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Wooster Square

Italian Thanksgiving, or How One Ethnic Group Resisted American Food

The Italian Thanksgiving in New England was and still is a piece de resistance – a masterpiece of Italian and American cooking. It’s also a result of Italian cooks who successfully resisted do-gooders trying to Americanize their food habits.

An Italian Thanksgiving in the Italian cities like Waterbury, Conn., or Providence, R.I., or Revere, Mass., typically started out with antipasti – thin slices of prosciutto, salami, mortadella along with black olives and crusty bread. Soup followed, maybe escarole or dumpling, and lasagna or ravioli. Then came the turkey, stuffed with Italian sausage, brown gravy, potatoes, squash and cranberry sauce, washed down with homemade wine or soda for the children. And then finally dessert! Pie, torrone, spumoni, panna cotta, candy almonds, hazelnuts – topped off with roasted chestnuts.

That was not what social workers had in mind for the new arrivals from Italy. They wanted to Americanize the Italian immigrants who lived in the crowded North Ends and Little Italys of New England. And they took special aim at their dietary preferences – without much success.

“The reformers could not budge Italians on culinary matters,” wrote Harvey Levenstein.

Fortunately.

Boston’s North End today

Lacking Nutrition

Between 1880 and 1920, four million Italian immigrants came to the United States, more than any other ethnic group. Many settled in New England, still the most Italian region in the country.

Most came from Southern Italy to escape extortionate taxes, disease, failed crops and the ravages of the Messina earthquake, which killed 10,000 Sicilians. They were often unskilled, illiterate and dirt poor. When they arrived in the United States, they crowded into tenement slums where tuberculosis ran rampant.

Reformers in the 1890s believed they could help the immigrants living in slums by teaching them sanitation, personal hygiene and household economics.

And they blamed Italian food, in part, for Italian troubles.

“They easily fall victim to tuberculosis, they crowd together in unhygienic tenements, and the food to which they are accustomed seems to lack nutrition sufficient to enable them to fight with vigor the difficulties besetting them,” according to an 1899 report of the Family Welfare Society of Boston.

Robert Woods, who ran the South End House in Boston, attributed an increase in death rates among Italian immigrants in 1904 to crowded tenements and ‘their over-stimulating and innutritious diet.’

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Welcome to New Haven’s Little Italy, Wooster Square

Poison Tomatoes

Throughout the 19^th century, Americans viewed the tomato, a staple of Sicilian cuisine, as dangerous. In 1880 the tomato’s reputation fell even further when scientific research revealed they caused cancer. Though that finding was quickly disproven, many continued to believe the tomato safe only in very small quantities.

Experts also tried to discourage the Italian love of fruits and vegetables. They didn’t know vitamins were a thing, and believed produce mostly consisted of water and cost too much. Good Housekeeping declared pork, a key ingredient in Italian sausage meat, as unhygienic. Spicy foods damaged the stomach, had no nutritional value and led to the excessive consumption of alcohol they thought. And garlic – Oh! The horror!

Reformers of the era believed food was more nutritious when cooked separately. A pamphlet for Italian immigrants warned that ‘it wasn’t right’ to cook meat, cheese, beans and macaroni together. Some people referred to their soups and stews as ‘pig wash.’

Pasta alla norma, a traditional Sicilian dish. Hardly pig wash.

The Local Store

The reformers were no match for the tidal wave of Italian immigrants and the food they brought with with them.

In Boston’s North End, Italian food became available by 1874, when Pietro Pastene opened a grocery store at 229 Hanover Street. Another Italian immigrant, Alessandro Badaracco, had moved to Boston before the Civil War and ran the biggest fruit business in the city. John Ponte started the Boston Macaroni Co. in 1890, and Prince followed soon after.

Reformers figured they could change Italian cooking habits by changing their shopping habits.

In 1911, Eva White, the head of Peabody House in Boston, complained about Italians shopping in such shops. “No matter what inducements the larger stores of the city offer they will trade with none but their own people.”

Shopping local in Boston’s North End, 1909, by Lewis Wickes Hine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

No Takers for Cooking Schools

Settlement houses held cooking classes for immigrants to teach them economy and proper food preparation. In the 1890s, the Denison House cooking school was popular among the Irish residents of Boston’s South End. But then when the Italians moved in and the Irish moved out, the cooking school attracted few students. The same thing happened with the Bennet Street settlement house in the North End. Irish immigrants flocked to its cooking school, but when the Italians moved in the cooking school had to close for lack of interest.

One despairing social worker commented in a report, “Not yet Americanized; still eating Italian food.”

U pizz’ di creanze

For their part, Italian immigrants viewed American food as disgusting. Doctors complained about Italians who refused admittance to hospitals because they thought the food unfit to eat.

Italians also attached great importance to the family rituals associated with eating Italian food.

Joanna Clapps Herman, who grew up in an Italian family in Waterbury, Conn., described one ritual: u pizz’ di creanze, the piece of politeness.

“If the last piece of anything is eaten, all the customs of politeness have been violated,” she wrote in The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America. “It means that the host hasn’t provided enough for all their guests to have as much as they wanted,” she explained. “It means that the guest is demonstrating this fact publicly. No matter how much the host presses her guests, no one is to take it.”

Instead of abandoning Italian food, Italian Americans simply added American ingredients to a traditional Thanksgiving for a belly-busting feast.

An Italian Thanksgiving

Ed Iannuccilli described his grandparents’ Italian Thanksgiving in their second-story tenement in Providence. They had come to the city from Italy in 1910.

