New Turmoil at American Irish Historical Society
Four years ago, the board wanted to sell its stately Fifth Avenue mansion for $52 million but was blocked. Now the executive director who was brought in to turn things around has been fired and three board members have resigned in protest.
| 22 Mar 2025 | 01:39
A new uproar is gripping the American Irish Historical Society, which sits in a stately Gilded Age townhouse on the Upper East Side, following the firing of its executive director, which in turn triggered the resignation of three board members.
The board voted to eliminate the full-time executive director job held by Elizabeth Stack and replace the position with a part-time executive, essentially firing her, according to the Irish Echo, which broke the story.
Three board members, including author Terry Golway and real estate executive David Leavy, resigned. The Echo said a third board member had also resigned but did not identify the person.
It’s just the latest round of turmoil for the 128-year-old organization, which boasts a 10,000-book archive, the largest collection of Irish books in the world. Stack was recruited from the Albany-based Irish American Heritage Museum in Feb. 2024, after a few turbulent years for the organization, with the hope she could turn around the organization, which was awash in red ink.
It was four years ago that the AIHS appeared to be a moribund organization with the old guard preparing to sell off its townhouse to pay off its debts and pack up the archives for a move to upstate Otsego. That of course triggered an uproar among many in the Irish-American community.
But the organization—which started in Boston in 1897, moved to New York in 1904, and bought its Beaux Art townhouse on Fifth Avenue in 1939—appeared to be on the road to recovery. Its mansion was used as fictional character Logan Roy’s home in the HBO hit series Succession. It staged over 80 events in the past 12 months as Stack pushed for a broader cross-section of the Irish, rather than the old guard establishment.
”Her downfall was when she let the ‘shanty Irish’ into the place,” said John McDonagh, a taxi driver whose comedy Off the Meter, about driving a cab in New York City for over 40 years, was performed there last year. “She was doing a great job,” he said, but “the ‘lace curtain Irish’ were not happy.”
But the organization was still apparently in the red, which was part of the motivation to cut the only paid employee to part time. The year before Stark’s arrival, for the period ending Dec. 31, 2023, the organization, which is officially a 501(c)3 charity, posted a net loss of $274,667 on revenue of $755,696 and expenses of $1,030,363.
The Dublin-based Irish Times noted in 2021 that the five-story mansion with its curved balcony “has long symbolized the immigrant ascent of Irish America. The Tricolor and the Stars and Stripes flying from its bowed façade stake a claim to rarefied pavement directly across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
The three board members who resigned supplied a statement to the Echo, which pointed out, “The current executive director, Dr. Elizabeth Stack, was honored for her contribution to Irish-American life by state Attorney General Letitia James just hours before the board voted to eliminate her position.”
Many had hoped that the turmoil of recent years that almost resulted in the sale of the grand mansion in 2021 was behind it.
At that time, the old board put its Fifth Avenue mansion on the block seeking $52 million. That triggered an uproar among Irish Americans and government officials in Ireland and New York. Brian McCabe, a former NYPD homicide detective who had been active in the organization and served briefly as its chairman before being ousted in 2019, blasted the proposal at the time and teamed up with former marketing director Sophie Colgan to lead a petition drive to halt the sale. The effort to halt the sale drew wide support, including from the Irish Consulate and actor Liam Neeson.
Since it was a not-for-profit organization, New York State Attorney General Letitia James had the charities bureau look into the matter at the request of McCabe, who eventually amassed a 30,000-name petition.
Eventually, after several price reductions, the palatial mansion was taken off the market and, working with the Irish Consulate in New York, AG James announced a new board had been selected in 2023.
But following the latest resignations, of the original nine board members who joined in 2023, only four remain.
The three who resigned said the decision to eliminate Stack’s position was a “catastrophic setback for an organization that is struggling to put past discord and scandals behind it.”
“Dr. Stack has done a remarkable job reviving an organization that was dormant for years,” the statement said.
Our Town reached Stack, but she declined to comment. Calls to James Normile, the chairman of the AIHS and a senior counsel at the international law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman, were not returned by press time.
“Dr. Stack has done a remarkable job reviving an organization that was dormant for years.” Statement from three board members who resigned when they learned executive director Elizabeth Stack had been fired.