological. His portraits were studied for all that they revealed about their subjects. He photographed conditions in Europe for the Red Cross after World War I, then returned to Ellis Island in the 1920s to document efforts to improve conditions at the immigration center.

Then, in March of 1930, just seven months after Smith and Raskob announced the construction of the Empire State Building, Hine was commissioned to document the skyscraper’s rise.

The men in Hine’s photos are lean and muscular. Often they seem to be floating, even dancing gracefully. Of course, they are actually a slip of the hand or foot from death. (Interestingly, it is believed that only five people died during the construction of the Empire State Building.)

In Hine’s photos, the sun and sky create stark black-and-white contrasts. The steel and machinery often gleam, in contrast to the hazy, seemingly insignificant buildings in the distance. The photos ultimately capture the awe that such a skyscraper, and its construction, inspired in the 1930s, a feat difficult for modern audiences to grasp, now that nearly every medium-sized city in the world has skyscrapers.

In the end, Hine, Smith, Raskob, and the Irishmen who helped erect the Empire State Building produced a collaborative work of art of concrete and steel, shutter, and lens. When the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001, the sight of the Empire State Building was, among many other things, a beautiful comfort. For it too had had its plane crash. On July 28, 1945, a US Army B-25 bomber lost in the fog hit the 79th floor, causing 14 deaths and $1 million in damages. But the building stood and continues to function as an office building and the main tourist attraction in New York City.

When deciding what the first line of Empire Rising should be, Tom Kelly ultimately chose this very telling line: “This one, they say, will stand forever.”

* Originally published in August 2016, updated in April 2026.

The photos below were added by Tommy Mac

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Walt Disney requested a meeting with the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Éamon de Valera, while on a research mission that led to the creation of “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.”

According to a letter recently released by the Royal Irish Academy and Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Disney was traveling to Ireland to conduct research for a cartoon motion picture on Irish life and folklore.

The letter, from the Consulate of Ireland in San Francisco to the Department of Foreign Affairs, reads: “I beg to report that Mr. Jack Lavin, a Director of the Walt Disney Productions, Burbank, near Los Angeles, telephoned me recently and informed me that Mr. Walt Disney and a party of six, including himself, will sail from New York on the 14th November on the S.S Queen Elizabeth for Southampton, and will go directly from there to Dublin. They have applied for their passports, and I have sent the necessary application forms for Irish visas.

“The party intends to tour Ireland on a research mission, with the intention of making cartoon motion pictures dealing with Irish life and folklore. I informed Mr. Lavin that I would give Mr. Disney a letter to you, so he would be facilitated in meeting parties such as the President of the Irish Tourist Association. Mr. Disney would also like to meet An Taoiseach.

“Mr. Lavin has written directly to the Irish Tourist Association for literature, but in the meantime, I have sent him a few booklets from the old meager stock on hand here. I have also loaned Mr. Lavin the box of glossies of Irish scenery sent recently to this office.”

In 1946, Disney traveled to Ireland to research Irish folklore, particularly leprechauns, and the result was the 1959 film “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.”

Disney traveled around Ireland and on November 22, 1946, he met with the Irish Folklore Commission (now the National Folklore Collection). There’s no evidence to suggest, however, that he managed to meet with de Valera on his excursion.

On returning to Ireland, he remained in contact with the Commission and with its director, James Delargy, for up to a decade. Much to Delargy’s disappointment, however, Disney eventually decided to adapt Irish-American writer Hermione Templeton Kavanagh’s 1903 collection of stories, ‘Darby O’Gill and the Good People.’

Walt Disney is among the many famous figures who can boast Irish roots, as his great-grandfather, Arundel Elias Disney, emigrated from Gowran, County Kilkenny, Ireland, where he was born in 1801.

Disney, Darby O’Gill (+ de Valera). Origins of Disney’s famous 1959 film in a 1946 trip to Ireland NAI DFA 323/32 pic.twitter.com/cfX05Nk5Cx

— DIFP (@DIFP_RIA) May 20, 2015

Editor’s Note: The following piece has been shared with IrishCentral from the American Irish Historical Society’s (AIHS) Treasures of Time, stories from the collections and archives of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City.

