Italian neighborhoods in North America

Originally Posted by s.davis

I didn't mean it in it's perjorative sense. I meant it is a fun place to walk around, discover, sample. Essentially, exactly what you are saying. And specifically, I meant touristy compared to Northeast in KC, which, while it has a very comparable Italian-American population and is a fascinating and very unique (for the Midwest) neighborhood in it's own right, is not the kind of neighborhood that is as rewarding to just stroll around as an out-of-tower and pop into places. I did not mean touristy like Little Italy in NYC, which is pretty disinteresting to me.

Capisci?

Totes. Thanks.

[Docere]

Had a look at the Midwestern cities of Chicago, Cleveland and St. Louis.

In terms of census tracts, the Hill in St. Louis (47% Italian ancestry) was the highest of anywhere in the three. But beyond that no concentrations.

The most Italian tract in the city of Cleveland - which contains Little Italy - is 16% Italian ancestry. There is an Italian concentration in the eastern suburbs, with tracts that are at least 20% and as much as 1/3 Italian ancestry. For example:

Mayfield Heights (pop. 19,000): 24.8% Italian ancestry, 3.3% speak Italian home

Highland Heights (pop. 8,500): 30.6% Italian ancestry, 2.8% speak Italian at home

http://statisticalatlas.com/county/O...ounty/Ancestry

Chicago's Italian concentration is in the city's northwest fringe and western suburbs, where there are some 20%+ Italian tracts (and a few scattered 30%). For selected places:

Norridge (pop. 15,000): 17.6% Italian ancestry, 7.5% speak Italian at home

Harwood Heights (pop. 8,500): 17.3% Italian ancestry, 6% speak Italian at home

Elmwood Park (pop. 25,000): 20.2% Italian ancestry, 4.9% speak Italian at home

Bloomingdale (pop. 22,000): 21.4% Italian ancestry, 2.5% speak Italian at home

http://statisticalatlas.com/county/I...ounty/Ancestry

http://statisticalatlas.com/county/I...ounty/Ancestry

[Centropolis]

i was looking at french ancestry in the midwest...only 3.9% claimed as a whole for st. louis metro (a lot of caucasian people say they are german, irish, with maybe a dash of french) but it jumps up to 15.6% for nearby ste. genevieve. in the small areas that spoke french until after world war 2 i'm sure it's much higher locally, such as in washington, co missouri which claims 16.2% overall, and includes the heart of missouri creole country, la vieille mine.

there have to be other concentrations, especially in the northern midwest along the rivers and big lakes. this is the highest i've found, though. as far as larger metro areas, minneapolis and detroit share the same percentage as metro st louis. some small metros in the northern midwest are slightly higher.

for comparison, metro new orleans claims almost 14%, which is huge for a metro. lafayette is 22% and im sure it skyrockets on up out in cajun country.

[brickell]

Here's a fun little pdf from 2000
https://www.census.gov/population/ww...9_Ancestry.pdf

[dave8721]

I never associated New Orleans with Italian/American culture. Interesting.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i was looking at french ancestry in the midwest...only 3.9% claimed as a whole for st. louis metro (a lot of caucasian people say they are german, irish, with maybe a dash of french) but it jumps up to 15.6% for nearby ste. genevieve. in the small areas that spoke french until after world war 2 i'm sure it's much higher locally, such as in washington, co missouri which claims 16.2% overall, and includes the heart of missouri creole country, la vieille mine.

there have to be other concentrations, especially in the northern midwest along the rivers and big lakes. this is the highest i've found, though. as far as larger metro areas, minneapolis and detroit share the same percentage as metro st louis. some small metros in the northern midwest are slightly higher.

for comparison, metro new orleans claims almost 14%, which is huge for a metro. lafayette is 22% and im sure it skyrockets on up out in cajun country.

I'm pretty sure you'll get a lot of French ancestry in rural Maine, too. The cities always seem to be a wash, but the areas that aren't booming seem to retain some of their old genes.

----
Touching briefly on my earlier post about San Francisco's ethnic Russian enclave, I recently switched medical plans and yesterday was my first appointment with my new doctor. I chose him because he is affiliated with UCSF, one of the nation's best hospitals, but when I arrived I realized I was the only one there--patient or staff--who did not speak Russian. Most of the signs were bilingual English-Russian, and the waiting area featured not one but two local Russian-language newspapers. Note the first one has a circulation of 9,000:

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by dave8721

I never associated New Orleans with Italian/American culture. Interesting.

there is a particular fusion of creole and italian cooking in new orleans. the single most memorable meal of my life is a result of that!

[Docere]

In the mid to late 19th century, New Orleans had the largest Italian population in the US.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=c7T...201870&f=false

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by fflint

I'm pretty sure you'll get a lot of French ancestry in rural Maine, too. The cities always seem to be a wash, but the areas that aren't booming seem to retain some of their old genes.

----

Yes, Maine is very French as it touches on Québec and New Brunswick. There was a massive migration of French Canadîans to New England for a long time from the middle of the 19th Century to the 1930's. Upper New York State, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire all have strong French-Canadian presence. Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin attracted many. California was also favored by Québécois in the 19th Century. There is an interesting story about the two Beaudry brothers where one was mayor of Montréal while the other became his Los Angeles counterpart.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Docere

In the mid to late 19th century, New Orleans had the largest Italian population in the US.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=c7T...201870&f=false

the port of new orleans received immigrants much like any east coast port, and as such lots of groups typical to say boston like irish and italian arrived. however, new orleans was also miami before miami, and there were arrivals from the carribean and south.

