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PART 5: BOSTON'S LITTLE
ITALY
1900-Today
by
Guild Nichols
folks@NorthEndBoston.com
The
Italian masses that flowed into the North
End on the heels of the departing Irish and
at the apex of the Jewish settlement found
a neighborhood in dire physical condition;
a rundown, overcrowded slum of deteriorating
tenement buildings. Like their predecessors,
these newly-arrived Italian immigrants also
had to contend with Bostonians' disdain for
foreigners. As historian Samuel Adams Drake
opined (in 1871) about living conditions in
North Square:
Nowhere
in Boston has Father Time wrought such ruthless
changes, as in this highly respectable quarter,
now swarming with Italians in every dirty
nook and corner. In truth, it is hard to
believe the evidence of our own senses,
though the fumes of garlic are sufficiently
convincing. Past and Present confront each
other here with a stare of blank amazement,
in the humble Revere homestead, on one side,
and the pretentious Hotel Italy on the other;
nor do those among us, who [know] something
of its vanished prestige, feel at all home
in a place where our own mother-tongue no
longer serves us.
The
first Italian immigrants came in the 1860s
from Genoa and settled in a three-block area
off Fulton Street, adjacent to the Jewish
Menorah Products poultry slaughterhouse. They
numbered fewer than 200, but during the 1880s,
the immigrant tide began to shift -of the
15,000 Irish that lived here in 1880, barely
5,000 remained by 1890.
The
Genoese were followed by the Campanians, who
were followed by the Sicilians, the Avellinese,
the Neopolitans, and the Abruzzesians. Each
group settled in their own area within the
North End, creating their own enclave within
the greater North End neighborhood.
Italian Immigrants
The North End
had also changed in a number of other significant
ways over the preceding decades. Formerly
Protestant churches were acquired by the Catholic
Archdiocese of Boston - reflecting the ascendancy
of Irish Catholicism throughout the neighborhood.
The Seamen's Bethel became the Sacred Heart
Church in 1871 after Rev. Edward Taylor's
death. The Bulfinch-designed New North Congregational
Society became St. Stephen's Church. In 1873
a new Italian-Portuguese Catholic church,
St. John the Baptist, was dedicated, and in
the same year St. Leonard's Church was founded.
St. Leonard's, at the corner of Hanover and
Prince Streets, was completed in 1899, becoming
the first Italian church in New England and
the second oldest in America.
During
this same period, a new Settlement House Movement
swept through Boston's North End. It took
several forms. Some settlement houses were
established to assist immigrants in adjusting
to their new life in America. For example,
the North End Union provided food and aid
to several generations of immigrants. In the
1880s, it housed the Children's Mission which
developed "The Boston Sand Garden Project",
the city's first public playground.
A
North Bennet Street Industrial School was
also founded in 1881 by Pauline Agassiz Shaw
to teach Italian and Jewish immigrants skills
needed to obtain employment. And eight years
later, Lina Hecht set up her Hebrew Industrial
School next door to teach needlework skills
to Jewish women. Then there was the "Saturday
Evening Girls" library club. It was founded
in 1899 by Edith Guerrier, a 21-year-old librarian
who maintained a reading room at the North
Bennet Street School. She came up with a novel
approach to keeping Jewish and Italian young
women "off the streets" while at the same
time advancing their education and well-being.
Her library club held meetings on Saturday
evenings at which literary scholars, writers,
historians and social reformers would present
talks.
With
the encouragement and financial support of
Boston philanthropist Helen Osborne Storrow,
Guerrier and her friend Edith Brown, an artist,
also formed the Paul Revere Pottery on Hull
Street in 1908. The aim was to help their
"Saturday Evening Girls" to become
financially self-sufficient. The young women
worked eight-hour days in "an airy, healthful
atmosphere" and received a decent wage, an
annual paid two-week vacation, and a daily
hot lunch - all of which were virtually unheard
of in the early 20th-century workplace. Paul
Revere Pottery is today a valued collectible.
By
1900, the Italian population in the North
End was 14,000. Over the next 20 years it
would more than double to 37,000 and at its
peak, in 1930, 44,000 Italians were packed
into an area less than one square mile in
size. As North End historian William DeMarco
notes, "By comparison, the parking lot at
Florida's Disneyworld is three times larger
than the inhabited area of the North End."
The neighborhood had become 99.9% Italian
and was said to be more densely populated
than Calcutta.
The
first arrivals, the Genoese, made their living
as fruit and vegetable vendors and as peddlers
selling wine, cheese, and olive oil from North
End storefronts and from stalls along the
open air Haymarket in Dock Square. Access
to these North End markets and shops was greatly
facilitated by the construction of North Station
(in 1893) and by the Metropolitan and West
End Street Railway companies. In the meantime,
the Sicilian immigrants, who had colonized
the length of North Street along the harbor
by 1925, found employment in the booming commercial
fishing fleets.
Others
were able to find work in the construction
trades - as masons, metalworkers, carpenters,
and general laborers - with Italian owned
and operated contractors. But to no small
degree, it was the neighborhood itself that
offered many job opportunities - providing
for the feeding, clothing, servicing and ministering
to the masses of fellow immigrants and paesani
that filled the neighborhood to overflowing.
