The first and longest running all Irish library in the United States, the United Irish Cultural Center’s Patrick J Dowling Library in San Francisco, is near to concluding its fiftieth year, following its establishment in April 1975.
With the support and oversight of the UICC Board of Directors, Library Director Jennifer Drennan and a diverse team of dedicated library volunteers—including a professional law librarian and three Irish language speakers—the library maintains regular public hours (schedule available online) and hosts on-site programs and events at the UICC. The Dowling Library also produces monthly online events and collaborates with other elements of the UICC in promoting, preserving, and enhancing Irish and Irish American culture.
Founded by its namesake and first director, Patrick J Dowling, the Library opened its doors on April 5, 1975, less than a month after the opening of the UICC facility at 2700 45th Avenue in San Francisco. In addition to its monthly programs, the library organizes annual events: among them its literary Bloomsday program every June in the UICC’s St Francis Room, the popular Brigid’s cross-weaving workshop in early February, and the unique, quirky, and always well attended Mad Hatter Tea Party.
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill
As part of the UICC, the library engages in collaborations with entities including the United Irish Societies of San Francisco and the San Francisco Historical Society, which from March through July of this year featured the UICC’s Keepers of the Steps Irish dance initiative in an installation at the Historical Society’s Museum on Commercial Street.
Eyes on the Future
Liam Reidy has served as president of the UICC Board of Directors since December 2020. Under Reidy’s leadership, the UICC is embarking on an ambitious building initiative to redevelop its longstanding facility. The project aims to expand the center sixfold, from 20,000 to 120,000 square feet, to better serve the Irish American community’s evolving needs.
A centerpiece of the new development will be the Dowling Library. An expanded, state-of-the-art library will feature climate-controlled facilities to protect its collection of rare books, archival materials, artwork and cultural artifacts—some of which date back more than a century. (The oldest book in the collection, Fingal: an Ancient Epic Poem by James MacPherson, was published in 1763).
“The library is a beloved part of the center and is bursting at the seams with cultural treasures,” Reidy noted. “This expansion will finally give us the space to showcase and display these materials in an enhanced fashion.”
The modernized facility will also enable the library to offer digital installations, immersive exhibits, and expanded educational programming, bringing to life the history of the Irish in San Francisco and the Western United States.
“There are so many stories yet to be told through the library’s resources,” said Reidy. “The new facility will provide a platform to share these stories with the public and make them accessible in ways we could only imagine before.”
“The library, first of its kind in the United States, is destined to become one of the most important as a source of study and research for students, writers, scholars and historians, etc, and for all who are interested in their Irish heritage. …
—Patrick J Dowling, 1975
The library is the ‘Memory of Mankind.’”
The Library Today
The Library’s current director, Jennifer Drennan, picked up the reins in September 2019. Drennan is certified in Library and Information Technology; she also serves as a library technician in the Jefferson Elementary School District in Daly City.
“Jennifer took the library into the online world,” said the library’s previous director (2010-2019), Valerie McGrew. Today, people can access the library’s collection via its online Dewey system catalogue. Drennan also expanded and/or developed the library’s UICC website section and its social media presence. She ensured continuity of the Irish Marvels and Genealogy Club programs by transitioning them online in 2020, when Covid-related public health regulations shut down such in-person events.
Drennan estimates the library holds 4,500 books on site, with another 2,500 recently donated books awaiting the expansion of library space. Also on site: thousands of archived news publications, pamphlets, and similar items from Irish California and from Ireland. Some date back to the early 20th Century.
The library archives also hold a unique collection of local news publications from all parts of Ireland, which Patrick Dowling acquired via airmail on a regular basis through the 1970s, 80s, and into the 90s, so people could come to the library for current news from their hometowns, GAA teams, etc., in the days before the internet.
Dowling’s Vision
Patrick Dowling hailed from County Laois, where he was born in 1904. He emigrated to San Francisco in 1928, and served as director of the library from its founding into the 1990s. He authored two books: California: The Irish Dream, published in 1988, and Irish Californians, completed some ten years later just before he passed away at age 98.
Dowling was a man of tremendous energy. He founded and operated successful local real estate enterprises during his decades in the city. He was a member of the UICC’s initial entity, the Irish Cultural Center of California, prior to the 1975 opening of today’s 45th Avenue facility.
In addition to his never-ending bond with his Irish homeland, Dowling was an active civic San Franciscan, engaging with the city’s social, cultural, and historical institutions. One such entity is the Mechanics’ Institute, established in 1854, which today houses a treasury of San Francisco historical publications in the Mechanics’ Institute Library on Post Street.
Whether the Mechanics’ Institute Library provided some inspiration for Dowling to found the UICC’s library, two of his daughters, Kathleen Dowling McDonough and Colleen Dowling, recounted how it was Dowling himself and his vision, energy, and financial support, coupled with his remarkable ability to reach out to friends, colleagues and others in California and worldwide, which created the library of today.
On the run-up to completion of the UICC facility, Dowling acquired for the library a substantial Irish materials collection from the Carmelite monastery in Oakville, Napa County. Additionally, he solicited and arranged multiple initial-collection donations from other religious and ethnic institutions, amassing a foundational world-class collection prior to the library’s opening.
The Dowling sisters recalled their father’s ability to marshal human resources—friends, colleagues, and (of course) his own family—to move, store, organize, and eventually deliver and install the originating collection. Young Kathleen and Colleen commenced Dewey cataloguing the library’s books in the 1970s as the materials passed through their Ingleside Terrace home, where their mother resides to this day. They recall their father as “highly motivated—passionate!” explaining how he reached around the world “the old-fashioned way,” mailing hundreds of letters and making personal contacts.
Dowling’s outreach and energy went beyond founding and opening the library. During his decades as director, he promoted the library relentlessly, organizing and publicizing visits by prominent Irish and Irish Americans—including Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, in the 1980s.
A Beloved Institution
Director Drennan knows and loves the library: “The library is its own special place, out of time, out of space. It’s just fascinating.”
Director emeritus McGrew, reflecting on her decade as Drennan’s predecessor, said, “There is something magical about the place. People care about the library, absolutely. The Dowling Library means something to San Francisco, to the local community, and the Irish Cultural Center.”
The library’s public hours, events, online catalogue and more can be found at https://irishcentersf.org/programs/library.
Written by Christopher Donnelly and originally published in the November 2024 Irish Herald newspaper with the headline: “Eyes on the Future as the UICC’s Patrick J. Dowling Library Approaches Its Half Century”; used with permission.
PICTURED TOP: Patrick Dowling, the Library’s founder and first director, used his incredible ability at outreach to invite top politicians from throughout Ireland and the US to the UICC with Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.