NEIGHBORHOOD
STORIES
Recollections
of the old Neighborhood by Miriam Medina
ITALIAN HARLEM
America’s Largest
and Most Italian Little Italy
By Gerald Meyer
Italian Harlem--which
was located on Manhattan’s east side between 96th Street and 125th
Street from Lexington Avenue to the East River—at its height in
1930 was home to eighty-nine thousand first- and second-generation Italian
Americans. Its large population allowed for the construction of an unusually
extensive and elaborate social infrastructure, including the country’s
largest festa. This community encouraged the development of an extraordinary
set of political and communal leaders—Salvatore Cotillo, Leonard
Covello, Edward Corsi, Fiorello LaGuardia, and Vito Marcantonio. Italian
Harlem may be the most important single site for an understanding and
an appreciation of the Italian-American experience.
The first Italians arrived
in East Harlem in 1878, from Polla in the province of Salerno, and settled
in the vicinity of 115th Street.*1* In response
to the inhospitable treatment of their adopted land, Southern Italians
gathered together to the extent that they actually became the most residentially
segregated European nationality in the United States.*2*
Within the Little Italys, immigrants from various regions—even
towns—settled together. In Italian Harlem there was on East 112th
Street, a settlement from Bari; on East 107th Street between First Avenue
and the East River, people from Sarno near Naples; on East 100th Street
between First and Second Avenues, Sicilians from Santiago; on East 100th
Street, many northern Italians from Piscento; and on East 109th Street,
a large settlement of Calabrians.*3* The 1930
census showed the remarkable homogeneity of Italian Harlem, 81 percent
of its population consisted of either first- or second-generation Italian
Americans. (This was somewhat less than the concentration of Italian
Americans in the Lower East Side’s Little Italy—88 percent;
but Italian Harlem’s total population was three times that of
Little Italy.)*4* Some blocks reported: Italians
672, others 10; Italians 703, others 17; Italians 914, others 18.*5*
Italian Harlem occupied
the eastern half of East Harlem which stretched west to Fifth Avenue.
By 1890, the original Irish- and German-American communities were rapidly
being replaced by Italian Harlem and a Yiddish-speaking community of
Eastern European Jews, which was located between Lexington Avenue and
Fifth Avenue.*6* They shared East Harlem with
the much smaller communities of Finnish Americans, Greek Americans,
and the remnants of the original German- and Irish-American communities.
In the twenties, Jewish Harlem began to be replaced by the expansion
of Black Harlem in the north and the rise of El Barrio, that is, Spanish
Harlem. In general what was characteristic of East Harlem’s three
historic communities—Jewish Harlem, El Barrio, and Italian Harlem—was
that they were long-standing entities which constructed an organizational
life that satisfied the cultural and social needs of their residents.
All played key roles in the history of these peoples and the history
of immigrant experience within the United States in general.
Throughout East Harlem,
and most especially Italian Harlem, there prevailed extremely poor housing
and conditions of overcrowding. Italian Harlem was a community of original
settlement, whose housing was constructed specifically for immigrants.
It was a tenement district where speculators had constructed block after
block of narrow five- and six-story dumb-bell shaped (because they had
airshafts on either side) dwellings that contained railroad flats, that
is, apartments where one room entered directly onto the next. Overwhelmingly,
these were old-law tenements, which had been constructed before the
enactment of the Tenement Laws of 1901.*7* Therefore,
they occupied most of the lot, leaving a minimum of open space for light
and air, and most lacked toilets and bathtubs within the apartments.