“They may have been comforted when they learned that they shared something with those early settlers who long ago also arrived with fear, expectation and hope,” Iannuccilli wrote in the Providence Journal.

Their Italian Thanksgiving began after a thankful prayer. Then antipasto, hot dumpling soup and lasagna before Grandfather proudly carried in the turkey. And then a couple of fruit pies, torrone, nuts and chestnuts for dessert.

The feast may have been Italianized, wrote Iannuccilli. “But it was now clearly American.”

Here is a menu the DeFinis and Diioria families from Norwalk, Conn., still serve (thanks to Brooke Dojny):
Cold Antipasti
Ravioli Soup
Home-Style Lasagne
Roast Turkey with Bread Stuffing and Homemade Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Candied Sweets
Boiled Diced Turnips
Green Beans Almondine
Steamed Broccoli
Sausage-Stuffed Mushrooms
Date-Nut Bread
Italian Bread
Green Salad
Chocolate Cream Pie
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie

Old school Italian Thanksgiving by Paul Altobelli, creative commons license. Boston North End By Ingfbruno – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27355267; Pasta alla Norma By Paoletta S. – Pasta alla Norma, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4992962.

With thanks to The American Response to Italian Food, 1880-1930, by Harvey Levenstein in the Food in the USA reader. This story last updated in 2022.

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David Wooster, Revolutionary War Hero, Befriends a Freed Slave

David Wooster is known more as the person who gave New Haven’s Wooster Square neighborhood its name than for his heroism during the American Revolution. He’s even less known as an abolitionist.

Centuries after his death, the revolutionary war general got caught up in the Battle of Wooster Square, a conflict over symbols of ethnic and racial pride.

David Wooster

On June 24, 2020, a crew hired by the city took down the statue of Christopher Columbus in Wooster Square, New Haven’s Little Italy. Italian-Americans protested the removal of the statue that symbolized their heritage. As the statue came down, they clashed with black, Native American and Latino protesters who said Columbus represented the evils of colonial conquest.

Two days later, a group of people met with state Rep. Roland Lemar to ask to rename Wooster Square after William Lamson, a black New Haven entrepreneur in the early 19^th century. That did not sit well with the Italian-American community, which submitted a petition with 3,000 names asking to keep the name “Wooster Square.”

Perhaps a closer look at the life of David Wooster would change some minds (or not).

David Wooster

He was born into a well-to-do family in Stratford, Conn., on March 2, 1711, the youngest of six. His Puritan parents, Abraham and Mary, imposed a severe and sober discipline.

Wooster graduated from Yale College and then earned his master’s degree. In his early 30s he commanded the first warship built in Connecticut, the Defense, to defend the East Coast from pirates and smugglers. During his time on the Defense, “the shores of Connecticut were unpolluted by pirate invasion,” according to the oratory on the dedication of his monument.

David Wooster house, now gone.

In 1745, David Wooster married Mary Clapp, the daughter of Yale President Thomas Clapp. They had four children and bought a gracious house in New Haven. The house survived British arson but not urban renewal. The Woosters entertained frequently, employed black servants and kept a phaeton for rides around town.

Siege of the Fortress at Louisbourg

In 1758 David Wooster led Connecticut forces at the Siege of Louisburg. His gallantry earned him the right to bring a ship of prizes and prisoners to France and England. The English feted him, and he was “gladdened with the sunshine of the royal smile.”

He also served six years in the French and Indian War, rising to the rank of colonel. Afterward, New York granted him 3,000 acres of Vermont, but he lost it to squatters. Nevertheless, he prospered. Both he and his wife inherited money, and he earned quick and substantial profit as a merchant.

Yale President Theodore Dwight called him a “brave, generous-minded man, respectable for his understanding and for his conduct both in public and private life, ardent in his friendships and his patriotism, diffusive in his charities and steadfast in his principles.”

A Letter

In 1773, Wooster received a letter from Phillis Wheatley, the first published African-American poet. She had astonished Bostonians with her work. They couldn’t believe a young black slave could write such poetry. Wheatley proved them wrong, and moved to England. There she became the darling of abolitionist circles and tried to publish her first book. So she asked Wooster for help.

She apparently didn’t know him, but knew of him through a servant of his neighbor, a Mr. Badcock. She must also have assumed he would sympathize with her.

Phillis Wheatley , victim of the slave trade.

Wheatley in her letter asked Wooster if he would help sell her first book of poems. John Wheatley, she wrote, had just given her her freedom, and she knew she’d have to make her own way in the world. She asked Wooster if he would use his influence with the gentlemen and ladies he knew to subscribe to her poetry. (Back then, people subscribed to books before their publication.)

“The more subscribers there are, the more it will be for my advantage as I am to have half the Sale of the Books,” Wheatley wrote. “This I am the more solicitous for, as I am now upon my own footing and whatever I get by this is entirely mine, & it is the Chief I have to depend upon.”

For God, for Country and for Yale

Wooster believed ardently in independence from Britain–and for enslaved people. In the war’s early days, Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen got credit for seizing Fort Ticonderoga, but David Wooster helped plan the attack and lent money for it.

In May 1775, the Connecticut General Assembly appointed the 64-year-old businessman a major general of a militia regiment. Before marching off to war, he assembled his regiment on the New Haven Green and led them in prayer. His pastor, Jonathan Edwards, also an abolitionist, couldn’t make it.

