Dear Readers
July, the month we celebrate Independence Day is a good time to focus on Boston’s “Little Italy”, the North End section, where it all began. The Old North Church, Paul Revere’s House, the Betsy Rose Place, Boston Harbor, they are all there on the Freedom Trail.
Thanks to Fred Langone, who served on the Boston City Council for 22 years and Pamela Donnaruma, publisher of the Post-Gazette (formerly La Gazzetta del Massachusetts), you can read the story of The North End, Where It All Began by Fred Langone. (It can be purchased for $20 by post-paid check payable to Post Gazette 5 – Prince St. Box 130135, Boston, Ma 02113).
Here are a few highlights as recalled or researched by the author Fred Langone: The North End Section of Boston played a leading role in the American fight for Independence from the British. Long before the famous Midnight Ride of Paul Revere with the signal lanterns hung from the Old North Church tower on Salem Street across from the Headquarters of General Gage (the British Commander), the North End was the meeting place of American rebels such as Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere and other revolutionaries.
The Cradle of Liberty, Faneuil Hall was on the edge of the North End near Dock Square where ships docked before all this water was filled in by land. This was the meeting place where they plotted the revolution against the British and at the nearby Brattle Tavern on Brattle Street, which is now government center housing city hall and the John F. Kennedy Federal Building.
The waterfront adjacent to the North End was where the famous “Boston Tea Party” took place. The expansion of the North End and its demographic makeup changed with the arrival of the European immigrants, first from Ireland after the disastrous Potato Famine of 1840, then the Jews from Eastern Europe after the Russian Czarist expulsion and persecution a couple of decades later.
The North End remained as the seaport for commercial trading in wool, tea, coffee and spices for most of the 1800’s during which the Clipper ships built by Donald McKay in East Boston sailed all over the world with Boston’s merchandise. Just before the turn of the century immigration from Italy commenced and accelerated after World War I to a point when they were the dominant ethnic group in the North End.
The Italian immigrants brought with them their customs, traditions and other cultures from the Old World. In the years prior to World War II, their churches and schools dominated this section and the Italian atmosphere and culture prevailed. About 10 years after WWII, the younger second and third generation started moving to the suburbs in search of more living, open space.
Young urban people (Yuppies) started to infiltrate the waterfront and then, the North End. Old wooden warehouses on wharves were converted to housing and the Boston Redevelopment Authority created the North End Waterfront Urban Renewal Plan. Prior to 1890, records indicate that there were less than 5,000 Italian immigrants living in Boston.
However, after World War I the number of Italian immigrants had increased to more than 18,000. Despite the “abbondanza” of the Italians living in Boston, early Italian immigrants often found themselves victims of prejudice, bigotry and police brutality as local and even the federal government was controlled by bigoted Yankees and Irish who banded together against the Italian immigrants.
North End merchants got together and founded the Italian Chamber of Commerce, organized a Committee to build an Italian Hospital, and James V. Donnaruma founded and began (1896) publishing their news via “La Gazzetta del Massachusetts.” Those were the days when North End businessmen had to organize, to help poor Italian immigrants, because you couldn’t get a job unless you joined the Masons.
Due to language and social barriers the Scalabrini fathers and Franciscan priests came from Italy and opened St. Leonard’s and Sacred Heart Church. Fr. Valerian was a familiar face at St. Leonard’s and Father Alberto and Carlo were doing yeoman missionary work at Sacred Heart. St Anthony’s and St. John’s School became one of the main sources of education, although the Cushman, Paul Revere, Christopher Columbus, Eliot and Michelangelo were well used. Man kids had to quit school to help support their families.
There was poverty in the North End and a sub-standard housing. In fact, the North End was one of the most congested areas in the world except for Calcutta, India and Casablanca, Morocco. At the turn of the century, there were three periods of substantial Italian immigration to Boston. First, there was the period at the beginning from the 1870’s to the 1900’s.
These were mostly immigrants from Northern Italy, particularly Genoa and a smaller number from Southern Italy around Naples. Then, there was the post World War I immigration period which brought a large number from Sicily and Naples from towns such as Palermo, Messina, Catania, Augusta and Sciacca in Sicily.
From the Neapolitan area came immigrants from the cities of Avellino, Labia, Chuiusano, Montifalione, Sansosso, Mirabella; others came from Abruzzi, Calabria, Potenza. This period was really the height and peak of the Italian immigrants coming to the Boston area. They settled first in the North End, which by then was inhabited by the Irish and Jewish. But with this heavy influx of Italian immigration, the other ethnic groups started to depart for suburban areas, making more room for the new arrivals from Italy.