As late as 1939, in the most Italian census tract, 84 percent of the
dwellings were without central heating, 67 percent lacked a tub or shower,
and 55 percent a private toilet. Only 7.5 percent of the apartments
contained five or more rooms.*8* Further contributing
to the overcrowding was the absence of public spaces. The only park
within this community, Thomas Jefferson, was established around the
turn of the century, when the city demolished six square blocks of tenements
and other structures in order to create one open space. In the mid-1920’s,
the district had the distinction “of having the most populated
block in the city. . . . Five thousand human beings in one city street
. . . .”*9*
The only notable exception
to Italian Harlem’s tenement-district character was East 116th
Street and a few adjacent streets which contained one- and two-family
row houses. East 116th Street, known as “Doctors’ Row,”
served as the corso, or promenade, for this community. It was very important
for the “completeness” of this community that it contained
an area where the prominenti of the community could reside. (Marcantonio
and Covello, for example, lived there in adjacent row houses on East
116th Street.) Nonetheless, this middle class enclave was limited in
size— in 1940 the census tract that embraced this relatively privileged
area contained only sixteen one-family and twenty-four two-family dwellings.*10*
Italian Harlem was a dormitory
community that included no important concentration of businesses or
industry. Approximately 20 percent of the community’s working
population found employment there, the others commuted.*11*
The lack of employment was compensated for by the area’s two significant
assets: proximity to districts offering jobs and an excellent public
transportation system. Every avenue had at least one mode of transit,
with a subway line under Lexington Avenue and elevated railroads above
Second and Third Avenues. The other north-south streets were served
by cable cars or streetcars, which stopped at almost 60 percent of the
street intersections.*12*
Italian Harlem’s
housing stock predetermined that it would be a poor working class community.
The vast majority of the Italian migrants to the United States were
contadini whose skills ill-matched the needs of an industrializing urban
economy. Low levels of literacy in the Italian language and formal education
in general also hindered the adaptation of Southern Italians to their
new country. The skills of the much smaller numbers of artigiani, who
were generally literate, reflected the pre-industrial character of Southern
Italy’s economy. No organization or group of earlier-arrived co-nationals
acted to mitigate either their economic hardships or the pervasive and
persistent hostility Italians faced from the host society. As a result,
the Italians predominated in the lowest-paying least-skilled occupations.
In Italian Harlem, these occupational patterns, perhaps to even the
most extreme measure, prevailed. A 1929 survey of the occupations of
fathers cited: milkmen, vegetable vendors, street cleaners, truck drivers,
dock hands, factory hands, builders, plumbers, plasterers, stone masons,
painters, and auto mechanics. The number of professionals and even while
collar workers was negligible.*13* The concentration
of Italian Americans in occupations that were seasonal and especially
vulnerable to economic downturns exacerbated their plight.
The Great Depression struck
Italian Harlem with a vengeance. In 1930 and 1931 the East Harlem Nursing
Service conducted employment surveys which showed that in a group of
363 families, 28 percent had work relief jobs, 21 percent worked in
the private sector or the traditional civil service, 6 percent had irregular
work, and 45 percent were unemployed.*14* Another
study which surveyed the economic condition of the parishioners of East
Harlem’s churches in this period categorized them into three tiers:
“very poor,” defined as “unable to pay rent”;
“poor” as having “enough to eat most of the time but
little else”; and “fair” as “comfortable living
is possible.” Of the four Italian parishes in Italian Harlem,
the parishioners of three (Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. Ann’s,
and St. Lucy’s) fell into the “very poor” category
and Holy Rosary’s “poor.”*15*
These conditions persisted. In 1940, one-third of East Harlem’s
work force was still unemployed. By 1950, the levels of employment had
greatly increased, but 60 percent of its work force was employed as
craftsmen, laborers, and operatives.*16*
At all times, however,
a small stratum of middle class Italian Americans, who served vital
communal needs, resided in Italian Harlem. A “Community Survey,”
sponsored by Covello in 1940, listed fifty-nine Italian-American doctors,
eighteen lawyers, and a scattering of dentists, morticians, politicians,
and labor leaders. This community’s middle class contingent was
augmented by a large number of small-scale proprietors residing in the
community. Community surveys produced by Covello showed that, with remarkably
few exceptions, among the hundreds of small stores in Italian Harlem,
ownership of particular types of stores and businesses was linked to
ethnicity, for example, clothing, hardware, and jewelry stores were
owned by Jews and bars by Irish Americans. Italian Americans predominantly
owned the baking, bedding, fish, flower, fruit and vegetable, grocery,
music, and shoe stores, as well as garages and restaurants. They also
owned practically all the funeral homes, coal and ice delivery businesses,
tile and marble installing, and barber shops. Jews and Italians, in
more or less equal numbers, owned the candy stores, drug stores, radio
repair shops, and printing establishments.*17*
