Once upon a time, before New York lost its hyphen, when part of lower Manhattan was last destroyed, it was rebuilt by the son of a Galway man.
James Duane was born in that city to his immigrant parents, a merchant and his wife, in 1733, a time when the present centre of Manhattan was "upstate", a patchwork of farmland and wilderness. He grew up with an interest in finance, real estate and the law. He was called to the Bar in 1754, and later qualified as a solicitor as well.
A lean man with a prominent nose and an expression both serene and wily - to judge by the portrait of him that now hangs in City Hall - he got a reputation for being something of a maverick. He would take on law cases that no one else would touch.
He would defend British clients against colonials, or colonials against British interests, exactly as suited his whim. He made enemies; those famous Vermont-based terrorists, Ethan Allen's "Green Mountain Boys", put a price on his head after he took New York's side in a border dispute case, won it, and caused a significant percentage of Vermont to become part of New York State.
He tended to be either very popular, or vigorously detested, depending on whether he had been for you or against you in court.
This kind of talent has a way of rising to the top, and James Duane didn't loiter. By 1762 he was clerk of the New-York chancery court: by 1767 he was the state attorney general.
Declaration of Independence
Storm clouds were already gathering over the colonies' relationship with Great Britain, and he was not one to sit out such a challenge - he was simply one of those people for whom life meant being involved in everything going. Duane was active in various pre-revolutionary committees, and in the Continental Congress. The only reason his name doesn't appear on the Declaration of Independence was that he was up in New York that week, busy drafting the state constitution along with John Jay.
Some of his associates suggested that he should seek national office, but Duane never bothered. He just loved New York too much.
Then, as everyone had known it would, in 1776 war came. Long Island fell to the British in late August. Peace talks on Staten Island in early September broke down when Lord Howe demanded that the colonists revoke the Declaration of Independence, and they flatly refused.
The New Yorkers fled the ensuing assault, Duane among them; much to his grief, his home and first-acquired piece of "upstate" real estate, the beautiful little farm called Crommen See, "Crooked Creek" - now Gramercy Park - was seized by the British commanders to use as their headquarters.
Burned to the ground
But worse was to come. In the wake of the Battle of Harlem Heights, which George Washington's troops won, the city of New York was suddenly engulfed in flames on the night of September 19th, and burned to the ground.
The war went on for six years until the signing of the Treaty of Paris, and during this time lower Manhattan lay mostly in ruins, occupied by the British. Even when they were finally evacuated, there was still no co-ordinated scheme for its reconstruction, and funds and manpower were scarce.
James Duane was kept busy during this period as a delegate to the Continental Congress and a circuit court judge; but when the fighting stopped at last, Washington knew where to turn. He asked Duane to get together with his real estate connections and organise the reconstruction of the city, which was to be the nation's capital until something more permanent could be arranged.
Duane was what we would now recognise as an indefatigable networker, and a workaholic. A better assignment for him couldn't have been imagined. He got to work, calling in favours from merchants and contractors, soliciting for donations, starting fund-raising campaigns; he organised, wheedled, bullied, wheeled-and-dealed.
The governor of New-York appointed James Duane, an Irish-American before anyone thought of the term, as the first mayor of the free city, and he served in that office for two terms, all the time tirelessly rebuilding what he ran.
The street now bearing his name lies very close to City Hall, in what used to be the shadow of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.
Today New York again has as its mayor a man of immigrant ancestry, faced with a problem that would have made even James Duane take a long breath or so before he got down to work. Rudy Giuliani is functioning in the best tradition of his remarkable spiritual forebear.
"We will rebuild," he says. Though the leaseholder of the World Trade Centre site is already committed to that rebuilding, the shape it will take will obviously take time to emerge.
Fitting memorial
As James Duane's six-times great-granddaughter, a native Manhattanite now 15 years in Ireland, it seems to me that the most fitting memorial, on a site where thousands of New Yorkers and people from around the world once worked, is another place where thousands of New Yorkers and people from around the world can get back to work.
Such a place would be the best evocation of the inimitable, tireless, hard-working buzz of New York City, which my distant ancestor rebuilt from the ground up - the spirit of which he helped define, and which those who died in the Towers lived and breathed every day.
Let the builders of the new World Trade Centre engrave all their thousands of names on the walls around the bases of the new buildings, where everyone can see them and be reminded of them every day; and then let them set a plaque into the pavement of the reconstructed plaza, saying, "If you're seeking their monument, just look around." Or maybe better, "Look up".
I think James would approve.