West End has long Celtic history

While the West End in Long Beach has become a melting pot for many cultures that celebrate the Irish on St. Brendan’s Day each October, the Irish Catholic roots run as deep as the founding of the city by Sen. William Reynolds in 1906.

According to Long Beach historian Roberta Fiore, Reynolds’s mother was Irish Catholic and he was sympathetic to her heritage. He hired Irish men to help build the city, which initially included the boardwalk and the Estates of Long Beach in the East End. With this planned community ending at New York Avenue, workers lived beyond the city’s boundaries in the West End.

“Senator Reynolds had no problem with them setting up tents and cottages there when they weren’t working,” said Fiore, adding that word spread quickly of this makeshift beach town. “That was the beginning of the Irish migration into the West End.”

Reynolds offered the summer residents a chance to be a part of his community and promised to provide them with electricity, sewage and plumbing. Between 1910 and the start of World War I, prefabricated cottages and bungalows were built on the first three streets of the West End, which were named after the styles of cottages raised there: New York, California and Pennsylvania. The city was incorporated in 1922 and the Irish were the first official residents and business owners in the West End.

The West End’s bar and restaurant district is not a new development. During Prohibition in 1920, there were 28 speakeasies west of New York Avenue. Morrison & Callaghan’s, now The Inn on West Beech Street, was one of the first bars in town.

In time, the primarily Catholic neighborhood began to attract Italian residents. Resident Bob Carroll, who grew up on Virginia Avenue with only four other year-round families, said the close-knit community consisted of either Irish or Italians.