Why Chicago Has 4 St. Patrick’s Day Parades

CHICAGO — Like the green shamrocks Irish Catholics pin to their lapels in support of St. Patrick himself, Chicago wears its Irish pride on its sleeve.

While early Irish immigrants to the United States were often met with contempt and disregard, including in Chicago (think of poor Catherine O’Leary and her scapegoat cow), today the city revels in the Emerald Isle’s heritage and descendants with celebrations across town — including the famous dyeing of the Chicago River. 

But the massive parade Downtown, now in its 69th year, isn’t the only Irish pageant on display for St. Patrick’s Day. There are at least three others: The South Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Northwest Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Chicago Working Families’ Archer Ave. St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

All four parades take place the same weekend this year. And there have been even more St. Patrick’s Day parades throughout history.

Why so many?

The answer has to do with politics, death rates and a need for community — as a city but also as neighbors and fellow Irish Chicagoans. While the Downtown parade has long been held as a celebratory staple of Chicago, the smaller St. Patrick’s Day parades have loyal followings of their own.

“I think everybody’s neighborhood has a culture of Irish, and the Irish love the parades,” Liz Murray-Belcaster, co-founder of the Northwest Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade, told Block Club. “[There’s] always been a need to have the community together for these things.”

The ‘Good Ould Days’

The first St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago was held in 1843, when the city’s population was between 8,000 and 12,000. Marchers included citizens, a band and a military group of Irish men called the Montgomery Guard, who had spent the winter raising money for uniforms that debuted in the parade. The celebration started at the Irish armory at the corner of Randolph and Wells streets and remained a Downtown event until the late 1860s, when it moved to Haymarket Square. 

The parade was abandoned in 1902 in favor of “a missionary movement for strengthening the United Irish League of America,” according to newspaper reports from the time.

“Local Irishmen say affairs in the native island have come to such a pass that serious thought must take the place of celebrations,” said a 1902 Chicago Tribune article, which forecast that “Chicago has seen its last St. Patrick’s Day parade until Ireland has achieved her independence.”

By 1911, nearly a decade had passed since the last St. Patrick’s Day parade. A newspaper article lamented the “good ould days” when the parade was “the big feature” of the day’s celebration. 

Not only were the “ould timers” who emigrated from Ireland and marched in the parade’s early years passing away, but pneumonia and sicknesses derived from the cold-weather tradition were killing participants — so much so that the Catholic clergy “became alarmed over the death rate that followed the parade and discouraged its recurrence.”

“The glory of the day has faded since the abandonment of the parade feature,” the Tribune wrote in 1911. “But the same love and devotion for St. Patrick still burns in the hearts of every man and woman of Celtic blood.”

Revive And Unite

In the absence of a centralized parade, some of the city’s Irish organizations formed new traditions in areas with large Irish populations — though the hope of reestablishing a Downtown parade remained by groups like the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Association. 

Meanwhile, parades, marches, demonstrations and various festivities were held on the West and South Sides, organized by local Irish groups. 

In 1953, the West Side Irish held a parade near Garfield Park at Springfield Avenue and Madison Street that marched 20 blocks and included a grand marshal, nine bands, color guards, Irish dancers and veteran organizations. 

That same year also saw the first Southtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade at 79th Street and Damen Avenue, complete with marching bands, floats, flags and Gaelic costumes. By the next year, it had grown to between 80,000 and 100,000 revelers and 13,000 marchers.

Some areas with more than one Irish association even split the holiday within the neighborhood. In 1954, two West Side Irish groups — the Ulster Irish Liberty Legion and the St. Patrick’s Day Association — took turns celebrating the day. 

Just two years after its inception, the Southtown parade had become a major hit, swelling to 200,000 spectators.

After Mayor Richard J. Daley was elected in 1955, he pledged to bring back the Loop’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, as well as combine the neighborhood parades into the Downtown event.

In 1956, Daley held the first Loop parade since 1869, after an 87-year absence. Ten thousand marchers walked from Wacker Drive and State Street to Old St. Patrick’s Church at Adams Street and Des Plaines Avenue. The building turned 100 years old on the date of the parade and was then the oldest public building in Chicago. 

The parade also included the folding in of West Side traditions, with the West Side Irish joining in on Daley’s State Street parade. Over 250,000 people attended.

By 1958, the West Side’s Irish were the largest group represented in the parade, compromising a “major portion” of the 30,000 marchers, according to an article in the Tribune.

The Southtown parade continued its parade until 1960 when it, too, combined with Loop procession, making it once again the main St. Patrick’s Day attraction.

A ‘Welcoming Home’ In The Neighborhoods

With a return to the Loop and a unified St. Patrick’s Day parade, the city’s quest for a nostalgic revival appeared to be satisfied. The parade of the “good ould days” was back.

But by the late 1970s, some who had grown up in the 1950s with a neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day parade had begun to yearn for their own glory days. 

In 1979, a fateful kitchen-table reminiscing session “after a few beers” over the former Southtown Parade became the spark for Far South Side friends George Hendry and Pat Coakley to recreate the tradition with their families and friends. 

“George and Pat felt the obligation to create ‘something’ for their children and the children of their friends and ‘green’ neighbors,” according to the South Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade website. “Nearly twenty years had passed, but now the South Side would rise again with a new parade in a new location for a new generation.”

That year, 17 kids from West Morgan Park gathered to march down the sidewalk along the 10900 blocks of Washtenaw and Talman avenues with a theme of “Bring Back St. Pat.” Their only float was a baby buggy covered in a shamrock-decorated box and the 26 flags of Ireland, according to parade organizers. The buggy is still showcased in the annual parade today.

