The name became symbolic of slums where poor Irish immigrants lived in ramshackle shanties, squatting on property they didn’t own.

Decades before Irish were Chicago political royalty, they lived in a ramshackle slum called Kilgubbin.

And William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle series has “ironweeds” like Billy and Francis Phelan. What, then, is the greatest book ever written about the New York City Irish? Slums and suburbs ...

Decades before Irish were Chicago political royalty, they lived in a ramshackle slum called Kilgubbin.