After World War II, there was another wave of Italian immigrants, which lasted for about 15 years. Many of these immigrants came from Sulmona, Puglia, Frascati, and Abruzzi. They followed the same pattern as the earlier immigrants, stopping only long enough to get a job, save money to buy a house either in the North End or in the suburbs where the earlier immigrants had moved. These people helped preserve the Italian atmosphere in the North End because around the 1950’s and 1970’s came an influx of new, young suburban people who wanted to live away from home.
The biggest problem was that North End people were being forced out of their homes by real estate developers who bought North End property for a higher price, did some renovations and improvements such as adding showers and baths and central heating and then drove prices upward and out of reach for the old-timers. Thanks to the third wave of Italian immigrants for their hard working habits and thrift as well as their family values, it helped preserve the Italian tradition and atmosphere.
These new immigrants started businesses such as the Martignetti family on Richmond Street called the Salumeria, Joe Pace on Cross Street, the various restaurants and coffee shops on Hanover Street like Caffè Dello Sport, one of the earlier ones, Caffè Vittoria that formerly was a pastry and coffee shop owned by the Buccino family but was taken over by Jerry Riccio and his son who made it into one of the grandest coffee shops in Boston. The Frattorolli family started Lucia’s on Hanover Street, then Filippo purchased Polcari’s Restaurants on Keaney Square.
His brother, Donato, started Artue Rosticceria on Little Prince Street. Spagnoli’s on Prince Street, was new as was Saraceni’s on Hanover Street. We had crime in the North End, among the Italians, but a mother and a father always brought their children up with respect for the law and God. We were stuck in the North End with the biggest bootleggers during prohibition. Not all of them were Italian.
The biggest was a Greek grocery importer of alcohol in Greek olive oil cans and a Jewish philanthropist who both later became connected legitimately with the big whiskey distillers. But, they never got the publicity that our Italian bootleggers received. This was a curse to the Italians that spoiled the image of the hard working people who were good family people and had respect for the law and God.
But since my grandfather’s day, we have never been able to shake that mafia image from our Italian names. We had many of our second generation boys become doctors even thought they couldn’t get into schools like Harvard or Tufts because of prejudice and bigotry. One of our most famous doctors was G. Balboni, who became famous at the Mass. General Hospital. But many other doctors of his era had to go to Middlesex and intern in some small hospitals in Canada or the Midwest.
Despite all this, without any special anti-poverty programs, they were able to life themselves up and work days to get an education in the evenings. The North End was the birthplace of the great matriarch of the Kennedy family Rose Kennedy, mother of our late President John F. Kennedy. Rose Fitzgerald was born on Garden Court Street the daughter of John F. Fitzgerald, a Congressman and Mayor of Boston about a century ago.
The Fitzgerald family was very proud of the North End and they belonged to a group that call themselves the “Dearos”. The name “Dearos” stood for “Dear Old North Enders”. They met every Columbus Day for Mass at St. Stephen’s Church because that was the so-called Irish church, staffed mainly by the Archdiocesan priests who were mostly of Irish descent.
When Rose Fitzgerald was a young girl the family moved to a more spacious house in Dorchester from where she married Joseph Kennedy who was originally from East Boston before he attended Harvard and became a financial wizard in the business world. The Fitzgerald family kept their ties in the North End and one of Rose’s brothers, Henry Fitzgerald operated a Cigar factory on Atlantic Ave. near Rowe’s Wharf and manufactured “Elcho” Cigars.
Perhaps the worst time to have lived in the North End was during the 1930’s when the big depression hit the United States. People lost their jobs, the banks, like the Banca Commerciale Italiana, where many of the immigrants had their money closed down; the government had just passed a Volstead Act, which eliminated the prohibition of liquor, beer and wine sales.
Many of the clothing and dress factories closed as well as the shoes factories in the South Station area. The furniture business, which was hit hard, closed down in the North Station area. The restaurants that flourished from the sale of wine and liquor in coffee cups shut down because the bootleggers were the last of the big spenders and their fancy uptown stockbrokers had gone broke when the stock market crashed.
Life was more or less at a standstill. Italian immigrants were ashamed to go on welfare or to seek government assistance. Nobody had any money but somehow the people managed to survive. The North End/Waterfront wasn’t always like it is today. Prior to the 1960s it was a bustling shipping center that had hundreds of cargo ships that used Boston as a port.
The Eastern Steamship ran the passenger cargo ships such as the Evangeline and the Arcadia to Nova Scotia which left from Eastern Wharf on a daily basis. The United Fruit ran its White Fleet on banana boats to Honduras, Guatemala and other Central American banana republics. The New York boat left at 5 o’clock every night from Rowes Wharf as did the Nantasket boats which ran daily service to Pemberton and Nantasket boats.
The Italian fishing boats docked at Fish Pier, which was between Commercial and Long Wharf, behind the wholesale fish houses on Atlantic Avenue where the Italian and Jewish wholesale fish dealers were located. This is now Christopher Columbus Park.
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