The Godfather Part II is a 1974 American film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. There are two parallel plots in this movie. One starts the 1958 story of Michael Corleone (Pacino), the new Don of the Corleone family, protecting the family business after a murder attempt on his life. The other story covers the journey of his father, Vito Corleone (De Niro), from his Sicilian roots to beginning his family business in New York City.
While influxes of arrival from Italian coasts produced what people consider Little Italy, the streets in between Worth Street and Houston Street initially contained Lenape tribes, Dutch settlers.
About two hundred years ago, many Italians left from their motherland to exploit the cultivating industrialization period in America. Italy persistently suffered in the late 19th century from droughts that devastated the Southern farmlands. There was also an outbreak of cholera, malaria, and parasites. Since the Italian economy was failing in the aftershock of divergence, agrarian inactivity, and troublesome tariffs, Italian men came to America with hopes to make enough money to send back to their relatives still present in Italy. Unfortunately, the internal and governmental circumstances in the 19th century only collapsed as fascism, the mafia, and corruption encouraged entire families to move permanently to America.
The Italians who moved to New York City initially occupied streets within the Lower East Side tenements, along with other immigrants who had settled there for centuries. While many Italians first resided in Lower Manhattan’s Little Italy, others moved out to East Harlem and created a larger Little Italy with bigger homes and wider streets.
Frequently detached from former settlers because of their language, Italians immigrated to New York City in the 1880s to create communities separated from their novel neighbors. Italian immigrants, at the time, often thought of themselves collectively as a minor Italian colony, La Colonia, that created a portion of the demographics of New York City. In each of the five boroughs, Italians set up many societies. Numerous of them lived in Manhattan in East Harlem, the West Village, SoHo, and the lower part of the Lower East Side, overlapping Canal Street, which still classifies Manhattan’s Little Italy, the most popular Italian region in America. It began with the first period of immigrants arriving in Lower Manhattan in the early 1800s. Many people came to escape political and religious persecution, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte and Giuseppe Garibaldi. In the 1870s, many Italian immigrants lived in Little Italy. The turbulent history of the Five Points area, recollections from the Italian newspapers, L’Eco d’Italia and Il Progresso Italo-Americano, were also very prominent at the time.
Little Italy is a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, New York City, previously known for its large population of Italian Americans. Today, however, the community is comprised of only a few Italian stores and restaurants. Little Italy on Mulberry Street used to extend as far south as Worth Street, as far north as Houston Street, as far west as Lafayette Street, and as far east as Bowery. Now, it is only three blocks on Mulberry Street. During the late 19th century, immigrants usually settled in cultural areas. Therefore, the large immigration from Italy during the 1880’s led to the large settlement of Italian immigrants in lower Manhattan. The consequences of such movement had generated an influx of Italian immigrants, which soon led to the commercial gathering of their residence and business.
Generations of Italian-Americans have made their residences in Little Italy for over a hundred years; the mass arrival of Italian immigrants began in the late 1800s when unemployment and poverty in Italy forced many people to emigrate and start a new life in America. Between 1860 and 1880, about 68,000 Italians moved to New York. By 1920, about 400,000 Italians lived in the city; that was the peak of the community’s Italian population. The immigrants brought their motherland individualities with them, which divided Little Italy into provincially explicit neighborhoods. Northern Italians lived along Bleecker Street, the Genovese lived on Baxter Street, while those from Sicily gathered themselves along Elizabeth Street.
Such a quickly developing neighborhood impacted the U.S. labor faction in the 1900s. Italians made up most of the work force in the garment industry. After World War II, many denizens of the Lower East Side began moving to Brooklyn, Staten Island, Long Island, and New Jersey. Chinese immigrants had an amplified presence after the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965 removed immigration constraints, and the Manhattan Chinatown stretched into Little Italy.
As of the 2000 U.S. Census, 1,211 residents claiming Italian ancestry lived in three census territories that make up Little Italy. Those occupants encompass 8.25% of the population in the area, which is comparable to the amount of those of Italian ancestry throughout New York City. In the year 2000, of the people in the parts of Chinatown south of Grand Street, 81% were of Chinese descent.
Rossi & Company, an Italian gift shop on Grand Street located on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, has become a symbol of Italian-American pop culture.
“We’re the last of the old mom-and-pop stores in Little Italy, which has really shrunk over the years,” said Ernest Rossi, 66, the shop’s owner. “There are few Italians even living here anymore.”
