Read Barry: Irish shipwrights built St. Brigid’s in 1848 as spiritual shelter for those brothers and sisters who survived steerage on famine ships. Its twin steeples rose over Tompkins Square in proud declaration to nativist New York: we Irish – we Catholics – are here to stay.
And Brick: It was no place to leave a baby in the middle of the night. The fence runs under the dirt and clang of the elevated train, around a lot of weeds in a neighborhood where the bodegas have bulletproof glass for a reason. Popeye’s fried chicken boxes, plastic foam cups and potato chip cans are all over the sidewalk. One sign says the yard is baited with rat poison, and another has a number to call for plastic slipcovers.
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