Center Church on the Green today

Wooster then led patriot forces in the ill-fated expedition to Quebec and returned home. He received a new command of the Connecticut militia, and he paid his men and officers with his own money. Still, he hoped his country would repay him. So he asked for receipts. But British soldiers burned his house after his death with the receipts inside. His wife ended up in debtors’ prison.

Battle of Ridgefield

Charged with the defense of Connecticut, he got word that on April 25, 1777, British Gov. William Tryon had invaded Connecticut at Westport with 2,000 troops. Tryon’s forces marched 20 miles north toward Danbury to destroy military supplies.

Along what is now Rte. 28, the British ravaged the land. They then burned Danbury.

Troop movements during Tryon’s raid.

Wooster and Benedict Arnold, who happened to be staying in New Haven, responded to the British with 700 militiamen and Continental Army soldiers. The British retreated toward Ridgefield, burning houses along the way.

On April 27, Benedict Arnold barricaded the center of Ridgefield. He received reinforcements, but the British drove them off in a running battle down Main Street. Wooster tried to rally his undisciplined militia with the words, “Come on, my boys, never mind such random shots.” A ball then hit him in the back, severing his spine. A small Masonic stone memorial marks the place where he fell from his horse at the intersection of the Post Road (Route 1) and Patriots Bank.

His men carried him from the field to a nearby house. The surgeon told him he had no hope. Wooster suffered agonizing pain for the next five days. His wife Mary came to his deathbed, but he didn’t recognize her until the end. He died on May 2, 1777.

Condolences

After Wooster’s death, poet Phillis Wheatley wrote a letter of condolence to his widow – one lost to history until rediscovered around 1980. In it, she thanked Mary for selling her poems to their friends. She also praised David Wooster while pointing out the hypocrisy of those who supported independence from Great Britain but not for the enslaved.

“I sincerely sympathize with you in the great loss you and your family sustain,’ Wheatley wrote.

“You will do me a great favor by returning to me by the first oppy those books that remain unsold and remitting the money for those that are sold–I can easily dispose of them here for 12/ Lmo. (12 shillings lawful money) each–I am greatly obliged to you for the care you show me, and your condescention in taking so much pains for my interest–I am extremely sorry not to have been honour’d with a personal acquaintance with you.”

Wheatley also enclosed a poem, one not terribly admired by critics, that lauds Wooster as a martyr for freedom:

He nobly perish’d in his Country’s cause
His Country’s Cause that ever fir’d his mind
Where martial flames, and Christian virtues join’d.

Wooster Square

Long after their deaths, developers built a desirable residential neighborhood around a square named after Wooster. Sea captains and prosperous businessmen bought homes in Wooster Square. Then, following a typical urban trajectory, the neighborhood declined as industry moved in. Then in the late 19th century, Italian immigrants crowded into the old buildings and ran shops and restaurants.

Houses in the Wooster Square Historic District.

In the 1930s, one entrepreneur, Frank Pepe, established F rank Pepe Pizzeria N apoletena on the first floor of Wooster Street.

The city slated Wooster Square for urban renewal in the 1930s, but plans changed by the late 1950s. Postwar prosperity allowed preservation and gentrification to make the neighborhood, once again, a desirable place to live.

By 2004, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called Pepe’s New Haven pizzeria a “thriving community treasure.”

Frank Pepe’s exterior.

And then in 2020, another battle – over a statue and a name.

With thanks to Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation Vol 1, edited by David Dabydeen, Sukhdev Sandhu.

Images: Center Church on the Green, By Dicklyon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79216980. Frank Pepe’s By Krista – frank pepe exterior, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640336. This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Gravesites of Military Heroes

Military heroes who sacrificed for their country certainly deserve to be remembered on Memorial Day weekend. Some people remember them with parades and speeches, others with flowers on their graves.

The New England Historical Society honors them with this story about the place where each state’s greatest military heroes rest, we hope, in peace.

Wooster Cemetery

David Wooster

Connecticut produced many military heroes, including Benedict Arnold, a hero at least for a while.

Nathan Hale is the first among all Connecticut’s military heroes, having given his life for his country. But no one ever found his body.

And you might get into an argument if you called Revolutionary War Gen. Israel Putnam a hero.

But Gen. David Wooster definitely qualifies as a military hero from Connecticut, albeit a largely forgotten one. He gave his life for his country in the Battle of Ridgefield, chasing British troops back to New York after they burned Danbury.

As Wooster lay dying, he said, “I am dying, but with a strong hope and persuasion that my country will gain her independence.”

He was buried in Wooster Cemetery on Mount Moriah in Danbury. And yes, Wooster Square in New Haven was named for him.

Monument to David Wooster in Wooster Cemetery.

Wooster Cemetery, Ellsworth Ave., Danbury, Conn.

Pine Grove Cemetery

Of all of Maine’s military heroes, Joshua Chamberlain stands as the greatest.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, by Matthew Brady

When the Civil War broke out, Chamberlain left his job as a Bowdoin College professor to command the storied 20^th Maine Regiment.

On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine held off three savage charges by Confederate regiments. By evening, the 20th Maine ran low on ammunition. He could either hold the hill and face certain destruction, or retreat and allow the Confederates to overrun the Army of the Potomac.

Instead, the men fixed their bayonets and charged down the hill. The shocked rebels broke and ran.

Chamberlain suffered grievous wounds during the Second Battle of Petersburg. He then received a promotion to brigadier general on what was thought to be his deathbed. He lived to the age of 85 and received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at Gettysburg.