150 years ago, from the 17th to the 19th of April in 1876, six Fenian rebels escaped an Australian penal colony and made their way to New York. Though many are familiar with the work of Irish-American journalist John Devoy (a staple of AIHS’ collections) to organize and assist the escape, few know the fundraising of Judge John Goff that made it possible.

In this article, we look through the history of this escape, the role of penal colonies in Australia, and the contributions of Irish Americans to support Irish Republicans abroad.

Firstly, a brief review of why this escape was necessary in the first place. As many of our audience will be familiar with, the role of penal colonies (settlements used to exile prisoners) in Australia holds a significant place in Irish history. While these colonies existed for a number of charges, the primary reason for Irish prisoners to be exiled was their role in revolutionary practices, particularly Irish nationalist groups like the Young Irelanders and the Society of United Irishmen. By the late 1860s, many prisoners had been issued pardons and were gradually released.

However, some Irish Republican Brothers or Fenians remained in the system, seen as particularly dangerous for their supposedly militaristic approach. In 1871, only a small group remained in prison, but with little hope of freedom for escape.

It was then that the Fenian prisoners grew truly desperate and began to seek other methods of escape. Knowing the support members of the diaspora had previously given to Irish causes, the prisoners decided to reach out to their American brethren in hope that they might be able to assist them. In 1874, Séamas Mac Liammóir (also known as James Wilson, 1832-1921), wrote to New York journalist John Devoy (1842-1928) and asked for his help. Devoy helped to collect donations, eventually permitting an escape aboard the merchant ship Catalpa.

Though Devoy chaired the committee that led these efforts, the fundraising work of Goff is often neglected in the retelling of this escape. Both Goff and Devoy were prominent members of Clan na Gael, the American sister organization of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In this organization, they had often worked to support Irish causes in the States and back in Ireland.

After Devoy received the letter from Wilson, he quickly rushed his peers to action, proposing a direct response at the 1874 Baltimore Clan na Gael conference and urging all to work together to guarantee freedom for these prisoners.

John Goff (1848-1924). Just 26 years of age at the time, Goff had passion and drive for the cause. His roots in Ireland were more recent than some of his peers, having emigrated himself as a child from Co. Wexford. Though he had started from a humble background and pushed himself to study law, his drive was enough to make him recognizable for such advocacy and passion. As he raised funds and encouraged others to support the freedom of these prisoners, the entire mission changed to be known for his name, known as “Goff’s Irish Rescue Party.”

During the course of the campaign, tensions rose between Goff and Devoy, likely in part due to this change of branding. The growing resentment bubbled into a bitter ending to their friendship, and though they succeeded in fulfilling the escape mission, the two men went their separate ways once the task was complete.

Both Goff and Devoy went on to be successful and memorable Irish Americans, making significant contributions to the landscape of Irish New York – including in this archive. However, this escape remains one of the most significant courses of action taken by Irish Americans to support the cause of Irish nationalism. Goff’s ability to embolden the public and build their passion into meaningful funds was crucial to the success of the Catalpa escape.

Goff continued in his legal career in New York, taking his passion for the cause of Irish Nationalism and using it to fight against corruption in the States. In New York, he became involved with the Society for the Prevention of Crime and started to investigate the corrupt officers of Tammany Hall. His notoriety for revealing city and state corruption made him known as the “Great Terror of the New York Bar.” One author stated that members of the bar would wake in a cold sweat, hearing Goff’s voice in their nightmares, saying “’Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, guilty!’”

Though Devoy and Goff exist separately in their lives and in our archives, their causes remained much the same throughout the remainder of their lifetimes. While Goff’s legal practice seemed to many to be less Irish-oriented than Devoy’s explicitly nationalist journalism, he never shied away from his belief in Irish freedom. In 1916, after the failed Easter Rising, Goff started the Irish Race Convention, which later built the Friends of Irish Freedom. Both organizations promoted the cause of Irish nationalism and encouraged global discussion on the roots and actions of the fight for Irish freedom.

Goff is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. He is remembered in collections such as our own and throughout New York State for his legal and civic contributions.

This column is adapted from the blog of the American Irish Historical Society (AIHS). Read the full stories at AIHSNY.org/blog.

