Housing
During its peak, Little Italy was home to more than 10,000 Italian immigrants. In the 1920s, a tenement in the area cost around $10 a month (about $130 today). Today, a one bedroom apartment in the area rents for anywhere from $1,900 to $3,000 a month. Buying a two bedroom apartment on Mulberry Street will cost you upwards of $3,000,000. Many of the original buildings and tenements have been torn down or renovated to make space for new luxury apartment buildings. Business and store rents have also increased exponentially. John Delutro, owner of Caffe Palermo, told the New York Times his rent 45 years ago was $17 a month. Today, retail spaces on Bowery go from $10,000/month – $40,000/month.
As a result of this, many different groups flooded into Lower Manhattan, particularly the Chinese and this led to the rise of Chinatown which shared borders with Little Italy and eventually began to expand into the Italian community, decreasing its size. This trend continued to persist, resulting in the 2000 census showing that a mere 6% of the residents in Little Italy remained Italian. In conjunction with the census data showing the decline in Italian American, in the year 2010, the National Park Service created a Chinatown and Little Italy district with no borders distinguishing the two, demonstrating that not only is the Italian population declining, but the borders of Little Italy are continually being erased. This introduced ethnic tensions into the area and although this could be found in any given area where two communities are coexisting, these tensions were heightened due to Italians’ sense of community and fear of the stranger stemming from their experience in Italy where they constantly had to defend their land. These tensions only continued to grow into the 1970s when Little Italy residents claimed they were facing a housing crisis due to the influx of Chinese immigrants coming into the area and due to neglect on part of the city allocating resources to Little Italy. These beliefs are expressed by Mr. Tarantini, one of the founders of LIRA, the Little Italy Restoration Association, and an associate director of Gouverneur Hospital, when he says “There is no decent school, there are no health facilities and there hasn’t been a stick of new housing built here in 50 years.” This issue persists into today with the hot button issue of housing in which there is a debate between whether a new housing facility should be build for senior citizens or whether one of the few remaining green spaces, considered to be a “cultural cornerstone of the community” in Little Italy should be preserved. This issue, again, leaves the long time residents of Little Italy feeling neglected and deprived of necessary social service.
The data below shows how most of the houses in little Italy was built primarily in the early 1900s. In 1910, Little Italy reached its peak population, with 10,00 Italian immigrants. Due to the massive waves of Italian immigration during those years, many tenements were built to house these immigrants. However, due to lack of space, many of these tenements resulted in cramped and unsanitary living conditions. As the years have gone by, construction of homes in Little Italy has decreased.
Schools
Within the city-determined boundaries of the community, there is no school, which can be attributed to early Italian immigrant experiences characterized by their lack of regard for education and low literacy rates. Due to a lack of emphasis placed on education, the Italian community’s focus in terms of occupation was initially stone work and masonry which allows Italian immigrants to wave their way into the history of New York City by taking on historic projects such as the construction of the subway system. Although many Italians in the suburbs still own extremely lucrative and successful businesses in these industries, Little Italy itself is now more concentrated with restaurants, bakeries, and family owned trinket shops. Although these family businesses still have their place in the community, they are now capable of achieving greater success due to the newer generations of the family still staying in the business, but now having professional degrees to support the expansion of the business, as seen with Ferrara. This is a direct reflection of attitudes in education becoming more positive as parents want their children to become more successful than they were, which originally was not a popular attitude with older Italian immigrants.
Undercover Boss: Mafia Edition
John Gotti was known for being the head of the Gambino crime family during the 80s and 90s. Newspapers nicknamed him “Teflon Don” because he somehow always managed to avoid prosecution and “Dapper Don” because of his great sense of style. It was believed that he received $10 million a year in cash for his duties in the Gambino family. In 1990, Gotti was arrested at the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy and was later found guilty in 1992 of 13 counts of murder and racketeering.
Originally born in Sicily, Ignazio Lupo settled in New York City in the early 1900s. He and his father opened a grocery store, and later Lupo was in charge of two stores and a bar. Unsatisfied with the money, Lupo began preying on the poor Italian immigrants of Little Italy. Lupo joined forces with Giuseppe Morello, Nick Morello, and Vincenzo and Ciro Terranova. It is believed that Lupo “The Wolf” was responsible for more than 60 murders over the course of his life. Lupo was finally arrested in 1909 and charged with extortion and counterfeiting. After being released from prison, he returned to Italy briefly and re-established himself in the mafia. He later returned to New York and began extorting Italian bakeries. In 1935, Lupo was charged again with extortion and sentenced to ten more years in prison. He died a year after his release in 1947.
Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, AKA Paul Kelly, founded the Five Points Gang. The Five Points Gang is infamous for being one of the city’s most dominant street gangs and is where some of the biggest names in organized crime got their starts, including Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. Paul Kelly emigrated from Italy and quickly became a professional boxer. He used his earnings to invest in brothels in Little Italy and transformed Italian organized crime from street gangs to the crime family structure. Kelly joined ties with Tammany Hall and used his gang to ensure political victories. In one instance, Kelly had 1,500 gang members to beat up voters and block poll booths to guarantee the defeat of a candidate who campaigned to get rid of Kelly’s brothels in Little Italy. Political favors like these allowed Kelly to avoid prosecution.
Joe Gallo was born in 1929 in Brooklyn and is one of three sons to Umberto Gallo, the famous Prohibition bootlegger. Gallo earned the nickname “Crazy Joe” in 1950 when he was sent to jail and diagnosed with schizophrenia. Gallo became an associate to the Profaci mob family, but later tried to have his boss kidnapped in attempts to take over. A deal was made between the Profaci boss and Gallo, but tensions were still high. Gallo was sentenced to 7-14 years in prison in 1961 for attempting to extort a local cafe. He was released in 1971. In April 1972, Gallo and his friends and family went out to celebrate his 43rd birthday. The group went to Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy where he was spotted by Joe Luparelli, a Colombo associate. It is believed that Luparelli left to recruit his fellow Colombo associates Phillip Gambino, Carmine DiBiase, and others to kill Gallo. At 4:30 AM, over 20 rounds were fired at Umberto’s Clam House and Joe Gallo was killed.
While the culture surrounding the mafia is often thought of as persisting negative stereotypes among the Italian-American community, a product of this, such as the Godfather Series, is one of the greatest triumphs of Italian filmmaking in the states.