A simple headstone marks Joshua Chamberlain’s grave in historic Pine Grove Cemetery near Bowdoin College, where he returned after the war.

military-heroes-gravesite-chamberlain-grave

Pine Grove Cemetery, image courtesy Google Maps

Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Maine

Old Burial Hill

The Americans might have lost the Revolution if it weren’t for one of Massachusetts’ great military heroes, John Glover.

military-heroes-glover's-regiment-glover

John Glover

Glover raised a regiment of Marblehead fishermen and sailors known for their discipline and teamwork. The regiment, which, included African-Americans and Indians, ferried George Washington and 2,400 men across the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776.

The Battle of Trenton, which followed, gave the American cause a boost in morale when it badly needed one.

Glover had already saved Washington’s Army. When the British defeated the Continental Army on Long Island, Washington ordered Glover’s Regiment to evacuate the troops to Manhattan. They safely landed 9,500 men, along with all their baggage, nearly all their artillery, stores, horses and provisions. Had the evacuation failed, Washington’s army—and probably the war—would have been lost.

John Glover is buried in Marblehead in the picturesque Old Burial Hill cemetery.

Old Burial Hill

Marblehead, Mass.

Stark Cemetery

John Stark

John Stark, , the most famous of New Hampshire’s military heroes, was also a quote machine. During the Battle of Bennington, Stark rallied his men with the words:

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!

Stark’s performance earned him the nickname Hero of the Battle of Bennington:

He may have been the one who said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And he most certainly coined New Hampshire’s motto, Live Free or Die.

Stark fought with distinction during the entire war, then went back to his farm in New Hampshire. He is buried with his wife in Stark Cemetery in Manchester, N.H. It’s in the back of Stark Park.

Stark Cemetery

Stark Cemetery, River Road, Manchester, N.H.

Common Burying Ground

You would expect Rhode Island’s greatest military heroes to be mariners and you would be correct.

But Rhode Island’s Oliver Hazard Perry wasn’t just a military hero. He defeated a British squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. His victory turned the tide of the war in the West, and he became a national hero as well as a military hero.

Perry didn’t have long to enjoy his fame. He died of yellow fever in 1819 at the age of 34.

Perry joins many of Newport’s most prominent citizens at the Common Burying Ground in Newport. His neighbors include Ida Lewis, Ann Smith Franklin and William Ellery.

The Common Burying Ground has a large number of colonial era headstones, including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the United States.

military-heroes-perry-common-burying-ground

The Common Burying Ground

Farewell St & Warner Street, Newport, R.I.

St. Joseph’s Cemetery

Capt. John Lonergan

John Lonergan realized his men were under heavy fire from a house in front of them. Lonergan ordered his men to charge it. They surrounded the house and Lonergan knocked in the front door, bellowing, ‘’Surrender! Fall out here, every damned one of you!’ The Confederates tumbled out of the house, and Lonergan’s company took 83 of them captive.

Lonergan later headed the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood and organized two failed raids into Canada from St. Albans. His aim was to pressure Britain to leave Ireland. He died in 1902. In 2013 his great-granddaughter unveiled a memorial marker to honor him in Burlington’s City Hall Park. He is buried, however, in St. Joseph Cemetery in Burlington.

military-heroes-gravesite-lonergan-st-joseph

St. Joseph’s Cemetery

206 Auburn St. Burlington, Vt.

End Notes

Images: David Wooster’s monument, By Kensphotos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4064498. Common Burying Ground By Swampyank at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17984252. Oliver Hazard Perry, By Gilbert Stuart(Life time: 1755-1828) – Original publication: Portrait by Gilbert Stuart Immediate source: http://www.toledomuseum.org/2013/08/08/artwork-of-the-week-august-9/, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40572296. Stark Cemetery By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26455478. Google images by Google Maps. Image of Oliver Hazard Perry courtesy Toledo Museum of Art.Old Burial Hill By Newenglandhistory1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114115853.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Little Italy in New England: Some Lost, Some Thriving

Shortly after the American Civil War, a new kind of neighborhood emerged in New England cities: a Little Italy. They were poor, dense, Roman Catholic and very, very family oriented.

The Italians came to escape grinding poverty in Sicily and Southern Italy. They followed the Irish, who came to escape the potato famine and usually moved out when the Italians moved in.

Today, the descendants of Italian immigrants make up more than 10 percent of the population of every New England state except Vermont and Maine. A Little Italy survives in Boston, in New Haven and in Providence, but bulldozers took out the Little Italies of Northern New England to make way for hotels and parking lots.

People flock to the surviving Little Italies for their buoyant street atmospheres, their summer religious festivals and most of all for their food.

Here, then, are six of New England’s Little Italies, both lost and surviving.

Wooster Square

Welcome to New Haven’s Little Italy, Wooster Square

Connecticut is the second most Italian state in the United States, with 18.7 percent of the population claiming Italian ancestry. So you shouldn’t be surprised that roughly half the populations of three New Haven neighborhoods — East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven — are descended from Italian immigrants.

Wooster Square is New Haven’s Little Italy, one of the densest and oldest in the country. It has plenty of Italian pastry shops and restaurants, like Tony & Lucille’s, Da Legna and Consiglio’s. Locals argue about which is better: Frank Pepe’s white clam apizza or Sally’s.

Frank Pepe’s exterior.