The Catholic Church which
had served the Irish and other European immigrant nationalities so well
seemed unwilling to play that role for the Italians. Almost immediately
after the Italians arrived in Harlem, clashes broke out between them
and the Irish. The Catholic churches already established in the community
reserved the “lower churches,” that is, the basements for
Italian-language services. One elderly Italian resident, who was interviewed
in the thirties recalled that when the Italians attended services in
predominantly Irish parishes they were subjected to a barrage of insults
and even beatings. Excluded from the organize church, in 1882 a group
of Italian immigrants began celebrating the feast of the patron of its
native village, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Originally this event took
place in the front yard of a residence at East 110th Street and First
Avenue, but the following year, the group obtained rooms on the first
floor of a house on East 113th Street, where an Italian priest celebrated
East Harlem’s first Italian-language Mass.*18*
The Italian craftsmen literally built Our Lady of Mount Carmel with
their own hands after coming home from exhausting days of work; Italian
junkmen and icemen lent their carts and horses to carry materials. However,
in 1884 when the work was completed, the Italians were sent into the
lower church—that is, the basement—to worship. Despite the
fact that over 90 percent of the baptisms in this period were of the
offspring of the Italian immigrants, they remained there until 1919
when the first Italian priest, Gaspare Dalia, became the pastor.*19*
The statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was not moved to the church proper
until 1923.*20*
Italian Harlem’s
festa to La Madonna de Monte Carmelo became the best attended festa
in the entire United States. Its popularity was ensured when in 1903
Pope Leo XIII awarded the statue a set of golden crowns (one for the
Madonna and one for the child Jesus) and declared the church a basilica,
a status which in the entire United States is shared only with Our Lady
of Perpetual Help in New Orleans. By the thirties, pilgrimages from
as far away as California, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Canada
swelled the number of participants to 500,000.*21*
One observer in the thirties described some of the features of the festa’s
procession:
A band heads the parade,
which is then followed by members of the Society of
Monte Carmelo. The image of the Madonna is carried by four men. Immediately
following the Madonna come the Verginelle (little virgins), young girls
all dressed in
white wearing fine white veils . . . . Following them is banner [on
which] are pinned
all the dollars which the faithful contribute. At the end of the parade
march all those
who claim that the Madonna had healed them of some malady or performed
some
other miracle for their benefit, many of whom walk barefoot though the
streets of
Harlem carrying wax images of the parts afflicted to be presented at
the church and to
be melted down as candles. . . . The band plays popular tunes . . .
.*22*
The procession wound its
way though every block in Italian Harlem in a sense defining its borders
and consecrating its ground.
The traditional relationship
between the Southern Italians and the Church persisted in other ways.
In 1930, Our Lady of Mount Carmel reported that it had one thousand
adult male members and three thousand female adult members.*23*
In the forties, Covello conducted a survey of East Harlem high school
boys that showed when compared with schoolboys from other predominantly
Catholic ethnic groups the Italian American boys evidenced far less
religious fervor.*24* The distant relationship
of southern Italians and the organize Church was also reflected in the
fact that the festa of Our Lady of Mount Carmel as well as the other
feste were organized by congregations, that is, societies based on place
of origin that the Church recognized as responsible for conducting the
feste. Social service activities sponsored by the Catholic Church, which
could have forged closer associations between the organized church and
its adherents within the community remained limited.
Italian Harlem contained
a galaxy of voluntary organizations founded, organized, financed, and
otherwise operated by its residents. In 1935, no fewer than 110 mutual
benefit societies existed in Italian Harlem, that is, one for approximately
every 225 adult males. These organizations, which were composed of former
residents from a locality in Italy, typically were named after the patron
saint or the town of its members. They provided recreational and religious
activities, death benefits, sometimes sickness and accident benefits,
and aid in seeking work. Attendance of members at other members’
funerals was mandatory. Generally, each society had its own doctor and
lawyer, who were also members.*25* These societies
allowed their members to associate regularly with people who spoke their
own dialect. Also, for a group that was defamed and devalued within
the wider society, they gave their members the opportunity to achieve
recognition and status by gaining a title or simply building a reputation
within a community.*26* In the third generation
the mutual aid societies based on Italian home towns were generally
replaced by social and athletic clubs based on patterns of residence
within the community itself or some other mutual affinity. All of these
societies exclusively enrolled men. The major locations for informal
socializing—coffee shops and barber shops—also excluded
women. The Catholic churches sponsored women’s societies, but
their memberships were quite limited.
