Italian neighborhoods in North America

[Centropolis]

s. davis is a kc guy.

the hill is the major and only urban italian-american node in st. louis. although, there used to be a lot of italians on the northside who created a secondary suburban "node" in mid-century north st. louis county during white-flight, where there still are a good number of italian restaurants/mom and pop pizza places. but what midwestern city isnt like that? there was an actual "little italy" adjacent to downtown st. louis, near the wholesale produce row thats still there.

i wouldnt be surprised if cleveland has a larger regional/suburban italian presence. st. louis had a large polish population, too, (on the northside) but almost certainly not as large as cleveland, either. it was much more heavily a german-irish dynamic, here.

edit: stats bear out that metro cleveland is over 2X as italian.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i wouldnt be surprised if cleveland has a larger regional/suburban italian presence.

As I pointed out earlier in the thread, there isn't really any Italian area in Cleveland proper - but it has an Italian concentration in the eastern suburbs (i.e. Mayfield Heights). St. Louis has The Hill but no concentrations in the suburbs.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Docere

As I pointed out earlier in the thread, there isn't really any Italian area in Cleveland proper has an Italian concentration in the eastern suburbs (i.e. Mayfield Heights). St. Louis has The Hill but no concentrations in the suburbs.

anecdotally, those suburban areas that likely had the most italians began white flighting their suburbs up there at least a generation ago, if not longer, so that makes sense. so 2-3-4 diasporas for that quarter up on the northside, and poof, even though the hill is south-central.

[James Bond Agent 007]

From the 1910 Census, which should reflect roughly the height of the Italian-born population in the US. If anyone wants figures for a city not shown, I can add it. Note these are merely people born in Italy; by this time there had already been quite a few Italian immigrants for at least 2-3 decades, many of whom already had lots of kids born in the US.

Boston
Total population: 670,585
Total born in Italy: 31,380 (4.68%)

Chicago
Total population: 2,185,283
Total born in Italy: 45,169 (2.07%)
Note: That's less than I thought it would be. Germans seem to have been the 800-lb gorilla for Chicago immigrants back then, with over 182K born in Germany in the city. Seems to be an under-appreciated factoid.

Jersey City
Total population: 267,779
Total born in Italy: 12,060 (4.5%)

Newark
Total population: 347,469
Total born in Italy: 20,494 (5.9%)

New Haven
Total population: 133,605
Total born in Italy: 13,159 (9.84%)

New Orleans
Total population: 339,075
Total born in Italy: 8,066 (2.38%)

NYC
Total population: 4,766,883
Total born in Italy: 340,770 (7.15%)

Philadelphia
Total population: 1,549,008
Total born in Italy: 45,308 (2.92%)
Note: That's also less than I thought it would be

Providence
Total population: 224,326
Total born in Italy: 17,305 (7.72%)

St Louis
Total population: 687,029
Total born in Italy: 7,594 (1.1%)

San Francisco
Total population: 416,912
Total born in Italy: 16,919 (4.06%)

[Centropolis]

SF higher than Phila. lord in heaven...that sounds like the kind of thing i'd bet against at a table of urban history nerds and have to slug some night-train.

that you-know-what history in chicago really made the whole section larger than life. that's way way low. even i tend to think of chicago immigration patterns as more east coastal, than typical midwest (the old thing...the germans lost the war but invaded the midwest or whatever).

[Docere]

Yeah San Francisco really was a big center for Italian immigrants - but nobody thinks of it as a particularly "Italian" place today.

Italian American identity held up much better in the Northeast and there's no San Francisco equivalent to South Philadelphia or Staten Island.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Indeed, I found that surprising too. But I just double-checked the figures, and they are correct.

[James Bond Agent 007]

To bring to further light the situation in the Bay Area back then, here are numbers for Oakland:

Total population: 150,174
Total born in Italy: 8,800 (5.86%)

It gets a bit tricky comparing some of these smaller cities with ones several times their size, but anyway ... I suppose if you want to know the "Italian-ness" of cities back then, it's probably OK.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Indeed, I found that surprising too. But I just double-checked the figures, and they are correct.