Founded in 1897 and located on Museum Mile in New York City, the American Irish Historical Society (AIHS) preserves and promotes the history and cultural legacy of the Irish in America through its archives, art collections, and public programs. Learn more at AIHSNY.org.

Derided and reviled for much of his life by those who knew him, William Joyce was Ireland’s most famous Nazi and, after his execution by the British in 1946, one of the most infamous traitors of the whole Second World War.

Nicknamed “Lord Haw Haw” by the British public to whom he broadcast his nightly “Germany Calling, Germany Calling” bulletin of Reich propaganda, he was a proud and defiant Nazi until the very end.

Joyce was born in Brooklyn in 1906 to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother, but the family left New York a few years after his birth to return to his father’s native Galway. Unusually for a Catholic family in the west of Ireland, the Joyces were staunch unionists and it was rumored in the local area that young William had spied for the Black and Tans during the War of Independence.

In 1921 he moved to England, later claiming that the IRA had tried to assassinate him, and enlisted in the British Army. After his young age was discovered he was discharged by the army. He enrolled at Birkbeck College of the University of London and there he first became interested in fascism. Joyce had a scar on his face which he said was caused by Jews during this time.

In 1937 he was sacked as a salaried party worker by the BUF after a dismal election. Joyce set up his own National Socialist League with his new wife Margaret; he had divorced his first wife Hazel the previous year.

As the drumbeat of war in Europe grew louder, Joyce maintained contact with numerous Nazi friends and in August 1939 he fled to Berlin with his wife. He was allegedly tipped off by the head of MI5 (the British equivalent of the FBI), Maxwell Knight, that he was about to be arrested and detained under Defence Regulation 18B as a Nazi sympathizer upon the outbreak of war with Germany.

Unemployed and listless in the capital of the Third Reich, a chance encounter with a fellow British fascist in exile led him to interview at the Nazi propaganda station, Rundfunkhaus, which immediately recruited him to work for their English language service.

Quickly nicknamed “Lord Haw-Haw” by a contemptuous public, at the height of his popularity, his nightly “Germany Calling, Germany Calling” bulletin had an estimated six million regular listeners and 18 million occasional listeners. His broadcasts were never officially banned but it was frowned upon by many in society to listen to them. Nevertheless, many continued to listen in intently as Joyce usually beat the heavily censored BBC in delivering news of German victories.

With so many millions of listeners, he gained an almost mythical status in wartime Britain; his strange accent was parodied and he was even the subject of advertising campaigns.

A grateful Nazi Germany quickly made him a citizen of the Reich and in 1944 he was awarded the Cross of War Merit First Class by Hitler.

When not broadcasting he kept himself busy: he wrote a book called “Twilight over England” that compared Nazi Germany favorably to what he maintained was a Britain dominated by the interests of Jewish capitalists. He also enthusiastically attempted to recruit British Prisoners of War into joining Reich’s British Free Corps – a minute regiment of fascist volunteers from the British Empire.

Loyal to the end, he began to drink heavily as the war turned in the Allies favor. He made his final broadcast to Britain on the day Hitler committed suicide, April 30, 1945. Clearly drunk, he concluded with a defiant, “Heil Hitler!” and went into hiding with his wife, and occasional fellow broadcaster, Lady Haw Haw.

At large for over a month in occupied Germany, his strange accent raised suspicion and as he reached to retrieve his forged identity papers he was shot in the leg by a British soldier who thought he had a revolver in his pocket.

His capture was greeted with plaudits from London and after a fortnight recuperating in a hospital he was flown back to Britain in chains to face charges of high treason.

However, what prosecutors expected to be a relatively straightforward trial soon floundered over the complex question of Joyce’s nationality. Joyce’s parents had renounced their allegiance to the British Crown to become US citizens and, even though he had fled to Germany on a British passport in 1939, it was clear that he had omitted this key fact when he applied for it. Could a natural-born citizen of the United States, raised in Ireland, be tried for treason against a country to which his allegiance to was in doubt?

Britain’s Attorney General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, pressed on and argued in court that even if he had fraudulently obtained a British passport until it expired, he was entitled to British consular assistance and as such was guilty of high treason as, “a person owing allegiance to our Lord the King, and while a war was being carried on by the German Realm against our King, did traitorously adhere to the King’s enemies in Germany.”