In 1920, the North End had 28 Italian physicians,
six Italian dentists, eight funeral homes,
and along just one block of Hanover street
four or five barbershops.
Most
North End businesses were of the "Ma
and Pa" variety - small grocery stores,
butcher shops, and bakeries, dressmakers,
cobblers and shoe stores. Each had their
favored clientele. Two noted exceptions
to this "Ma and Pa" variety
were founded by Luigi Pastene and by
three Sicilian friends, Gaetano LaMarca,
Guiseppe Seminara and Michele Cantella.
Luigi Pastene came to Boston from Italy
in 1848 and began selling produce from
a pushcart. By the 1870s, he was joined
by his son, Pietro, in establishing
Pastene as a company specializing in
selling groceries and imported Italian
products. By 1901, Pastene expanded
its operations to facilities along Fulton
Street in the heart of the North End
Genoese district. Today, the Pastene
Corporation is a major national
brand with distribution and packing
facilities established in New York,
Montreal, New Haven and Havana, as well
as in Italy in Naples and Imperia.
The
three Sicilian friends- LaMarca, Seminara
and Cantella - started a small macaroni and
spaghetti manufacturing business in 1912 at
90-92 Prince Street. They became so successful
that within five years, they moved their Prince
Pasta Company to 207 Commercial Street. Then,
in 1939, the three partners moved the entire
operation to Lowell, where they were joined
by Guiseppe Pellegrino, another Sicilian immigrant
with a deft hand at marketing. Pellegrino
eventually bought out the three partners and
proceeded to build Prince into a national
brand. He created the famous radio slogan
"Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day" in and
in 1969, under the direction of his son, Joseph,
Prince introduced its most memorable TV commercial,
featuring Anthony Martignetti and the refrain
of a mother peering out a tenement window,
calling to her son to come home for a supper
of Prince spaghetti. Joseph Pellegrino, took
over the presidency of Prince Pasta from his
father Guiseppe in 1972, eventually selling
the company to Borden, Inc. in 1987.
These
two business success stories aside, most Italian
North Enders found life hard, both economically
and socially. Anti-Italian sentiment remained
deeply ingrained. With the close of the First
World War and the rise of Bolshevism, a new
"Red Scare" ran rampant across much of the
United States. This, coupled with the growth
of Italian fascism and the anarchist movement,
made for a hostile political climate towards
immigrants and radicals.
On
January 15, 1919, a 50-foot tank filled with
2.3 million gallons of molasses exploded on
the North End industrial waterfront, causing
widespread destruction and taking the lives
of 21 people and injuring another 150. The
blast was initially believed to be the result
of a terrorist act. This was a main line of
argument by attorneys for U.S. Industrial
Alcohol, owner of the storage tank; a case
of sabotage by political anarchists. The resulting
investigation and legal hearings - involving
125 lawsuits - was the longest up until then
in the history of the Massachusetts court
system. It ended in 1926 with a conclusive
judgment: the tank had been improperly designed
in the first instance and its failure was
due entirely to structural weakness, not to
a terrorist attack.
Thirteen
months to the very day following this Great
Molasses Flood, a shoe company paymaster and
guard were robbed and murdered in broad daylight
in South Braintree. The two perpetrators made
off with $15,000. Eyewitnesses claimed they
looked Italian. Over the next month, a large
number of Italian immigrants were questioned.
Two North Enders were arrested - Nicola Sacco
and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Both men were avowed
anarchists, who had protested American entry
into WW I and had fled to Mexico to avoid
conscription into the U.S. Army.
At
their trial, the main evidence against them
was that they were both carrying guns when
arrested on a Quincy streetcar. Despite the
fact that both men had good alibis - Vanzetti
was peddling fish in Plymouth while Sacco
was with his wife at the Italian Consulate
in Boston having his passport photograph taken
- attorneys for the prosecution underscored
the fact that those who testified in support
of these alibis were also Italian immigrants.
They emphasized the men's radical political
beliefs, accusing them of unpatriotic behavior
for having fled to Mexico to escape the draft.
Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty of first
degree murder and sentenced to death.
Despite
the many appeals filed (and denied), the considerable
publicity the case received, and the numerous
large public demonstrations in their defense
across the United States and throughout Europe,
South America and Japan - Sacco and Vanzetti
were executed on August 23, 1927. Their wake
was held at the Langone Funeral Home, which
was then at 383 Hanover Street, and was attended
by over 100,000 mourners. The funeral procession,
carrying the bodies to the Forest Hills Cemetery
for cremation, attracted 50,000 marchers,
the largest funeral procession up until then
in Boston's history.
Yet
even with the waning tide of negative public
feelings towards Italian immigrants over subsequent
decades, the North End still had to contend
with its unsavory criminal reputation. From
its earliest days when it was rife with sailors,
gamblers and brothels, the neighborhood had
a Dickensian quality to it. Even after the
Irish influx, gambling and prostitution were
commonplace.