Four Protestant Churches
(Jefferson Park Methodist Episcopal, St. Ambrose Episcopal, Ascension
Presbyterian, and a Seventh Day Adventist Church) ministered to the
spiritual needs of the scattering of East Harlem’s Italian Americans.
The oldest of these churches, the Methodist Episcopal, which was founded
in 1890, dedicated in 1906 a newly built four-story edifice, located
on East 114th Street facing Thomas Jefferson Park, that contained a
church, rooms for classes, and a rectory. After World War I, at another
site, the church opened La Casa del Popolo, a community center staffed
by Italian Americans, which provided services for the community. In
1921, it boasted that its “Civic School” enabled 342 Italian
immigrants to become citizens.*27* The income
levels of Italian Harlem’s Protestants on average may have been
somewhat higher. The survey of various churches parishioners’
economic status mentioned earlier found that those of the Methodist
church, of which Covello was a very active member, was “fair,”
that is, in the highest of the three categories.*28*
Mitigating the effects
of the harsh economic and social conditions in Italian Harlem was a
wide array of social agencies. In 1930, East Harlem could count fourteen
social agencies whose activities were coordinated by the East Harlem
Council, which was founded in 1921 as the first neighborhood council
in New York City. This agency intentionally designed its program to
overcome the Southern Italians’ opposition to away-from-home health
care by locating its operations in a brownstone on East 116th Street,
where the staff attempted to foster a friendly homey atmosphere. By
1929, the agency claimed that it had contributed to a dramatic improvement
in the health indices of the community, including decreasing, to a much
greater degree than the City as a whole, its death rate, deaths from
pneumonia, and cases of tuberculosis*29*
Indicative of the limited
successes of some of these agencies, however, was the results of the
Boys’ Club program, which was inaugurated in 1927 in a newly built
six-story building (on East 110th Street between First and Second Avenues).
Its stated goal was to help “boys of foreign origin to become
real Americans . . . [and to] help the boys cultivate character from
within [because] the most serious lack in their makeup is a sense of
responsibility to themselves, their friends and their government.”
Under the auspices of the New York University School of Education, a
team of sociologists closely monitored the Italian Harlem’s Boys’
Club’s activities. The general conclusion of the resultant study
was that “the Club was not an important factor in the prevention
of juvenile delinquency.” Paradoxically, the number of criminal
offenses committed by the Club’s members actually increased from
1928 until 1931.*30*
The social agency that
has had the greatest positive impact on Italian Harlem was founded in
1898 by a Canadian Protestant missionary, Anna Ruddy, as the Home Garden.
In 1919, when it moved to its present location on East 116th Street
between First and Second Avenues, it was renamed Haarlem House, and
in 1956 it adopted its current name, La Guardia Memorial House.*31*
Harlem House touched the lives of almost all the great Italian Americans
from Italian Harlem. After earning a law degree in 1922, Edward Corsi,
who arrived in Italian Harlem from Italy at the age of ten, in 1926
became the Director of Haarlem House. He authored books and articles
that explained the immigrant reality to the general public; in 1931
President Herbert Hoover appointed him Commissioner of Immigration at
Ellis Island, and in 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him
Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization.*32*
It was under Ruddy’s
tutelage that Leonard Covello, who had arrived in Italian Harlem at
the age of nine from Southern Italy, academically achieved to the extent
that he attended Columbia College on a Pulitzer scholarship. He also
adopted the principles of Ruddy’s version of the social gospel,
ultimately dedicating his entire life to developing and implementing
educational strategies to met the needs first of the Italian-American
school children and then all cultural-minority students. In 1932, the
East Harlem Council mobilized the community to demand the establishment
of a high school in the community. With LaGuardia sitting in City Hall,
in 1934, Benjamin Franklin High School was opened with Covello, who
had already achieved recognition as an innovative progressive educator,
as its founding principal.*33* As New York City’s
first Italian-American high school principal, his writings and work
in Benjamin Franklin gained him a national reputation.
Haarlem House interpreted
its mission as empowering the community as opposed to transforming the
newcomers and their children into “real Americans.” While
providing instruction in English and preparing their clients for the
naturalization process, its activities never neglected the cultures
of origin of its clientele. Haarlem House held annual folk music festivals
and conducted classes in Italian for the immigrants’ children.