There were two big Italian migrations to the U.S.- prewar and postwar. The prewar is the stereotypical red-sauce cuisine, Mama Mia stuff and was largely nationwide (at least in urban areas) while the postwar was more localized, both in terms of Italian origins and U.S. destinations, and much more under-the-radar.

Maybe Philly got more of the postwar migration, while SF got more of the earlier, bigger wave? Just guessing here. I know that in NYC, pretty much any Italian feel you get in 2016 is not from the big migrant wave. They're long gone, in NJ, PA, NC, FL and the like. It's the postwar Sicilians and Calabrians, rather than the assimilated Italian-Americans, that have an imprint on modern-day NYC.

That's, in part, why Italian neighborhoods in the Outer Boroughs are known for regional Italian cooking, not red sauce cuisine. I go to a Sicilian place in Gravesend that has panelle (chickpea fritters), vastedda (spleen sandwiches, trust me very good) and other localized stuff. If you want veal parm, go somewhere in Manhattan or Jersey.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There were two big Italian migrations to the U.S.- prewar and postwar. The prewar is the stereotypical red-sauce cuisine, Mama Mia stuff and was largely nationwide (at least in urban areas) while the postwar was more localized, both in terms of Italian origins and U.S. destinations, and much more under-the-radar.

Maybe Philly got more of the postwar migration, while SF got more of the earlier, bigger wave? Just guessing here. I know that in NYC, pretty much any Italian feel you get in 2016 is not from the big migrant wave. They're long gone, in NJ, PA, NC, FL and the like. It's the postwar Sicilians and Calabrians, rather than the assimilated Italian-Americans, that have an imprint on modern-day NYC.

That explains why virtually all the enclaves in the US where Italian is still spoken are in the New York area at this point. There's a difference between southern Brooklyn and South Philly.

New Orleans (Sicilian) and probably San Francisco (which I believe was heavily made up of northerners) received proportionally more of the "early early Italians" (i.e. 1880s and 1890s rather than 1910s and 1920s).

That's, in part, why Italian neighborhoods in the Outer Boroughs are known for regional Italian cooking, not red sauce cuisine. I go to a Sicilian place in Gravesend that has panelle (chickpea fritters), vastedda (spleen sandwiches, trust me very good) and other localized stuff. If you want veal parm, go somewhere in Manhattan or Jersey.

And they don't have "Sunday gravy"?

[Docere]

For selected metros in the 1980 census.

Population born in Italy:

New York 316,767
Chicago 46,950
Boston 43,643
Philadelphia 42,248
Los Angeles 28,538
Bay Area 23,988
Detroit 22,892
Cleveland 14,820

Post-1950 immigrants:

New York 174,236 (55%)
Chicago 28,682 (61%)
Boston 22,143 (51%)
Philadelphia 18,359 (44%)
Los Angeles 12,760 (45%)
Detroit 11,074 (48%)
Bay Area 8,862 (37%)
Cleveland 7,277 (49%)

This captures the post-war immigration from Italy just after it came to an end.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Germans seem to have been the 800-lb gorilla for Chicago immigrants back then, with over 182K born in Germany in the city. Seems to be an under-appreciated factoid.

Yeah, millions of Germans came here. We don't talk too much about German immigration experience generally... most of it happened in the 1800s, before touchstones like Ellis Island even existed.

Then, of course, WWI and WWII happened and German-Americans pretty much suppressed much of their heritage in the name of patriotism.

Also, it didn't help that elements of German culture became American staples... even apple pie is, essentially, based on German precedents.

[SPonteK]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

not so fast. not sure, but your neighborhood is historically 'it' for st louis and italians, isnt it? not exactly so for cleveland, where there is a big italian ghost in the house. the reason murray hill is cleveland's little italy is because cleveland also had another italian neighborhood that dwarfed it. this was big italy. it was originally located downtown around the old central market area, where most of the produce businesses were italian. and yes it was called that, big italy, because there was also the little italy in murray hill on the eastside (big italy was where the ballpark is today). anyway, those folks scattered to woodland avenue and all over the region following growth of the city, urban renewal and as suburbanization became a thing. the point being, today there is a noticable italian presence all around the cleveland area believe me, or at least where i have lived i guess, as they are the decendants of that local big italy diaspora. and they will tell you about that, too. there are also a few other smaller italian neighborhood nodes from the big italy disapora as well that still exist in the city itself. for one example, the south collinwood neighborhood and the holy redeemer feast, which still carries on today, brings one such italiany big italy diaspora node to mind. i bet as the murray hill feast has far outstriped it over the years most clevelanders have forgotten it used to have a much bigger festival than it does today.

