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SARATOGA SPRINGS — City Historian Mary Ann Fitzgerald will deliver a presentation about the Feast of St. Michael, celebrated on the city’s west side dating back to the early 20th century.
The event, free and open to the public, will take place 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 27 at The Saratoga Springs History Museum, 1 East Congress St.
Starting in 1914, the Feast of St. Michael was celebrated in late September in Saratoga Springs’ Dublin neighborhood, which had started as an Irish enclave, then became home to Italian immigrants and African Americans, among others, and is now known as the Beekman Street Arts District.
As the statue of Saint Michael was paraded down Beekman Street, people pinned money to him, which benefited the Principessa Elena Society, a community resource for newly arrived Americans that still exists today in the neighborhood. The “Festa” grew into a widely beloved celebration that embraced live music, plentiful cuisine at Dublin’s numerous Italian restaurants, and even fireworks on the outskirts of town. It ended in the 1970s, occasionally revived between 1997 and 2001.
“Everyone in Saratoga Springs went to the St. Michael’s Feast street celebration, not just Catholics and not just Italians,” says Fitzgerald, co-founder of the Saratoga Springs West Side Oral Narrative Project, which is the basis for the presentation. Funding for the event is provided by the Alfred Z. Solomon Charitable Trust.
“One commonality of the interviews in the project,” Fitzgerald says, “was that everyone remembered the Feast of St. Michael, and everyone wished it could come back.”