Leaflets and annual reports were published in both English and Italian.
After World War I, the staff enrolled some 1,250 families into the Harlem
Tenants League, which succeeded in forcing landlords to moderate rent
increases and to make necessary repairs and improvements on their properties.*34*
Vito Marcantonio, who served
as East Harlem’s Congressman for fourteen years between 1934 to
1950, had a close relationship with Harlem House. He worked as a tenant
organizer and taught in the naturalization classes offered by Haarlem
House. In 1924, he married Miriam Sanders, the head social worker of
Haarlem House, with whom for some years he actually lived in a small
apartment on the top floor of Haarlem House. In 1922, Fiorello La Guardia
decided to resume his political career by running for Congress from
East Harlem. Working directly from Haarlem House, he organized a large
contingent of insurgent Italian Americans who succeeded in enabling
him to serve as the sole Italian American in Congress. La Guardia, who
was not a native of the district, adopted Marcantonio as his aide de
camp, who tended to the needs of his constituents and build his political
organization. This enabled La Guardia to concentrate on his work in
the House of Representatives, where he provided a unique voice for the
urban poor and all the disenfranchised of the country.*35*
When he left the House as its most famous member to run for mayor, Marcantonio,
who had gained a powerful reputation for responding effectively and
promptly to the needs of the district’s residents, assumed his
seat and continue his mentor’s tradition. constituents and build
his political organization. This enabled La Guardia to concentrate on
his work in the House of Representatives, where he provided a unique
voice for the urban poor and all the disenfranchised of the country.*35*
When he left the House as its most famous member to run for mayor, Marcantonio,
who had gained a powerful reputation for responding effectively and
promptly to the needs of the district’s residents, assumed his
seat and continue his mentor’s tradition.
La Guardia, who actually
lived in East Harlem until 1943 until Gracie Mansion was opened as the
official residency of New York City’s mayor, did not maintain
close social or cultural ties to the area. He had been raised in the
American West, and has been aptly described as “cultivated and
Protestant,” whose “tastes were cosmopolitan and middle
class.” One of his biographers noted that: “[His East Harlem
constituents] addressed him as Major, unless they used an even more
exalted title, like Senator or Your Honor, and tipped their hats I his
presence.”*36*
Marcantonio’s relationship
to Italian Harlem was almost organic. When he was born in 1902 his family
resided on East 112th Street and when he died in 1954 he lived on East
116th Street. One of his biographers, Alan Schaffer, stated: “Few
men in public life have been so intimately linked with a particular
urban neighborhood. . . . In many ways, the man was the product and
the personification of the neighborhood.”*37*
Like La Guardia, he achieve real prominence in Congress by championing
not only for the needs of his constituents, but of all those who had
been left out of the American dream. He became the leader for civil
rights, champion for the foreign born, defender of the Italian Americans,
advocate for the Puerto Ricans, tribune for labor, and the national
spokesperson for the American Left. Unlike his mentor, however, his
social life largely consisted of hanging out with neighborhood friends
in a local coffee shop. Although he did not attend Mass, he marched
in the processions and maintained excellent relations with the local
priests. His organization responded to the widespread poverty of the
area by providing prodigious amounts of service. He did not hesitate
to use his own funds to help the indigent. His willingness to intercede
with the official world or, when necessary, substitute for it was congruent
with the personalism, embedded in the traditional Southern Italian social
structure. *38*
Similarly, his electioneering
style resonated with other aspects of the community’s culture.
His major means of reaching his constituents was street corner meetings
where he could exercise his exceptional oratorical skills. One of his
associates recalled that: “His voice was a hurricane of electricity
going through the people.” These meetings, where he spoke in both
English and Italian, incorporated a type of street theater where puppets
and men in costumes were used to represent his opponents. Following
in the already established tradition of LaGuardia, Marcantonio always
concluded his campaign on Election Eve at the so-called “Lucky
Corner,” on the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 116th Street.
There as many as twenty thousand supporters would listen to Marcantonio
orate and sometimes Paul Robeson sing in what resembled a political
festa replete with a band and huge electric-light signs urging people
to vote Row C, that is, the American Labor Party. The ritualistic quality
of regularly returning to a site and the implication of the talismanic
nature of the site, of course, resonated with the customs and popular
beliefs of the Southern-Italian masses that very much persisted in America.