tl;dr -- cleveland once had a much bigger big italy that scattered around, but still has a presence

http://www.clevelandmemory.org/italians/Partiii.html

***

i dk about the accuracy, but i found this. seems about right:

italian-americans
17,235,187
5.6% of the usa population
(2005)

http://www.slideshare.net/lschmidt1170/immigration-2013


***

*ethnic neighborhoods are always changing and are a fun topic, we should do threads on chinese, african-american, etc., as well -- if there isnt one already?*

I did not know that but am unsurprised. StL is not very Italian, and Cleveland is.

[SPonteK]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

s. davis is a kc guy.

Correct, though my Italian-American mother is a StLian, bred, born, and raised on the Hill, in fact, as were my grandparents until they moved to Northampton a couple years ago.

[Centropolis]

either im lazy or missed the stats...i wonder what toronto and montreal look like? one of them is probably a sleeper and blows boston or whatever out of the water. who knows.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Docere

Would that be "suburbanization" though? Oakland is a city in its own right and it wouldn't surprise me that it had a Little Italy district a century ago.

The 'process of suburbanization' I am referring to is the decades-old process by which the Bay Area's Italian American population, once highly concentrated in a dense urban "little Italy," San Francisco's North Beach, eventually dispersed and integrated into the greater suburban population. Oakland's Temescal district appears to have been a stepping stone, between the 1920s and the 1960s, on that longer journey.

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

From the 1910 Census, which should reflect roughly the height of the Italian-born population in the US.

San Francisco
Total population: 416,912
Total born in Italy: 16,919 (4.06%)

It is critical to remember just four years before the 1910 Census, 80% of San Francisco was wiped off the map by a catastrophic earthquake and fire, which caused tremendous disruption for the survivors. North Beach, the city's "little Italy," was entirely within the devastation zone. Homeless survivors from there, as from the rest of the city, had to move out into more intact areas (like Oakland) until their neighborhood and the city at large could be reconstructed.

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

To bring to further light the situation in the Bay Area back then, here are numbers for Oakland:

Total population: 150,174
Total born in Italy: 8,800 (5.86%)

This makes sense. Italian-Americans were uprooted from their traditional SF neighborhood by the '06 quake and fire like everyone else, and so thousands flooded into Oakland just like everyone else--some temporarily, others permanently.

[STLgasm]

St. Louis also had a large Italian neighborhood on the near north side of the city up through the middle of the 20th century. Italian Americans reside all over the metro, not just in and around The Hill. In fact, St. Louis' most famous local food, toasted ravioli, is a testament to the long-standing Italian influence in the region. Also, the only Italian language newspaper in the state, Il Pensiero, is published in St. Louis.

[Lipani]

Originally Posted by Docere

Yeah San Francisco really was a big center for Italian immigrants - but nobody thinks of it as a particularly "Italian" place today.

Northern Italian immigration to America tends to be greatly overlooked. They outnumbered Southern Italians in San Francisco and that might be partly why there's not a bigger discussion on their communities in the city.

[mousquet]

Lol, Mussolini was literally stoned on a public square some 70 years ago anyway. I see no reason for people in Italy to leave their homeland, except for the criminal corrupted clan organizations that spoil the southern provinces of the country. I think only a federal European Union could solve that terrible issue.

Otherwise, you won't see any more Italian immigrants to your country, 'murikans. Their northern provinces are productive and wealthy enough, and people from Italy are famously adventurous, but deeply bound to their places, like none other in the world. They actually have to deal with massive immigration themselves right now, definitely more seriously than any US state.

Sorry, but the so-called "new world" is just getting a bit old to us already.

[Centropolis]

yay mousquet

mousquet mousquetting!