- Date
- 1955-03-18
- Kind
- Celebration
- Followed by
- Chicago St. Patrick's Party for Holy Cross Church, 1958
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- celebrationcommunityheritagereligion
- Within
- Chicago
Summary
The March 1955 Beaver Beacon reprinted the invitation to a St. Patrick’s party at Woodlawn Gardens in Chicago, held Friday, March 18, 1955, for the benefit of Holy Cross Church on Beaver Island. The card was addressed to members and friends of the Chicago Beaver Island Club, with a $5.00 per-person donation covering music, dining, dancing, and refreshments, and representatives of the Beaver Island Civic Association on hand for the evening.
This is the earliest Chicago St. Patrick’s benefit documented in the held corpus, and it matches the year that St. Patrick's Party for Holy Cross Church, Chicago independently derives as the series’ founding year by working back from five later numbered editions (7th in 1961, 8th in 1962, 18th in 1972, 20th in 1974, 21st in 1975, all of which resolve to 1955). No source held here calls this a “1st annual” party or gives it any ordinal at all — the invitation reads simply as “St. Patrick’s Party” — so this article does not assert an ordinal number for it, but its year is the same one the hub’s arithmetic converges on from five independent directions.
Program
MUSIC-DINING-DANCING-REFRESHMENTS were included in the $5.00 admission. Representatives of the Beaver Island Civic Association were to attend “for the happy event,” and the invitation jokingly suggests a guest “might even coax one of them to make a speech.”
Evidence limits
The only source held for this edition is the reprinted invitation itself — an advance notice, not an outcome report. No attendance figure, proceeds total, or list of attendees for this specific Chicago gathering appears in the March issue or in the following (April) issue, which instead covers the island’s own, separate St. Patrick’s Day program. The invitation gives the venue address as “1200 East 23rd. St.”; a nearly identical announcement for the 1959 edition (five years later) gives the same venue, Woodlawn Gardens, at “1200 East 93rd Street” — this article records the 1955 printed address as printed and does not resolve the discrepancy between the two.
Open questions
- Is “1200 East 23rd. St.” an OCR or typesetting error for “1200 East 93rd Street” (the address given for the same Woodlawn Gardens venue in 1959), or did the party actually move address between 1955 and 1959?
- Did the Beacon ever report the outcome (attendance, proceeds) of this 1955 party in a later 1955 issue not captured by this search?
- Was this in fact the first Chicago party, as the hub’s independent ordinal arithmetic implies, or did the tradition predate 1955 without leaving a numbered trace?
See also
Sources
- Introduced as a reprint of the invitation card mailed to "Chicago Beaver Island Club Members and Friends" so that anyone who had not received a card would still know the details. The card itself reads: "ST. PATRICK'S PARTY -- FOR the benefit of Holy Cross Church, Beaver Island, Michigan -- MUSIC-DINING-DANCING-REFRESHMENTS -- Included in admission -- FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1955 Woodlawn Gardens -- 1200 East 23rd. St., -- Donation $5.00 per person," and states that representatives of the Beaver Island Civic Association would be on hand. No later 1955 issue held here reports the outcome, attendance, or proceeds.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1955-03_Beaver-Beacon
- The held three-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1955-03_Beaver-Beacon
Added 3 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Chicago St. Patrick's Party for Holy Cross Church, 1955”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/st-patricks-party-for-holy-cross-1955/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Beacon, March 1955, "St. Patrick's Party" (invitation reprint). (and 1 further source listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-03. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Chicago St. Patrick's Party for Holy Cross Church, 1955”RIS for “Chicago St. Patrick's Party for Holy Cross Church, 1955”