That
some Italian criminal elements - like their
Irish and Jewish counterparts before them
- preyed upon their own people was nothing
new. One example is the short-lived, nefarious
career of Charles A. Ponzi, who came to be
known as one of America's "greatest confidence
men" of modern times. He founded his Security
Exchange Company on Hanover Street in December
1919 with a simple promise: to pay investors
50% of their investment within 45 days. Initial
customers were cautious. But true to his word,
Ponzi paid these first investors 50% within
the prescribed period. Such a thing had never
been done before and as word spread throughout
the North End and across the City, money started
pouring in. He soon moved his offices to larger
quarters next door to City Hall on School
Street where money came in so fast that his
clerks had to pile it into baskets. By 1920,
Ponzi had promissory notes outstanding with
a face value of almost $15 million.
Charles
Ponzi claimed that he was simply sharing with
his investors a portion of the 400% profit
he was earning through trading in international
Postal Reply Coupons. When in 1920 Ponzi's
bubble finally burst , the truth came out:
he paid off his earliest investors with money
received from his later investors. He had
never bought or sold Postal Reply Coupons;
they simply served as his cover for what has
come to be called a "Ponzi Scheme" - robbing
Pietro to pay Paolo.
Crime
became "organized" inside the North End under
a variety monikers: "Mafia", "Cosa Nostra",
and "The Mob." Gaspare Messina started the
first "Boston family" crime organization in
1916. Filippo "Phil" Buccola, a Sicilian immigrant
like Gaspare, succeeded him in 1924. As Irish,
Jewish and Italian gangs sought to wrest control
over a number of illegal rackets - from gambling
and prostitution to loansharking and bootlegging
- violence, intimidation and murder prevailed
for more than a decade. Buccola gained a certain
respect from his underworld rivals by assassinating
a competing South Boston Irish gang leader,
Frankie Wallace and one of his associates,
in 1931. A year later, Charles "King" Solomon,
who reigned over the Jewish rackets, was gunned
down in front of Boston's Cotton Club.
By
the mid-1950s, the U.S. Senate began holding
organized crime hearings and Buccola sagely
decided to retire to Sicily, thus making way
for the rise of Raymond Patriarca Sr. who
ran New England's largest crime "family" from
his Federal Hill neighborhood in Providence.
He named Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo to run the
Boston rackets from his North End office at
98 Prince Street. It was in this office that
the FBI, in January 1981, planted electronic
surveillance equipment. The evidence gathered
from these surveillance activities ultimately
led to Angiulo's arrest and conviction in
1986, along with two of his brothers, under
Federal racketeering charges. As for Patriarca,
he had died a year earlier of a heart attack
at his girlfriend's apartment in Providence.
While
the criminal activities of Buccola and Angiulo
did not dominate the North End community,
"organized crime" remained an undercurrent
and still held a certain attraction to male
machismo. And still, as the late former
City Councillor Fred Langone noted in his
book, The North End: Where It All Began,
"Everytime a crime happened near or in the
North End, it got big headlines and gave the
rest of the city the impression that the Italians
were all gangsters and hoodlums."
Like
the experience of the Boston Irish before
them, Italian-Americans began to accrue political
power after the close of WW II and, in this
way, started to redress over a half-century
of prejudice and neglect. In 1948, Foster
Furcolo was elected the first Italian-American
Congressman and eight years later he became
the first Italian-American Governor of Massachusetts.
Fred Langone, whose grandfather had been elected
to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922,
was himself elected in 1961 to the Boston
City Council, a position he held for the next
22 years. Frank X. Belotti served as Lieutenant
Governor from 1963 to 1965, when John Volpe
was elected the second Italian-American Governor
of Massachusetts.
Langone
helped establish rent control in the North
End in the 1960s, preventing buildings from
being taken over by "outsiders" and curtailing
the exodus of elderly Italians. He successfully
lobbied for the creation of a new Christopher
Columbus waterfront park and helped preserve
over 70 waterfront warehouse buildings.
The
North End today retains much of its "Old World"
feel. Tourism provides an economic underpinning.
However, many neighborhood grocery stores,
fruit vendors, butcher shops, bakeries, shoe
stores, clothiers and cobblers have simply
disappeared to be replaced by restaurants.
With a population barely one-quarter of its
44,000 peak in 1930, fewer services are required
to sustain the community. Ten of its 12 schools
have been subdivided and converted to condominium
apartments. Church parishes have been auctioned
off to the highest bidder. Times have changed
in Boston's North End.
Yet
today, Italian-Americans still comprise more
than 41% of the resident population. Italian
remains the Lingua Franca throughout
the North End. It is one of the most vibrant
and thriving neighborhoods of its kind. Old
customs and traditions die hard (if ever at
all). For despite the fact that 50 individual
religious societies once existed in the North
End and only 12 remain today, these societies
with their religious Feasts and Processions
remain an integral part of North End neighborhood
life and culture, drawing large summertime
crowds. And soon, with the completion of the
"Big Dig" project and replacement of the elevated
Expressway with new open park spaces, the
North End will finally, physically rejoin
downtown Boston - for the first time in over
two centuries.
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