By John Ferrannini

The United Irish Cultural Center in the Outer Sunset is celebrating 50 years this month with a jubilee mass. However, board president Liam Reidy said the real party will be a celebratory gala on Aug. 22.

“It’ll be a hot item,” he said. “People want to come back and relive the past here. People will look forward to reconnecting with old friends.”

In 2020, there was going to be a big celebration for the center’s 45th anniversary timed with St. Patrick’s Day but it never happened, Reidy said.

“The City shut us down March 12,” he said, referring to the restrictions on public gatherings to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The cancellation was hard because the celebrations around Ireland’s patron saint make March “one of those months that carry us through the quiet period.”

Nevertheless, COVID-19 actually helped the center return to its place as a community focal point for both the Irish diaspora and the Sunset generally.

“We have 1,400 members and that’s up from 700 pre-pandemic, because we were one of the few places that had a huge outdoor dining experience; our membership is growing year over year because people want to support the center,” Reidy said.

One way coming soon people can do that is with the Greenfest block party, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, on Sunday, March 16.

“We basically throw open the doors of the center for people to come in,” he said. “Music on the street, vendors, Irish dancing and Irish music.”

It is dancing that is at the heart of the center’s origin story. The Knights of the Red Branch (KRB) Hall in the City’s South of Market neighborhood – the original center of the Irish diaspora in San Francisco – was a place where Irish and Irish-Americans would dance together each weekend night for decades through the mid-20th century.

“I don’t think those kinds of places exist anymore; maybe they’d be nightclubs,” Reidy said.

It was in the late 1960s that a group of very energetic people came together to build a new facility in the Sunset, because many KRB Hall regulars had moved to the west side. They bought the land at 2700 45th Ave. in 1971 for $130,000. Construction on the 20,000 square-foot facility started in November 1973.

When it opened 17 months later, it was finished at a cost of $500,000, Reidy said.

“The vast majority of this building was built by volunteer labor and people giving all kinds of donations – rebar, two-by-fours, sheetrock, paint, stucco – and it has been here ever since. It’s survived the test of time.”

“This place is retro. This place is cool. It’s straight out of the ’70s,” Reidy recalls visitors saying.

But time comes with its ravages, too, so the Board of Supervisors approved plans for a new six-story building with two underground levels for parking.

In the meantime, the center anticipates its programming being held at the San Francisco Scottish Rite Masonic Center on 19th Avenue at Sloat Boulevard for a period of 24-26 months.

“We’re going to have a campaign headquarters; we’re going to have as many of the events as we possibly can to keep the community happy,” he said.

The center hosts a wide variety of events and groups, including boxing, Chinese American ballroom dancers, bar mitzvahs, quinceaneras and, of course, the Irish pipers.

“You ask them ‘We need pipers in the morning,’ you get five pipers,” Reidy said.

The center also has a library where scholars can conduct research. Librarian and archivist Jennifer Drennan said she started volunteering with the library in 2017 and was hired in 2019.

The library has been open as long as the center.

“The library was planned in advance and our founder, Pat Dowling, traveled all over Ireland and the U.S. soliciting donations to build the collection,” she said. “Once the building was opened, which was March 8, then the library had its opening reception on April 5 of that year because it took that long to bring everything out of Pat’s garage and everybody else’s garage.”

Drennan said that people cannot check out books from the library, but it is “open to the entire community” as a research library three hours an afternoon on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Microfilm and digitized databases of old San Francisco newspapers, including the Richmond Banner, the neighborhood’s newspaper from 1894 to 1970, are available.

The jubilee mass – a memorial for members who have died – will be celebrated on March 8 by the Rev. John Ryan and the Rev. Michael Healy.

“The building of the United Irish Cultural Center 50 years ago was a marvelous accomplishment,” Ryan said. “So many people participated and made it possible.

“At this time, we can only say thanks from the depths of our hearts,” he said. “Their love and commitment contributed enormously to the happiness and well-being of countless people through the decades. As we remember and honor those who went before us, we can only pledge to do our part to continue the vision for generations to come.”

The United Irish Cultural Center is located at 2700 45th Ave. Learn more at irishcentersf.org.