The neighborhood was named after Revolutionary War General David Wooster because he owned a warehouse near Water Street. Before the harbor was filled, Wooster Square was close to the waterfront. Ship captains and wholesale grocers built large houses near the port. By the end of the 19th century, factories moved to Wooster Square, making it a less desirable place to live.

Sargent Manufacturing, a hardware maker, moved in to New Haven and brought workers from the Amalfi coast of Italy. More Italians followed, to make corsets at Strouse, Adler, boots at Candee Rubber Co., clocks at the New Haven Clock Company and carriage parts at C. Cowles and other carriage factories. Many families opened small shops out of their homes.

The neighborhood fell into poverty when factories closed during the Great Depression. The city planned to build a highway through Wooster Square during the 1950s and ‘60s, but preservationists rallied. Wooster Square was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

For 117 years, the Society of St. Andrew has held a festa at the end of June to honor St. Andrew, who saved Amalfi from Turkish invaders.

Portland’s Lost Little Italy

Maine is one of the least Italian states in New England (along with Vermont), but nonetheless 50,000 Italian-Americans live within its borders. They began arriving in large numbers around 1900 and moved to Portland’s Little Italy on India Street. They came to work in Portland as barbers, carpenters, fishermen, longshoremen, railroad workers and masons.

St. Peter’s Parish

Life for Italian immigrants centered on St. Peter’s Parish on Federal Street, built in 1929. Eventually Portland’s Italian-Americans moved to the suburbs, and Portland’s Little Italy is nearly gone. St. Peter’s Parish is still active, and Micucci Grocery Co., Est. 1949., is still open on India Street. Amato’s Italian delicatessen, now a chain, still claims to have originated the Italian sandwich.

The North End of Boston

Boston’s North End

People have lived in Boston’s North End since 1630. Paul Revere lived there in a house built on the site of Increase Mather’s house. The Old North Church still stands; Paul Revere saw lanterns hung from its steeple. Thomas Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, lived in a North End mansion before patriots ransacked it in 1765.

By the late 1840s, the North End developed a red light district and prosperous residents moved away. Irish immigrants moved in to the neighborhood, and moved up in the world. Boston Mayor John ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald and his daughter Rose lived there.

Ann Street in Boston’s North End, 1881

By the time Rose married Joe Kennedy and moved to Brookline, Eastern European Jews started moving in. Then came many, many Italians. At one time 44,000 Italians lived in the North End, more than three times the number of Irish at their peak — 14,000, and more than the 17,000 Jews.

Churches, Feasts, Processions

The Italians took over five Protestant churches and built new Catholic ones, including St. Leonard’s, the first Italian-speaking church in New England. They started the first Italian café, Café Vittoria, in 1929. They ran grocery stores and bakeries. Three Italian immigrants started the Prince pasta company on Prince Street, and the Pastene Corporation started in a North End pushcart.

The North End became the center of world attention during the trial and execution in 1927 of Sacco and Vanzetti. The Patriarca crime family operated out of the North End for a time. So did Charles Ponzi.

Today the narrow dense streets are lined with cafes, pizzerias, small grocery stores and dozens of Italian restaurants, popular among tourists and city dwellers alike. The North End’s religious societies sponsor a dozen feasts and processions during the year. Mass is celebrated, food is served and religious statues covered with dollar bills are paraded through the streets.

The North End of Portsmouth

Daniel Webster’s house. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Portsmouth, N.H., once had a Little Italy that was a tiny version of Boston’s Little Italy. There were 300 homes in 30 acres for about a thousand people. And, as in Boston, Portsmouth’s Little Italy was called the North End.

And if Paul Revere lived in Boston’s North End, Daniel Webster lived in Portsmouth’s.

It was a crowded waterfront neighborhood with narrow, busy streets and dozens of small businesses, restaurants and shops. Families sold beer and lobster rolls from their homes, popcorn and ice cream from pushcarts.

First it was a colonial neighborhood, then Irish. The Irish moved out when a wave of Italians arrived at the beginning of the 20^th century. They worked in the shoe and button factories. Or they worked in the construction trades and later at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

By 1920, Portsmouth’s Little Italy was 95 percent Italian. There were also Chinese, French, Irish, African-Americans, Russians, Jewish, Polish, Canadians, Greeks, Indians. Some people viewed the neighborhood as a slum.

Urban renewal in the 1950s and ’60s leveled many of the homes, replacing them with a municipal parking lot, the Sheraton Hotel and the old Portsmouth Herald Building. Daniel Webster’s home and the Farragut School next door became an A&P and a parking lot, then a hotel. Only a few of the old buildings survive.

Federal Hill

Providence’s Little Italy.

You can still hear Italian spoken in Providence’s Little Italy, known as Federal Hill. The neighborhood followed the typical trajectory of a Little Italy: A colonial neighborhood became a commercial district. Then Irish immigrants filled its tenements during the famines of the mid-19^th century. The Italians began to arrive in the 1870s.

Today Rhode Island is the most Italian state in the country, just ahead of Connecticut, and the Little Italy of Providence is alive and well.

The arch that welcomes people to Providence’s Little Italy on Federal Hill.

The gateway arch that welcomes visitors to Federal Hill is one of the most recognizable Providence landmarks. The neighborhood includes the Columbus Theater, college housing, a piazza, Italian specialty shops and bakeries and Roman Catholic churches.

Italian flags decorate the main thoroughfare, Atwells Avenue. The Columbus Day parade starts on Federal Hill in the middle of the three-day Columbus Day Festival. On March 19, St. Joseph’s Day, Federal Hill’s Italian bakeries churn out a pastry called zeppole.

