A US tribute to the fortitude of the Irish people during the potato famine has closed after less than a year because it failed to withstand a New York winter.
The 19th Century stone cottage that originally stood in Ballina, Co Mayo, was dismantled brick by brick last July and reconstructed in Lower Manhattan as the centrepiece of the Irish Hunger Memorial Park.
Despite surviving nearly 200 years of miserable West of Ireland weather, it was unable to last a single bitter winter in north east America.
The €3.5 million memorial has been shut down for emergency repairs that are expected to continue until the end of June, New York officials said.
Mr Timothy Carey, president of Battery Park City Authority where the memorial stands, said modern materials used to reassemble the cottage were to blame for the decay - not the ancient Kilkenny limestone.
Poor drainage meant many of the new elements were melting away in the rain, he told the New York Times.
A composite material used on the main pathways to the cottage that was meant to simulate an old Irish lane "performed miserably".
He added: "It was this clay-like substance. It got slippery when wet."
President Mary McAleese and Sir Bob Geldof addressed the memorial's opening ceremony last year.
An estimated one million people died and millions more were forced to emigrate after successive potato harvests were wiped out by a blight that triggered the 1845-52 famine.
The cottage overlooked the Manhattan harbour where many survivors from the disaster arrived in the US.
PA