After a three-day trial, the jury acquitted him on two of three counts; they concluded that none of Joyce’s actions after 1940 when his British passport expired could be judged treasonous as at that point his allegiance was to the United States, not to the British Crown. However, his work for the Nazis between 1939 and 1940 was judged to be treasonous as he had then been in possession of a valid British passport, thus he was found guilty on the third and final count.

Curiously, Lady Haw Haw, whose British nationality was unquestioned, was never tried for treason despite having made broadcasts to Britain. Rumors swirled that Joyce had done a deal with prosecutors in order to spare his wife.

His sentence was confirmed in Britain’s Court of Appeal and by the House of Lords – then the nation’s highest court – although his fellow Irishman, Lord Porter from Co Tyrone, dissented on the grounds that there was no evidence that Joyce had kept his British passport for use after September 18, 1939.

With all legal avenues of appeal exhausted, Joyce was hanged on January 3, 1946. Unrepentant till the bitter end, his last words were reported as, “In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the power of darkness which they represent.”

In total, Britain hanged four men due to convictions under the 1945 Treason Act but Joyce’s execution was the most controversial. Many people questioned why someone who had never killed anyone was given a death sentence when many high-ranking Nazis escaped with prison sentences.

The dispute about his allegiance to the British Crown also preyed on people’s minds. Norah Elam, his Dublin-born former colleague from the BUF and a staunch Irish nationalist, always argued passionately that Joyce was an Irishman and his conviction should have been quashed as he owed no allegiance to Britain. Conversely, Sir Oswald Mosley – Britain’s most prominent fascist at that time and his former boss – maintained he was a traitor and deserved what he got.

For many years Joyce remained buried in an unmarked grave in Wandsworth Prison where he was executed. However, in 1976, his remains were exhumed at the request of his daughter, Heather Piercey.

Speaking to the Guardian later in life, the retired schoolteacher said the idea of her father’s remains in the prison courtyard preyed on her mind. After hearing that the British Government had given permission for Roger Casement, a British diplomat turned Irish republican who was also hanged for treason, to be reburied she petitioned that she be allowed to do the same for her father.

But where could Joyce be buried? Tentatively, Piercey approached Galway County Council about interning her father’s remains in his native land. The county council agreed and one quiet night Joyce’s body was dug up and flown to Ireland for burial in New Cemetery in Bohermore, County Galway.

Speaking to RTÉ radio at the time, Piercey said she was touched by the “warmth” of the local community and by the presence of a number of her father’s school friends at the internment of his coffin in a Protestant section of the cemetery.

A devout Catholic, Piercey returned regularly over the years to tend her father’s grave. “A lot of mold collects on that grave, so I take a plastic bowl, a packet of Ariel, and a scrubbing brush, and it all comes off,” she told the Guardian in 2005.

Well into her eighties, Piercey made a final, unsuccessful attempt to have her father’s case reopened in 2011 on the grounds that he could have been a British double agent.

“He was so loyal that every time he heard the national anthem, God Save The King, he stood up,” Piercey told the Daily Express.

“I don’t think he hated Britain at all. He was very pro-Empire. Apparently, when he landed at the airport when he was brought back, he said: ‘Britain, God bless her.’ He was glad to be back on British soil again.

“I don’t have any proof that he was working for the British, but I don’t think that he could have forgotten his pro-British sympathies. It is possible he was a double agent. He never mentioned it in his letters during the war, but then it was the secret service, the silent service.”

But while she wonders whether Joyce was a victim of injustice, Piercey long ago renounced her father’s fascist views. She even dated a Jewish man in 1949.

On the twentieth anniversary of her father’s execution, she rang up her local synagogue and asked if she could attend a service. They told her the temple always welcomed visitors and ever since she has attended Mass every Sunday and Saturday synagogue twice a month.

“I went as an act of atonement for what had been done. It seemed strange not to hear the name of Jesus mentioned – I’m so used to it – but otherwise, I loved the services.”

Still, an active member of Britain’s Council of Christians and Jews, the daughter of Hitler’s most famous Irishman and Britain’s most infamous traitor lives a life far removed from the way she was raised.

H/T: Biography.com & The Guardian.

Originally published in 2017, last updated in April 2026.