While walking towards Arthur Avenue, the streets seem similar to parts of Spanish Harlem. The bodegas and shops share the same character. Some of the signs are even in Spanish. Then I hit the intersection of 187th St. and Arthur Avenue.
I cannot remember the last time I was here.
Quite the literal truth, considering I was about two and a half when my family moved to another borough. Still, whenever my father said, “I’m going to the Bronx tomorrow” at dinner, I knew he would bring back capers, pine nuts, and my favorite buttery green olives.
Arthur Avenue is a street in the Belmont section of the Bronx. It is home to a large concentration of Italian bakeries and specialty stores. The first one I stepped into was a place called Casa Della Mozzarella. On one side of the narrow store of there were pastas, canned specialties, and imported sweets. The other side of the shop was taken up mostly by a glass casing covering an array of olives, cheeses, and meats. Cheese, like bulbous stalactites, hung from the ceiling. According to the owner, this cheese is all made in house.
A woman was in the shop while I was there. She had an air of familiarity with the place, requesting “the usual” and asking if there was any of this or that. I asked her “What’s good here?” Her response: “This place is a gold mine.”
She goes there once a week for her meats, cheeses, and olives. It is about a ten minute walk from her apartment on 184th street. She’s been living in the same neighborhood for about 20 years, after moving to her current residence after college. “I’ve seen the neighborhood change, but this place hasn’t, and that’s all I care about.”
The next stop on my journey was to the Arthur Avenue Retail Market. When my father goes up to the Bronx to get olives, he goes to this market. Stepping inside, I clearly see why. The barrels of olives, dried tomatoes, dried mushrooms, and cured meats bring me back to the time I was in Rome. While in Rome, I stumbled upon an array of outdoor street merchants on my way back from the Pantheon, several of whom sold their wares in the same containers. However, Arthur Avenue’s market is indoors, which added a different dimension to the traditional open-air market. Meats and cheeses have a ceiling to hang from, unlike their old world predecessors. I spoke to the man behind the meat counter while in the Arthur Avenue market, the grandson of an Italian immigrant. “This market has been around since I can remember. People come and go, but everyone in the know, they know us. So we’re here to stay, you know.”
The Arthur Avenue Retail Market was created under Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City in the 1930’s. He decided to consolidate many of New York City’s pushcart vendors into several indoor markets. One was located in Belmont, home to many of the City’s Italian immigrants. This market, after opening in 1940, grew into the Arthur Avenue market. During the rougher days of the Bronx, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the market was not as profitable, but it was renovated in the eighties. It has been a constant fixture of the neighborhood for almost 75 years. The attitude of the vendors reflects that. Said the woman behind the counter of the pasticceria “I’ve only been working here three years, but I’ve been in the market my entire life.”
As I was ambling in and out of shops, I came to the conclusion that I would end up on a cannoli tour of the neighborhood. I purchased the pastry from four different bakeries, first from the pasticceria within the Arthur Avenue Market. “These are best eaten within the next two to three hours,” she cautioned after dusting them with powdered sugar.
The market is also home to a peculiar little stand that sells cigars. Behind a wooden counter, three people sit rolling tobacco in tobacco leaves. It is not all that common to find shops that specialize in making cigars here in New York, but the influence of The Godfather is strong here. I spoke to one of the people making cigars. He was from the Dominican Republic, and he learned how to make cigars before he came here. “People come here for cigars, because they know what we make is good,” he says. However, the stall in the Arthur Avenue Retail Market is not the only cigar shop on the block. I passed by Arthur Avenue Cigars on my trip down the street. Peering in the window I saw a much neater display of cigars, but I did not see anyone manually making cigars (and as a nonsmoker, I did not want to enter the shop).
I then went to another bakery. I asked about business, and whether or not it was competitive here. The girl behind the counter responded generally. “Yeah, it’s competitive, but we’ve been here about ten years.” I thought that was a little bit of a short lifetime for an Italian bakery in this neighborhood, but the girl just shrugged and went to the next customer.
I was not able to glean much from the third bakery I visited either. That particular shop doubled as a café, and was quite busy around noontime. I had to wait a while before my presence was acknowledged. However, I did overhear the conversation of three women in the bakery as they were ordering.
“Anything with chocolate or cream is good with me,” said one.
“Then you’d have the entire shop,” one of her companions responded.
They then dissolved into a conversation about the block. One woman was visiting from Wisconsin. She was excited to come and visit her sister in New York. The two women who were not visiting seemed excited to show her around their neighborhood. “Wait until you see the market,” said one of the women excitedly. “There are barrels brimming with goodies!”
Sweets and treats are not the only things the block has to offer.
“It’s communion season, so it’s a busy time of year for us” says the woman behind the back counter of Cerini Coffee and Gifts. The store specializes in coffee, coffee accessories, and ceramic gifts, and she is unpacking and packing boxes with carefully wrapped favors. “I have been working here about three years, but the owner was originally on 187th St for about 28 years. She’s been in business for almost 35 years now.” I asked her where the merchandise she’s carefully unpacking comes from.
“Well, a lot of the smaller favors come from China. Cheaper, you know? We still get a lot of our inventory from Italy too though.”
She spoke about how people appreciate the authenticity of the store. “We get people from as far away as Italy.”
It’s not the only place people come from far and wide to visit. While in the retail market, I spoke to the woman behind the counter of Mount Caramel Gourmet foods. In a thick accent, she says “We get tourists, but also locals too.” She was born a few blocks away, at the Mt. Caramel Church, and her sister lives in Pelham Bay Park. “Fewer people speak Italian, but business, it is good,” She says, when asked about changes in the neighborhood. “Outside of this block, people speak Spanish.”
In fact, according to the census bureau, the Hispanic population of Belmont has seen the most growth in the past ten years: a 16% change. Still, this Little Italy shows few signs of shrinkage and is proud of its legacy. For instance, a restaurant on the block had a painting of the Trinacria on the window. The Trinacria, the symbol of Sicily, is slightly strange looking. It has three legs bent into a triangle with the face of a woman in the center, framed by four snakes and a pair of wings. Seeing that symbol prominently displayed was impressive, and added to the authenticity of the neighborhood.
Another ethnic group that has recently become prominent in the Belmont area is the Albanian population. One of the last places I visited was a bakery called Gino’s. Interestingly enough, the store had Albanian articles in the upper corners of the wall behind the counter. However, the woman behind the bakery counter was an Italian immigrant. She said that she came over in the 1950s. I asked her about the bakery. She said she wasn’t the owner, and that she didn’t always work there. “I had worked my way through,” she told me in heavily accented English.
Although the story of the Italian Immigrant is usually set during the turn of the twentieth century in new york city, the conversation with the woman in Gino’s bakery proved to me that the tale has not yet ended. Although fewer Italian immigrants come to the city annually, the proximity to authentic tastes of the old country and rents that are around $600 per month per person make the Belmont area quite attractive. Although the language has faded away, it is still an easy place for an immigrant to make home.
