Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site
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Page This family-friendly site celebrates Italian culture for the enjoyment of children and
adults. Site-Overview
And Mulberry Bend Italian
Immigrant 'Haves' and 'Have-nots" Poverty
was a relative term... Naturalists
and Inventors, Designers and Artists Luigi
Palma di Cesnola, Soldier, Diplomat, Archeologist Waste
Disposal as an Italian Trade There were two classes of Italian immigrants to
the U.S. in the 1800s: If you were skilled, educated, multilingual,
cultured and had a financial cushion, you could generally take up a
relatively good position in American society. If you were unskilled, illiterate, uncultured,
and poor, you usually fell into the same situation in the U.S. that
you had left behind, which was a life of poverty in a slum. (The image to the right is of Aldolfo Baldizzi,
an Italian immigrant to New York. You can learn more about him
and his family's life in a New York tenement at the Tenement
Museum site.)
Two Italian immigrant women from circa 1906 who
arrived at Ellis Island However, the idea that U.S. streets were
"paved with gold" was not entirely wrong for even the poor
immigrants. There were many things that made poverty in the U.S.
better than poverty in newly-unified Italy, and lead to many poor
Italian immigrants emerging from poverty into the middle classes and
beyond. Skilled farm laborers often moved to
farming communities already settled by Italian immigrants from the
previous waves of immigrants. This was especially true of
immigrants from Liguria who joined communities in California's farming
communities. Once there, they earned a living, sent their
children to local schools, some set up small businesses, and acted as
a support network for later arrivals, both relations and village
compatriots.
Another famous Italian banker who made a
fortune in the U.S. was Egisto P. Fabbri (pictured right). He invested in
shipping, and later became an associate of J. P. Morgan's investment
house/bank in New York. He was one of the 'new wealthy' who
joined together to form the New York
Metropolitan Opera as an alternative to the more selective 'old
wealthy' Academy of the Arts concert hall. His brother Ernesto
(pictured below) was also an immigrant
to the U.S., marrying a Dutch-American from New York, Sara Randall, from the
distinguished Knickerbocker community, and excelling in banking and
business.
Ernesto joined his uncle in the banking industry in
New York, lived in the house
pictured here, which was a wedding gift from his mother-in-law, and eventually became the president of the Society of
Italian Immigrants in New York.
Egisto Fabbri (pictured left) became a noted artist, art
collector, designer and architect. His most famous work in
New York city, pictured right, is now called the House of the Redeemer and it's
Renaissance Revival decor can be visited and admired, and even used as
the setting for special events. (Thanks to Emily Randall for the images and
wonderful research on the site about
Jonas Randall and his Descendants (the Fabbris appear about a
1/4 of the way down the page). There are also some special pages
about the Fabbris.
Family of Ernesto and Egisto Fabbri.
Egisto Fabbri, Artist and Architect.
Family of Ernesto Fabbri and Sara Ann Randall.
Palazzo Capponi, Grazie mille!) After
an army career in Europe, Mr. di Cesnola emigrated to New York.
There he taught French and English, and set up a school for army
officers. At the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, Mr. di
Cesnola fought valiantly for the Union forces as an officer,
suffering a spell as a prisoner of war, but returning to duty to fight
on, ending his career as a Brigadier-General and being awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor for his conspicuous military service. General di Cesnola was then rewarded with a U.S.
consul position in Cyprus, where became an amateur archeologist,
as all archeologists were at the time. He expertly excavated the largest
collection of Cyprian antiquities ever put together by one man. He sold the
collection to the newly established Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York, and became the museum's first director. His
brother, Alessandro Palma di Cesnola was also an archeologist,
and also served in the U.S. diplomatic corps with distinction. There's an interesting story about General di Cesnola when he was director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
in 1897.
Muck-raking journalists, as investigative journalists were called at
the time, exposed an elitist entrance policy at the new museum.
Only well-dressed white people were allowed entry by the guards
at the front doors. In response, varying statements came from guards, Met
policemen, and museum committee members about who should be allowed
into the museum and who should be excluded: This view of the Met is from 1895. When the matter landed on General di Cesnola's
desk, he agreed that people should be dressed respectfully as if
going to church, and should behave well or they would be asked to
leave. He did not support excluding the poor or blacks as a
rule. And the idea that women with shawls over their heads
should be excluded, especially roused him because that would exclude
many Italian immigrant women. "Why, there are dozens of Italian women
to be seen here every Sunday with shawls over their heads, and dirty
shawls at that. You can see all sorts of ragamuffins
here. We don't want to exclude the poor, but we reserve to
ourselves the right to make any rules that we think necessary to
protect the public." Mr. Jacob Riis (pronounced Reese,
pictured right) a poor
immigrant from Denmark, first learned English to a level that allowed
him to become a journalist, and then exposed those conditions, and
orchestrated programs to improve conditions for all the poor in New
York City. The terrible slums in New York at this
time were not the result of a conspiracy against foreigners or the
poor, but a result of explosive population growth in a city
ill-prepared for it, and poorly run by a corrupt local government. Three quarters of all people living in New York
City in the 1890s lived in tenement buildings because there was no
place else to live. In 1812, New York City's population was a mere
150,000. By 1889, the city's population was estimated at 1.5 million
but already in 1890 it was reaching 2 million.