Mr. Rossi’s grandfather, who was named Ernesto Rossi, founded the shop in 1910, at 187 Grand Street, selling sheet music and publishing Neapolitan songs.
In 1936, the store moved to the corner of Grand and Mulberry Streets.
The increasing rent and fluctuating demographics have pushed Little Italy nearly to extinction. Previously a booming community stretching about fifty blocks, now hardly spans three blocks of Mulberry Street, which is also disappearing.
“You can’t rebuild Little Italy,” said Robert Ianniello Jr., owner of the famed Umberto’s Clam House. “If we go away, it will never be here again. You can’t build an Olive Garden and say it’s Little Italy.”
What if a Chinese restaurant tried to open on Mulberry Street? “We would have a problem with that,” says Robert Ianniello Jr., co-owner of Umberto’s. “Of course, what I really fear is Starbucks.”
Ianniello is combating a rent surge from a new landlord who purchased the building recently for $17.5 million. His rent is now $34,000 a month, double what he used to pay.
Emelise Aleandri, an author on Italian history and theater, claims that the area is still a cultural benchmark for Italian Americans travel the country, and that it would be a massive harm if it disappeared.
“Right now, there is just enough of a population to keep up traditions,” Aleandri explained. “But it’s going to be more difficult to keep the area Italian if the merchants and businesses leave.”
Recently, the National Park Service claimed the Chinatown Historic District and Little Italy Historic District have no geographical differences. The two vicinities have been trying to organize a “Marco Polo Day” and an “East Meets West” Christmas Parade. City Hall will eventually erase the borders. After the start of three resident community boards, the City
Planning Commission is anticipated to support the formation of a Chinatown Business Improvement District in March, which would take over all but about two blocks of a section that used to extend about fifty blocks, and once had the greatest amount of Italian immigrants in the United States.
Mort Berkowitz claims, “I have developed a lot of close relationships. And we’ve done a lot of events that help Italian-American culture. We’re doing dance. We’re doing opera. The cheese carver we’re bringing in for Columbus Day—he’s going to carve all three ships out of cheese! We brought in Frankie Avalon. And the Mario Lanza competition. And the tribute to Frank Sinatra. We do a cannoli-eating contest. It’s important that we do as much as we can—not to restore it but to preserve what’s left, to show people what was. You don’t want it to be forgotten that for one glorious moment, this represented Italian culture in America. The merchants want people to know: This was Little Italy.”
Although a fairly large number of Italian-Americans remain, a lot of the region has been repopulated in contemporary years due to the growing of SoHo and Chinatown, as immigrants from Asian countries moved into the region. The northern sections of Little Italy, around Houston Street, have stopped being noticeably Italian, and have changed into the fashion boutique-filled vicinity known as Nolita, an abbreviation for North of Little Italy. Today, only the segment of Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal Streets, lined with Italian restaurants popular with tourists, remains clearly distinguishable as Little Italy. Walking beside the small, cobblestone streets under the fire escapes of the old, outdated tenements, it is an interesting feeling to be shrouded by the sights, sounds, and smells of Italian cuisine and culture emitting from the restaurants, bakeries, and stores.
Mulberry Street’s numerous Italian bistros, Grand Street’s Italian restaurants continuously entice mobs of sightseers and natives alike. Stores such as the family friendly Pellegrino’s takes pride as one of Little Italy’s better-quality diners offering both Northern and Southern Italian cuisine. Casa Bella claims that its pasta and baking are all “in house.” However, Italian-American custom is prominent at Lombardi’s, which was the first established pizzeria in America in 1905.
Luckily, the days of drive-by shootings and suspicious events in “social clubs” are gone. The past of Little Italy is intertwined with the past of the American mafia, but do not think it is anything like the Little Italy portrayed in The Godfather II. Even though the community still has remnants of Italian-American culture, many wonder how much time is left before the hyperactive real estate market, and continuously growing Chinatown, will devour the remaining neighborhoods of Little Italy.
Resources
- Briquelet, Kate (March 30, 2014). “Little Italy is on the brink of extinction”. New York Post.
- “Littl-er Italy in NYC”. ItalianAware. Retrieved 18 March 2014.
- “Little Italy in New-York” The New York Times. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
- “Arrivederci, Little Italy” NY Magazine. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
- “The First Slum In America” The New York Times. Retrieved 30 September 2001.
- “Sustained by Saints and Song, This Little Italy Shopkeeper Hangs On” The New York Times. Retrieved 9 March 2017