The following year, the new tradition — now known as the South Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade — continued with 300 marchers taking to the side streets around Beverly’s Kennedy Park, including a bag piper. The parade concluded with Irish singing at the Beverly Bank parking lot.

On March 15, 1981, the parade officially moved to its current home on Western Avenue. That year, three children were chosen as grand marshals “to signify that the parade would be first and foremost a family affair.”

The popular parade briefly stopped from 2009 to 2011 due to rowdiness, public drinking and safety concerns, but resumed in 2012. 

Today, it’s one of the largest neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day celebrations outside of Dublin, according to organizers. Each year, the parade hosts over 10,000 marchers and more than 200,000 spectators, and donates to charitable organizations.

“I think it highlights our neighborhood,” said Kevin Coakley, son of original organizer Pat Coakley. “You get some people from different parts of the city that come down to see it. 

“It’s almost like a reunion of sorts, people that have moved away come back, there’s lots and lots of family parties and get-togethers all throughout Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. It’s like a welcoming home.”

In 2003, the Northwest Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade was formed by Murray-Belcaster and her father as a way to honor Murray-Belcaster’s late mother, she said. As a volunteer with the long-running, but dwindling, Norwood Park Memorial Day Parade, Murray-Belcaster used her experience to form a new parade.

With only about 200 combined participants and spectators the first year, which took place on the street where Murray-Belcaster’s grew up, the idea unexpectedly took off and quickly gained steam as a community event.

For its first five to 10 years, Murray-Belcaster said the parade was relegated to the weekend before the city and South Side’s parades, but when the South Side parade paused, the city said the Northwest Side parade could move to its timeslot.

Now in its 21st year, the Northwest Side parade is going strong as a beloved community gathering with over 50,000 attendees, organizers said. A few small things have changed, like the addition of four bars along the route, said Murray-Belcaster. She also bought her family home along the route and now has a front seat to the festivities. 

In addition to a grand marshal, the parade also features a “humanitarian” — a unique aspect that Murray-Belcaster said is to highlight the importance of giving back. 

The neighborhood traditions continue to evolve, too. 

In 2015, the South Side Irish and Northwest Side Irish St. Patrick’s Day parades were joined by yet another new event: The Chicago Working Families’ Archer Ave. St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Put on by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 and the Clear Ridge Men’s Social Athletic Club, the parade marches down Archer Avenue between Oak Park and Narragansett avenues, IUOE Local 150 Communications Director Kristine Kavanagh told Block Club. 

The union’s president-business manager, James Sweeney, a Garfield Ridge resident, felt that the Downtown parade had grown so large it left a disconnect between the community and the event, Kavanagh said. Sweeney set out to “offer a parade that could bring back the neighborhood feel to it.”

Since it began, the parade has steadily grown to include more spectators, more union participation, and more community groups. The parade has raised over $200,000 in recent years for police causes, including the Get Behind the Vest Program and the family of Chicago Police Officer Danny Golden, who was shot outside a Beverly bar in 2022.

“This parade offers a day where the neighborhood can come together, celebrate being a community, support law enforcement, as well as local businesses,” she added. 

Will The Parades Ever Combine Again?

With four parades on the books across the city, is it possible that Daley’s vision for a united St. Patrick’s Day parade is still possible? Not according to organizers.

“We’re not looking to fold or join anyone,” Coakley said. “We’re going to do what we’ve been doing for years.”

A major reason Coakley, who is still an active organizer of the South Side parade, said the neighborhood’s St. Patrick’s Day observance will continue is because of how much it financially benefits the local economy — not only the bars and restaurants but everything from bakeries to party supply stores see a boost. People along the route often host large parties and even prepare with home improvements.

South Side Irish Imports gift shop, 3446 W. 111th St. in Mount Greenwood, gets an uptick in customers. Swanson’s Deli, 2414 W. 103rd St., gets so busy it stops taking orders days before the parade, and Coakley speculated that County Fair Foods grocery store at 10800 S. Western Ave. sells more corned beef in the days leading up to the parade than anywhere else in the city. He said real estate agents have told him home sales go up after people visit the neighborhood for the parade.

The volunteer-run event is also paid for largely by the community via sponsorships and fundraising, as well as donations of time, money and expertise. It’s a labor of love put on by the neighborhood, for the neighborhood, Coakley said.

“I would like to think that people have gone to other parades and said, ‘Hey, this was a great day. Look what they’re doing in their neighborhood. Why don’t we do this?’” he explained. “No one owns the idea of a parade, right? But if someone sees how someone’s doing it, and it’s working out well, and it’s good for the neighborhood, then why wouldn’t someone else do that?”

Murray-Belcaster agreed that bringing together the parades at this point wouldn’t be beneficial. 

“The merging of them wouldn’t make any sense because they all have a difference,” she said. “The community aspect is different for each parade.”

According to Murray-Belcaster, parade heads at one point had a meeting with the city where they discussed the benefits of having multiple parades in the neighborhoods to spread the crowds out.

“We kind of all sat down together with the city and said, ‘You know, taking them into the neighborhoods makes a whole lot of sense,’” she recalled. “Because we’re not overcrowding one neighborhood more than the other. South Siders would come to the North Side, North Siders would go to the South Side, and it just got to be too many people.”

Plus, all the neighborhoods have their own unique “flavor,” Murray-Belcaster added.

“They celebrate a little bit differently,” she said. “But it’s all kind of the same concept …celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with the community.”

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