More than 20 Italian restaurants such as Angelo’s Civita Farnese and Café Mediterraneo line a quarter-mile of Atwells Avenue. They attract skilled chefs because they’re so near Johnson and Wales University.

In 1954, mob kingpin Ray Patriarca moved from Boston’s North End to the National Cigarette Service Company and Coin-O-Matic Distributors on Atwells Avenue. He died of a heart attack in 1984.

Little Italy, Burlington

The Little Italy in Burlington, Vt., mirrors the history of Portsmouth’s North End. Italians arrived at the turn of the 19th century to work in lumber mills and railroad yards. They created a vibrant little neighborhood along the waterfront east of Battery Street.

Burlington’s Little Italy had 140 homes, social clubs, Catholic schools and churches and small businesses like Izzo’s Market, Merola’s and Bellino’s Grocery.

Outsiders thought they could improve Burlington’s Little Italy with urban renewal. In 1966, the final house was razed to make way for the Champlain Street Project. More than 200 people were scattered after the city bought their houses at unfairly low prices. The old neighborhood fell to parking garages and lots, concrete-and-glass office buildings, a hotel and a windowless shopping mall.

Today three interpretive signs are all that’s left of Burlington’s Little Italy. It is fondly remembered as a place where neighbors shared homemade wine and children ran in and out of their neighbors’ houses, which were never locked.

Images: Gateway Arch over Atwells Avenue, By Zigamorph – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3996788; Atwells Avenue by Jef Nickerson, Flickr; Boston North End By Ingfbruno – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27355267; Frank Pepe’s By Krista – frank pepe exterior, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640336.

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How the Italian Immigrants Came to New England

Italian immigrants put their stamp on New England as indelibly as any Puritan. New England, in fact, is the most Italian region in the United States.

Boston’s North End, 1909, by Lewis Wickes Hine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Today, the descendants of Italian immigrants make up more than 10 percent of the population of every New England state except Vermont and Maine. Any New Englander can recognize the voice of Joe Castiglione or the Magliozzi brothers. And tens of thousands attend the region’s 45 summer festas. They happen from Our Lady of Assumption in Portland to St. Bartholomew in Providence.

Italian Americans have undeniably influenced New England’s food history. Boston’s North End brought us Prince spaghetti, Pastene sauces and Dragone cheese. It also gave us the first Italian café, Café Vittoria, in 1929. Amato’s Italian delicatessen in Portland, Maine, claims to have originated the Italian sandwich. And, of course, Frank Pepe in New Haven invented the white clam apizza.

More recently John Bello of New Britain created SoBe beverages.

Italian-Americans

And yet Italian immigrants have contributed to American history and culture in ways that are typically – well, American. Italian immigrants sculpted the Lincoln Memorial. They frescoed the dome of the Capitol. And they founded the Bank of America, formerly the Bank of Italy.

S. Z Poli of New Haven built a chain of vaudeville theaters and Charles Ponzi of Boston’s North End discovered a new form of financial fraud. Bart Giamatti presided over Yale University and Major League Baseball. Providence’s Edward Valenti created the Ginsu knife and the infomercial.

Mike Eruzione of Winthrop, Mass., captained the U.S. Olympic team that defeated the Russians in 1980. And Filippo Mazzei, a physician friend of Thomas Jefferson, published a pamphlet that contained a familiar line. It read,

All men are by nature equally free and independent.

Jefferson then used it in the Declaration of Independence.

Beginnings

The first Italians were explorers, and not just Christopher Columbus. America got its name from an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci. He explored the east coast of South America from 1499 to 1502.

Giovanni Caboto

Venetian John Cabot – Giovanni Caboto — and his son Sebastian are the reason Americans speak English. That’s because Cabot first explored the mainland in North America in 1497 under the commission of English king Henry VII.

And Giovanni di Verrazano explored the Atlantic coast between Florida and New Brunswick.

Italians also fought in the American Revolution. Afterward, Italian immigrants came to the United States as political refugees, as missionaries and as explorers.

They came as well because of a need for their professional skills. In 1801, Philip Trajetta founded a music conservatory in Boston, the first in the United States. And beginning in 1871, Gaetano Lanza taught mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 40 years.

Scattered Italian families settled in Boston between the American Revolution and the Civil War, but the city didn’t attract large groups of immigrants then. There was too little land and too little commercial opportunity. Boston’s homogeneous and self-contained social life also made it forbidding to outsiders.

But 7,000 Italians fought in the Civil War, and six won the Congressional Medal of Honor. New York even recruited infantrymen from Italy for its 39^th regiment, also known as the Garibaldi Guard.

Then after the Civil War, New England’s mills and factories didn’t have enough workers, so they recruited immigrants from overseas.

A Wave of Italian Immigrants

An Italian immigrant family, 1911. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

From 1880 to 1920, an estimated 4 million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. Most came between 1900 and 1914, and most came from southern Italy and Sicily. Italian unification in 1861 had worsened conditions in the mother country. Plus the soil was exhausted, taxes and tariffs were high and young men were conscripted for seven years

In 1880 about a thousand Italian immigrant families came to Boston. They represented the first wave to the city bypassed by most Europeans, save for the Irish.

These immigrants didn’t speak English. They therefore had to take low-wage jobs and fell prey to labor brokers known as padrones. So they settled in ghettoes known as Little Italys. Those included Front Street in Hartford, Central End in Bridgeport, Shrewsbury Street in Worcester and the South End of Springfield, Mass.