This great assembly at the Lucky Corner, which straddled the border
between Italian Harlem and Jewish Harlem, in ways similar to the political
rallies held in Madison Square Garden and even the May Day parades of
the period, concretized the unity of otherwise insular communities.
Aside from its large size, the Lucky Corner rallies communicated to
the residents of East Harlem the importance of their Congressmen, because
they attracted people from outside East Harlem, were broadcast live
on as many as three New York City radio stations, and were reported
on in the press.*39*
It was Covello who first
recognized that: “As concerns Italians in a community like East
Harlem . . . All adjustments, all accommodations, are made in terms
of an Italian environment. [This] makes the community a ‘Little
Italy,’ [where] all tendencies toward accommodation denoted attempts
to establish a replica of a southern Italian milieu which would assure
a measure of security against demoralization.”*40*
Covello’s research established that in Italian Harlem typical
Southern Italian mores persisted with remarkable force into the third
generation. Questionnaires that he administered to Benjamin Franklin
High School students showed that the values and attitudes of the Italian-American
students significantly differed from those of students from other ethnic
European, for example, the Italian-American students were much more
likely to list “cousins” when responding to the query: “Who
would you prefer to spend your leisure time with?” In a few specific
instances (willingness to do housework, and desire to live one’s
entire life close to family) slightly more third-generation than second-generation
Italian-American students responded in congruence with the dictates
of Southern Italian mores.*41* Covello was convinced
that this milieu discourage prolonged education, because the parents
feared that the Americanization process would estrange their children
from the family system. His response to this, however, was not to collaborate
in discouraging the persistence of the Italian culture, but to adjust
the school to the community. Working together with the Italian Teachers
Association, in 1922 Covello had convinced the Board of Education to
accept Italian on a par with French, German, and Spanish as acceptable
for the fulfillment of the Regents diploma language requirement. When
Covello had attended elementary school in Italian Harlem, his teacher,
without consultation with his parents, changed his first name from Leonardo
to Leonard and the following year, another teacher, again without parental
input, changed his surname from Coviello to Covello! He recalled that
the entire time he spent in public school, aside for Columbus, there
was never a mention of anything Italian.*42 *
After he became principal of Benjamin Franklin, the study of Italian
was encouraged (in 1936, 776 students were enrolled), and an intercultural
curriculum was implemented.*43*
Still home to fifty thousand
Italian Americans, Italian Harlem was largely intact in 1950. However,
its aging population and deteriorating housing stock conspired to undermine
its stability. Ironically, the public housing that the community had
fought so hard to obtain played the biggest role in reducing Italian
Harlem. Italian Harlem’s first public housing project, East River
Houses, which was initially occupied in 1941, resulted from a massive
housing campaign coordinated by Covello and Marcantonio. It was built
on a desirable site, between First Avenue and the East River between
102nd and 105th Streets, which had contained mostly antiquated industrial
properties. However, starting in 1947, demolition began for a series
of housing projects that often required as many as ten years before
completion.*44* The razing of housing on multi-block
areas entailed the destruction of fifteen hundred stores, and many small
churches, social clubs, union halls. The urban ecology of a community,
which a planning report of the Mayor’s Committee on City Planning
in 1937 had proposed as “The principle center of Italian culture
in this hemisphere,” was wantonly destroyed by well intentioned
but mindless public policy.*45* The Times in 1968
reported one old time resident as saying: “In came the bulldozers,
and out went the Italians.”*46* Then, the
VA mortgages and the lure of “a better life,” now defined
by the general society and culture, accelerated the exodus. By 1960,
fewer than sixteen thousand Italian Americans resided in East Harlem.*47*
Today, Italian Harlem
still exists. The 1990 Census shows only 918 Italian-Americans living
in Italian Harlem. Most of these predominantly older residents are clustered
around Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, where in a ten-block area (stretching
from East 114th Street to East 118th Street and from Second Avenue to
Pleasant Avenue) the remaining typical social clubs and business still
operate. The last pasticceria closed a few years ago, however, you can
buy excellent biscotti at Marrone’s Bakery, which still bakes
some of best Italian bread in New York City. There is a barbershop whose
proprietor reports that “Marcantonio was a good friend of mine.”