[JManc]

New Orleans has (had) massive Italian American presence. The mob even had a major footing and ran operations in the south/ Texas from there.

My hometown (Utica, NY) is about 24% Italian even though many have died out, moved to the burbs (Frankfort, NY 38%) or moved out of state (like me). Best Pizza and Italian food up there to this day...

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Kansas City used to have a halfway decent Little Italy in an area just north of downtown, but to be honest, I find few remnants of any Italian-ness around here at all, even in the suburbs. They seem to have been almost completely absorbed into all the other ethnicities.

Apparently there are still 112 people in the Pendleton Heights neighborhood - what used to be part of the old Little Italy - who still speak Italian at home. That's the tract with the most:
http://statisticalatlas.com/neighbor...ghts/Languages

[fflint]

I just saw something on the news and immediately thought of this thread...

An Italian deli in Oakland closed its doors for the last time today, a victim of the Bay Area's skyrocketing commercial rents, after 90 years in business. According to the local alternative weekly, the East Bay Express, the Genova Delicatessen was "one of the last vestiges of that neighborhood’s history as an Italian-American enclave." They have a surviving deli by the same name in the North Bay city of Napa.

So...the suburbanization process of Bay Area Italian-Americans began no later than the 1920s, and included the time-worn tradition of moving across the Bay to Oakland and setting up an enclave before eventually decamping for the shiny new suburbs. The Temescal neighborhood was, according to Wikipedia, an Italian-American neighborhood until the late 1960s. Anecdotally, I first visited that part of Oakland in the early 1990s and even then it was not noticeably Italian any longer.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by JManc

My hometown (Utica, NY) is about 24% Italian even though many have died out, moved to the burbs (Frankfort, NY 38%) or moved out of state (like me). Best Pizza and Italian food up there to this day...

Here's an interesting census tract in Utica. Still a lot of Italian speakers (6%). The most common languages however are Serbo-Croatian (9.3%) and Russian (7.7%). I knew there was a large Burmese refugee population in Utica but didn't know about those from the former Yugoslavia.

http://statisticalatlas.com/tract/Ne...1301/Languages

[Centropolis]

aah kc and the outfit, dreams of big vegas wealth. it was all too much for a nice italian-american community in the midwest. everyone overstepped. guys' didnt listen.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

the port of new orleans received immigrants much like any east coast port, and as such lots of groups typical to say boston like irish and italian arrived. however, new orleans was also miami before miami, and there were arrivals from the carribean and south.

Interestingly a lot of the Sicilian immigrants settled in rural Tangipahoa Parish growing fruits and vegetables, both for consumption in New Orleans and eventually export around the US. As in other cities, Italians came to dominate the grocery business in New Orleans, first selling from horsecarts and then from municipal markets before opening their own corner stores and supermarkets.
.
As a result, Tangipahoa Parish is one of the few places you can go to see an olive-skinned redneck with the last name of Spinelli...

[Docere]

Looking in the New York area, I found 56 census tracts (not going to list them all here!) where 10%+ of the population speaks Italian at home. The highest was in Middle Village, Queens at 25%, although this tract had a small population (1,600) - maybe it contains an Italian seniors home?

http://statisticalatlas.com/tract/Ne...5702/Languages

This seems to confirm my hypothesis that Italian neighborhoods in New York are largely so because of post-war immigration from Italy (which was much more skewed towards NY than the mass immigration of a century ago).

The only I could find in the US outside the New York area was one in Norridge, Illinois - where 14% speak Italian at home (though three others: two in the Dunning neighborhood of Chicago, 1 in Elmwood Park - come close in the 8-9% range).

http://statisticalatlas.com/tract/Il...0902/Languages

[Docere]

Originally Posted by fflint

So...the suburbanization process of Bay Area Italian-Americans began no later than the 1920s, and included the time-worn tradition of moving across the Bay to Oakland and setting up an enclave before eventually decamping for the shiny new suburbs. The Temescal neighborhood was, according to Wikipedia, an Italian-American neighborhood until the late 1960s. Anecdotally, I first visited that part of Oakland in the early 1990s and even then it was not noticeably Italian any longer.

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.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Docere

Here's an interesting census tract in Utica. Still a lot of Italian speakers (6%). The most common languages however are Serbo-Croatian (9.3%) and Russian (7.7%). I knew there was a large Burmese refugee population in Utica but didn't know about those from the former Yugoslavia.

http://statisticalatlas.com/tract/Ne...1301/Languages

Utica was one of the primary destinations for Bosnian refugees in the mid-90's to the point they reversed decades long population loss. Being relatively recent arrivals to the country, their language and culture very much intact. They took over and revitalized huge swaths of decaying urban areas. Suprised about the Russian speakers unless that's a second language for former Yugoslavian refugees.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by s.davis

Yeah, I don't. I don't know that it feels any more "Little Italy"ish, but it' due hard to argue that the Hill is not a legitimate Italian American enclave (and a legit neighborhood to boot) of a pretty rare breed for the Midwest.

It also seems a little bigger than Murray Hill, or more like you can walk all over the neighborhood and bump into Italian retail business, unlike Murray Hill which seem more like 1 main drag. Maybe I'm wrong, I had a college buddy who lived in Murray Hill, but I don't know that I've been to that part of Cleveland in a while, whereas I'm in the Hill waaaayyy to much, to the exclusion of a lot of other StL neighborhoods I love to spend time in...

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

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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


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*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?*