Burlington, Vt., Portsmouth, N.H., and Portland also had Little Italys, but they since disappeared. The once-crowded tenements of the North End of Boston, New Haven’s Wooster Square and Providence’s Federal Hill have all gentrified.

Birds of Passage

About a third of the newcomers were birds of passage, workers who intended to stay until they saved enough money to reestablish themselves in Italy. It wasn’t easy. Italian men ended up working low-paying construction jobs, while women usually worked as seamstresses in garment factories. Many Italian immigrants led the fight for better pay and working conditions. Arturo Giovanitti, Joe Ettor and Carlo Tresca organized the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

Many blamed prejudice against Italian immigrants for the 1927 execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. And many Italians Anglicized their names to avoid the stigma of their ethnicity. For example, actor Ernest Borgnine of Hamden, Conn., was originally Ernest Borgnino. Steve Carell, a Concord, Mass., native, would have been Steve Caroselli had his father not changed his name.

World Wars

World War I abruptly ended the massive wave of Italian immigration to America. Then came the restrictive Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924. The Little Italys stabilized and prospered, and English became the predominant language. Italian Americans then started to get better jobs as civil servants and skilled tradesmen, though the Great Depression reversed many of their gains.

Henry Mucci in the Philippines by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

By the time the United States entered World War II, 600,000 Italians had not become American citizens. The government therefore declared them enemy aliens and required them to report regularly. At the same time, as many as 500,000 Italian-Americans served in the armed forces.

During the war, Italian-American servicemen earned the Medal of Honor. For example, Col. Henry Mucci of Bridgeport led Army Rangers on a daring raid of a POW camp that held survivors of the Bataan Death March.

Postwar Prosperity

The war, however, opened up good-paying jobs to Italian immigrants in defense factories. Then after the war many Italian-Americans took advantage of the G.I. Bill to attend college. In the post-war era, Karen Ignani of Providence became CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Samuel Palmisano, of Southport, Conn., was named president and CEO of IBM.

Because they prospered, Italian-Americans gained political power. Ella Grasso won election as governor of Connecticut, the first woman governor elected in her own right. Tom Menino served as Boston’s longest serving mayor, while Massachusetts elected Foster Furcolo, John Volpe and Paul Cellucci as governors. Even Maine had an Italian-American governor, John Baldacci, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy’s mother has Italian ancestry.

Rhode Island

Nearly one in five Rhode Islanders – 18.9 percent – claim Italian ancestry. That makes the Ocean State the most Italian in the country. In 1950, John Pastore became the first Italian American elected to the U.S. Senate. Donald Carcieri, Edward DiPrete and Gina Raimondo since won election as governor. Raimondo now serves as secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce

And who can forget Buddy Cianci, who for years served as the colorful mayor of Providence?

Gateway Arch to Atwells Avenue in Providence.

Johnston, R.I., the most Italian municipality in the United States, has 46.7 percent of its population claiming Italian ancestry.

Companies like the Silver Spring Bleaching and Dyeing attracted Italian immigrants to Providence’s North End in the 19^th century. Today, 36.7 percent of North Providence residents say they had Italian ancestors.

Famous Italian Americans from Rhode Island include comedienne Ruth Buzzi and novelist Peter Pezzelli. Rhode Island also produced Italian-American athletes — hockey players Jack and Dave Capuano and Olympic skater Marissa Castelli.

Connecticut

Frank Pepe’s pizzeria.

Today, Connecticut ranks as the second most Italian state in America after Rhode Island. A full 18.7 percent of the population claims Italian ancestry.

Roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven and North Haven are descended from Italian immigrants. Wooster Square, home of Frank Pepe’s white clam apizza, is a bastion of Italian culture and cuisine. And more than a quarter of the populations of seven Connecticut towns — Northford, North Branford, Oakville, Orange, Wolcott, Derby and Wethersfield — have Italian ancestors.

Stamford sent Andy Robustelli to the Football Hall of Fame and Bobby Valentine to the helm of the Boston Red Sox. Joe Castiglione of Hamden announces Red Sox games on the radio. And Rosa Ponselle of Meriden performed with the Metropolitan Opera during the 1920s and 1930s.

Massachusetts

In Revere, 35.7 percent of residents claim Italian ancestry, making it the most Italian city in Massachusetts. Massachusetts itself ranks as the fourth most Italian state in the country behind New Jersey. That’s because close to 14 percent of Massachusetts residents have Italian ancestry, with a half-million living in metropolitan Boston.

Famous descendants of Italian immigrants to Massachusetts include poet John Ciardi and artist Frank Stella. Massachusetts has also produced such Italian-American athletes as Rocky Marciano, Tony Conigliaro and Joseph Bellino. Aerosmith’s Joe Perry’s mother was Italian, and so was Jay Leno’s dad.

New Hampshire

Yes, New Hampshire ranks as the seventh most Italian state in the country. Nearly 11 percent of its residents say they have Italian ancestors. Salem, along the southern tier, has the densest population of Italian-Americans in New Hampshire at 15.7 percent.

This story was updated in 2022.

Image: Atwells Avenue By Zigamorph – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3996788.

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The Birth of New Haven’s Famous White Clam Apizza

A peasant meal brought from 19^th century Italy evolved into New Haven’s famous white clam apizza, praised as an ‘intoxicating combination of romano cheese, fresh garlic, olive oil, parsley, and clams atop the chewy and charred oblong pies.’