Patsy’s Pizzeria is so legendary that the use of its name has
been the cause for a lawsuit. Across the street, Rex’s sells great
lemon ice, a few blocks south, Mario’s salumeria makes delicious
sandwiches. And while reservations at Rao’s will earn the caller
a “Forget about it!”, Andy’s Colonial serves excellent
traditional Italian food. Farenga’s, which is housed in a failed
Italian bank, still buries the old timers as they pass away. LaGuardia
Memorial House, which has a modest display of photographs and memorabilia
in its lobby, is governed by a largely Italian-American board whose
chair is Phillip Corsi. The physical artifacts of the community are
intact. Although Jefferson Park Methodist Church is now the Holy Tabernacle
Church, Biblical admonishments engraved in gilt letters in Italian are
respectfully preserved. Marcantonio’s last residence (231 East
116th Street) and Covello’s residence (229 East 116th Street)
remain as does the Fiorello La Guardia Political Association (later
the Vito Marcantonio Association) at 247 East 116th Street. Facing the
East River on Pleasant Avenue between East 114th and East 116th Streets,
Benjamin Franklin High School (renamed the Manhattan Center of Mathematics
and Science) remains a majestic and extremely well preserved public
monument. Most importantly, on East 115th Street near Pleasant Avenue,
the cathedral of Italian Harlem, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, still shines
in all its splendor, a monument to the entire Italian-American experience.
The church still holds a Mass each Sunday in Italian, and on every July
16th the continuity of this community is expressed when many of the
former residents return to join the procession, which led by a float
carrying a statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel wends its way through
the streets. Around the religions observance, a few sausage stands and
games of chance remind the attendees of the other aspects of a festa.
In stark contrast to Central
Harlem, however, where every site of historic note has been recorded
and noted and where almost every thoroughfare has been renamed to honor
a great resident, there is no visible memorialization of this historic
community and its great leaders. The residences of Covello, Marcantonio,
and LaGuardia remain unplaqued, the political headquarters where LaGuardia
and Marcantonio made national history is a tire repair shop, and no
street has been renamed to commemorate the great Italian Americans who
were engendered and gave voice to this great center of the Italian American
experience.
Endnotes
1. May Case Marsh, “The Life
and Work of the Churches in an Interstitial Area” (Ph.D.
dissertation, New York University, 1932), p. 438.
2. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants
in Buffalo,
1880-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), p. 116.
3. Irving Sollins, “A Socio-Statistical Analysis of Boys’
Club Membership” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1936),
p. 43.
4. William Shedd, Italian Population in New York (New York: Casa Italiana
Educational Bureau, 1934), p. 3.
5. Statistics compiled by Covello from United States Census. Covello
Collection, which are deposited in the Balch Institute, Philadelphia.
The Census counted third-generation Italian Americans as “native
born of native stock.”
6. See: Jeffrey Gurock, When Harlem Was Jewish, 1870-1930 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1979).
7. Frederick Thrasher, “Final Report on the Jefferson Park Branch
of the Boys’ Club of New York” (Typewritten, ca. 1935),
pp. 130, 122-34. Deposited in New York University Library.
8. Margaret Campbell Tilley, “The Boy Scout Movement in East Harlem”
(Ph.D., dissertation, New York University, 1935), p. 31.
9. Edward Corsi, “My Neighborhood,” The Outlook (Sept. 16,
1925), p. 92.
10. Abraham Kavadlo, “Housing in Lower East Harlem” (Typewritten
report, dated May 15, 1939), pp, 19-20. Marcantonio Papers, New York
Public Library.
11. Edwin Friedman, “East Harlem Community Study: 1940-1950”
(Masters thesis: New York University, 1954), p. 19.
12. Thrasher, “Final Report,” p. 100.
13. Marsh, p. 57. On the general distribution of occupations among Italians
see: John D’Alessandre, Occupational Trends of Italians in New
York City (New York: Casa Italiana Educational Bureau, ca. 1936).
14. “A Decade of District Health Pioneering: Ten Year Report of
the East Harlem Health Center,” prepared under the direction of
Kenneth Widdemer (New York, 1932), p. 137.
