City Hall Area Walking Tour A tour of historic sites within walking distance of City Hall on Saturday, December 1, presented by the New York Irish History Roundtable, will be led principally by John Ridge, our Vice President for Local History. Occasional contributions will be offered by Charles Laverty, President. Among the places to be visited are 165 William Street, where John Devoy published the weekly Gaelic American from 1903 until his death in 1928 and where he led the nationwide Irish Republican Brotherhood/Clan na Gael conspiracy and funding that culminated in the Easter Rising in Dublin, 1916. Directly across the street at 164 William Street is the William H. Sadlier, Inc. publishing house, famous for its early novels, general books, and textbooks for Catholic readers. The firm is still in business after 170 years. It became known in its early years for bestsellers by the immigrant from Cavan, Mary Anne Madden Sadlier, who produced a phenomenal sixty titles addressing issues of domestic servants, immigration, famine, historical romances, Western pioneers, and grammar-school catechisms. Other historic places to be visited are St. Peter's at Church and Barclay streets, New York's oldest Catholic church, and the nearby St. Paul's Episcopal Chapel on Vesey Street and Broadway. Here we'll view the Gaelic inscription on the William J. MacNeven monument executed by a member of the Gaelic-speaking Draddy family of sculptors from Kerry. Also here on Broadway was Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa's first New York business, a travel agency on Broadway at Murray Street. On Chambers Street, on the same block as the Emigrant Savings Bank, was the Draft Office commanded briefly by County Down-born Colonel Robert Nugent of the Irish Brigade before the outbreak of the 1863 Draft Riots. Nugent's home was pillaged and burned by the mob during the riots. Also on Chambers Street was the office of the Irish-language weekly newspaper The Gael and the office of the lawyer-historian Michael Doheny from Tipperary, an escapee from the failed 1848 rising. By 1851, Doheny would organize a New York militia unit, the 69th Infantry, and later, on St. Patrick's Day, 1858, the Fenian Brotherhood at his office just north of Foley Square at 6 Centre Street. The assembly point for this walking tour of about two hours (rain or shine) will be at the City Hall Guard's Booth on the east side of Broadway, opposite Murray Street, Saturday, December 1, at 2 p.m. The tour requires two hours of walking on sidewalks.