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How Irish Immigrants Helped Build The B&O Railroad

triforce_goddess64 // Flickr Creative Commons

Walk along Lemmon Street, just a block north of the B&O Railroad Museum on Pratt Street, and you’ll pass a row of little red brick alley houses. They were built in the 1840s for immigrants from the Great Famine in Ireland who had come to work in the rail yards. The houses were boarded up for decades, and the city eventually made plans to raze them. But in the 1990s, a group of citizens stopped the demolition and raised money to restore them.

Today, one of the homes looks just as it would have in the 1840s. Next door is a museum. Tuesday evening, Baltimore Heritage will lead a tour of the museum. Joining Sheilah to talk about it is the president of the Irish Railroad Workers Museum, Michael Mellett.

Irish-WebExtra.mp3
More of our interview with Michael Mellett.

Audio for this segment will be available by the end of the day.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.