15. Marsh, pp. 495-97.
16. “Memorandum on Child Care Survey of East Harlem Health Center
District, Manhattan,” Neva Deardorrf (New York: ca. 1940), pp.
5, 9.
17. Covello Collection.
18. Father Enrico Mizzatesta, interview conducted by S. Busacca, no
place or date. Transcript deposited in Covello Collection.
19. Robert Anthony Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community
in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985),
p. 54.
20. Domenico Pistella, The Crowning of a Queen (New York: Eugene Printing
Service, 1954), p. 118.
21. Pistella, pp. 68, 128, 105.
22. Marie Consistre, “A Study of a Decade in the Life and Education
of the Adult Immigrant Community in East Harlem” (Ph.D. dissertation,
New York University, 1943), pp. 223-24, in The Italians: Social Background
of an American Group, edited by Francesco Cordasco and Eugene Bucchioni
(Clifton, NJ: Augustus Kelly Publishers, 1974).
23. Unsigned carbon copy of memorandum deposited in Covello Collection.
24. Leonard Covello, The Social Background of the Italo-American School
Child: A Study of the Southern Italian Family Mores and Their Effect
on the School Situation in Italy and America (Leiden, the Netherlands:
E.J. Brill, 1969), p. 379.
25. Lists of Italian Harlem’s mutual aid societies are deposited
in Covello Collection.
26. Humbert Nelli, Italians in Chicago, 1800-1930: A Study in Ethnic
Mobility (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 157, 173-81.
27. Consistre, pp. 249-54.
28. Marsh, pp. 495-97.
29. “A Decade in Health Pioneering,” pp. 42, 45, 108.
30. Thrasher, "Final Report," pp. 49, 66-80.
31. Robert Peebles, “Leonard Covello: A Study of an Immigrant’s
Contribution to New York City” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University,
1967), pp. 87-89. Italian-born Salvatore Cotillo is a neglected Italian
American leader who was also a product of Italian Harlem. Elected from
Italian Harlem in 1912 to the State Assembly, he later served in the
State Senate and in 1923 became the first Italian justice on the New
York Supreme Court. He joined La Guardia and Luigi Antonini, of the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union, in founding an anti-Fascist
New York State chapter of the Order of the Sons of Italy. Although he
was associated with Tammany Hall, like Robert Wagner and Alfred E. Smith,
he was a strong proponent of social and prolabor legislation. Ronald
Bayor, Fiorello La Guardia: Ethnicity and Reform (Wheeling, IL: Harlan
Davidson, 1993), pp. 23, 135, 191.
32. “Corsi, Edward,” in Dictionary of American Immigration
History, p. 141, edited by Francesco Cordasco (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press, 1990).
33. Leonard Covello, The Heart Is the Teacher (New York: McGraw Hill,
1958.
34. Gerald Meyer, “Vito Marcantonio: A Successful New York City
Radical Politician” (Ph.D. dissertation, City University, 1984),
pp. 197-98.
35. Howard Zinn, La Guardia in Congress (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958).
36. Robert Freeman, “Exploring the Path of Change in East Harlem,
1870-1979: A Multifactor Approach” (Ph.D. dissertation, Fordham,
1994), p. 144; Arthur Mann, La Guardia: A Fighter against His Times,
1882-1933 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959).
37. Alan Schaffer, Vito Marcantonio: Radical in Congress (Syracuse:
Syracuse
University Press, 1966.
38. Gerald Meyer, Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902-1954 (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1989).
39. Ibid.
40. Covello, Social Background, p. 349.
41. Covello, Social Background, pp. 360-81.
42. Covello, The Heart, pp. 29, 43.
43. “Italian Teachers Association Seventh Annual Report: School
Year 1936-1937,”
p. 321, in The Italian Community and Its Language in the United States:
The Annual Reports of the Italian Teachers Association, edited by Francesco
Cordasco (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975).
44. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Middlesex,
England: Pelican Books, 1964), pp. 15, 56-57, 69, 71, 75, 113, 129,
306-7.
45. “Rebuilding Urged for East Harlem,” New York Times (June
29, 1937), p. 23.
46. “The Harlem Italians: Little Italy Is Kept Alive by Former
Residents Who Keep Coming Back,” New York Times (Oct. 15, 1968),
p. 49.
47. Freeman, p. 255