The legend of the white clam apizza’s founder, Frank Pepe, was celebrated with a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in 2004 called Pepe’s New Haven pizzeria a ‘thriving community treasure.’

Origins

It started in the 1920s, when Italian immigrants sold their wares from carts at an open-air market in New Haven. The vendors were hungry and, in the winter, cold. Frank Pepe made four or five flatbread pizzas and carried them on his head through the streets. When he reached the market, he put the pizzas down on a box. The hungry vendors bought the hot pizza.

Frank Pepe couldn’t read, though, and had a hard time keeping accounts. Born April 15, 1893 on the Amalfi coast in Italy, he immigrated to New Haven in 1909. He spoke no English. Like many poor Italian immigrants, he settled in New Haven’s Wooster Square because it offered jobs. As many as 5,000 people worked in Wooster Square’s shirt and dress factories. Other immigrants opened small shops in the district’s once-grand old homes.

Frank Pepe got a job in a bakery, making apizza from old bread and selling it at the open-air market on his own time.

Apizza Arrives

He eventually started his own bakery, delivering bread from a cart. His lack of education made it hard for him to account for his income and expenses. Two crucial decisions led to the eventual birth of the white clam apizza: He married the literate, English-speaking Filomena, and he focused on the apizza business, where his customers came to him.

In 1925, Frank and Filomena began making two kinds of apizza (pronounced ‘ah-beets’). One was a simple charred flat bread with a cooked sauce of hand-crushed tomatoes – the Original Tomato Pie. The other had anchovies.

White clam apizza

For 12 years they sold apizza from 157 Wooster St. with a small crew of family members. Frank’s contributions to the community during the Great Depression earned him the nickname ‘Old Reliable.’

In 1937, Filomena and Frank Pepe bought the building next door at 163 Wooster St. and moved to the apartment above it with their two daughters, Elizabeth and Serafina. Today, that building is still home to Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletena.

Modern Apizza opened nearby three years earlier, and in 1938, Frank Pepe’s nephew Sal Consiglio started his own pizzeria two blocks away. That family feud spilled out into the streets of New Haven and beyond. People argue over which has the best apizza. Frank Sinatra, for example, liked Sal’s, while Ronald Reagan preferred Pepe’s.

Sally’s Apizza rounded out the ‘Big Three,’ which, along with the term ‘apizza,’ define New Haven style pizza.

What Defines New Haven Apizza?

Eater calls it ‘a hotter, crispier, and dirtier descendant of Neapolitan style pie.’ New Haven apizza is left in intensely hot ovens longer than most pies, which blisters and chars the crust. Refrigerated dough is allowed to ferment overnight and then warmed to room temperature. That gives it a more nuanced flavor and chewier crust than most other pizzas.

Exactly how Frank Pepe invented the white clam pizza is unclear, though it is certain he invented it. “It was most likely an organic inspiration,” reads the website. Pepe’s also served raw littleneck clams on the half shell from Rhode Island as an appetizer , and some time in the mid 1960s they ended up on top of white pizzas.

Houses in the Wooster Square Historic District.

Fans and critics say there’s nothing like it.

Success spawned more pizzerias, in Fairfield, Waterbury, West Hartford, Manchester and Danbury, Conn., at the Mohegan Sun Casino and in Yonkers, N.Y. They’ve also opened in Warwick, R.I., and in the Massachusetts cities of Burlington, Chestnut Hill and Watertown,

Another Local Favorite

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana serves another vintage homegrown favorite: Foxon Park sodas. They are still made the way they were in 1922, when Matteo Naclerio founded the company in East Haven. Conn. Real cane sugar is used instead of the high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens most sodas. Foxon Park, still in the Naclerio family, attributes its early success to home delivery and unusual, varied flavors such as White Birch Beer, Gassosa and Iron Brew.

Frank Pepe died Sept. 6, 1969. The business remains in the family.

Excitement and Loyalty

On June 24, 2005, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro honored Frank and Filomena Pepe by entering comments in the Congressional Record:

With hard work, countless hours, and dedication the Pepes created a successful business that carried themselves and their extended family through the Great Depression … Pepe’s popularity grew outside the Italian-American community of Wooster Street and for four generations enthusiastic customers have returned with their own families. The excitement and loyalty of their customers has never waned — a truth that is reflected in the long lines of anxious patrons that are a constant on Wooster Street…

Four generations later, the business is still run by family and the walls are still adorned with family photos as well as those of Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, and Matthew Broderick–just a few of the stars who have dined at Pepe’s in the past… It is not just the pizza that makes’ Pepe’s such a special part of our community. It is the history and community spirit of Frank Pepe and his family that has made it a New Haven landmark.

Wooster Square has come up in the world since Frank Pepe delivered bread from a cart. The Wooster Square Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places. To see historic photos of Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletena, click here.

With thanks to The Italian-American Experience in New Haven by Anthony V. Riccio and The Definitive Guide to New Haven Pizza by Eater. Exterior of Pepe’s By Krista – frank pepe exterior, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640336.White clam pizza By Krista – frank pepe clam pie, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640270. This story was updated in 2021.

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End Notes

How the Italian Immigrants Came to New England

Italian-Americans

Beginnings

A Wave of Italian Immigrants

Birds of Passage

World Wars

Postwar Prosperity

Rhode Island

Connecticut

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

The Birth of New Haven’s Famous White Clam Apizza

Origins

Apizza Arrives

What Defines New Haven Apizza?

Another Local Favorite

Excitement and Loyalty

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