From 1880 to 1890 the entire U.S. population doubled due to
immigration from 37 million to 75 million. Over 5 million immigrants had landed in New York in a space of 20
years, from 1869 to 1889, and that's only counting the immigrants from
outside of the U.S. Many stopped in New York City before moving
on. The majority of the immigrants from abroad came
from Germany and Ireland, but large numbers came from Scandinavia,
Spain, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, China, Arab countries,
and Italy. Many internal immigrants came to New York City
from the southern states as freed slaves, and there were many bankrupted
farmers and out-of-work farm laborers from the mid-west. Here are some of Mr. Riis's observations from
his books (How the Other Half
Lives from 1890 and The
Battle of the Slum from 1892) and some of his famous
photographic images from that era (also at the
Masters of Photography site). These excerpts I've
collected together concern the Italian immigrants in
New York City. I've supplied other images too, and put sources
so you can research this further, if you wish to. Italian immigrants in New York
tended to congregate in two areas of similar dilapidation: The Bend (or
Mulberry Bend) and 'Little Italy' in
Harlem. Mulberry Bend, where
Mulberry Street turned, now Columbus Park, was an Italian immigrant
enclave in the late 1800s, the remnants of which can still be found
today. This amazing view of
The Bend, after it was turned into Mulberry Park in 1897, is from a drawing
of New York City from circa 1900, found on-line at the Library of
Congress site. You can zoom into the image to see the incredible
detail, including elevated railway tracks, street tracks of horse and
steam drawn trams, tenements, rear tenements (built in the former
gardens), bridges, even building facades. “The Five Points had been cleansed, as far as the immediate
neighborhood was concerned, but the Mulberry Street Bend was fast
outdoing it in foulness not a stone's throw away, and new centres of
corruption were continually springing up and getting the upper hand
whenever vigilance was relaxed for ever so short a time. It is one of
the curses of the tenement-house system that the worst houses exercise
a levelling influence upon all the rest, just as one bad boy in a
schoolroom will spoil the whole class.” A lodging house 'bed';
and people lined up waiting for the Mulberry Street Police Station lodging house to open for the
evening. “…a midnight inspection in Mulberry Street unearths a
hundred and fifty "lodgers" sleeping on filthy floors in two
buildings. In spite of brown-stone trimmings, plate-glass and mosaic
vestibule floors, the water does not rise in summer to the second
story, while the beer flows unchecked to the all-night picnics on the
roof. The saloon with the side-door and the landlord divide the
prosperity of the place between them, and the tenant, in sullen
submission, foots the bills.” The earliest tenements
(multiple-family dwellings) were family homes divided up into separate
living units. Later additions were the rear-tenements built in
the family-home gardens. In the images above, you can see the
space that would normally be garden space, is completely built in with
irregular buildings, added later, to capitalize on the housing
shortage in the city. Eventually
purpose-built buildings were erected where homes had been torn down,
or on any cheap land a builder could find, even land he didn't
own! By 1900 tenement had been built all over Manhattan island,
along the rivers, up through Harlem, to the city line and
beyond. And reformers' early dreams of wide open spaces in
suburbia died a quick death when tenements were built throughout
fast-growing Brooklyn. After much suffering on the part of the tenants, finally
city officials legislated health and safety rules to save lives in
these death traps. Thousands died each year from epidemics, heat
exhaustion, fire, suffocation... The space allowed by
law between the backs of tenements, from which tenants got their
'fresh' air and 'light', was barely 10 feet. Then as now in New
York, the higher the apartment, the higher the rent. You must
pay extra for 'air' and 'light'. This often meant an 8 story
walk-up. Men, women and children died every summer by rolling
off the rooftops in their sleep, where they took refuge in the
sweltering heat. “Recent Congressional inquiries have shown the nature of the
"assistance" he (ed. the Italian immigrant) receives from greedy steamship agents and
"bankers," who persuade him by false promises to mortgage
his home, his few belongings, and his wages for months to come for a
ticket to the land where plenty of work is to be had at princely
wages." "The padrone--the "banker," is nothing else--having
made his ten per cent out of him en route, receives him at the
landing and turns him to double account as a wage-earner and a
rent-payer. In each of these roles he is made to yield a profit to his
unscrupulous countryman, whom he trusts implicitly with the instinct
of utter helplessness." "The man is so ignorant that, as one of the
sharpers who prey upon him put it once, it "would be downright
sinful not to take him in." His ignorance and unconquerable
suspicion of strangers dig the pit into which he falls. He not only
knows no word of English, but he does not know enough to learn. Rarely
only can he write his own language.” Sheds
built of scraps of wood, homes for
extended families, as seen above. You could pay a dollar a month
per adult to sleep there, or 5 cents
got you a place to sleep on the floor, at any time of day or
night. A roof-top where people went to get light and air. Poor English skills make them vulnerable: “the Italian learns slowly, if at all. Even his boy, born
here, often speaks his native tongue indifferently. He is forced,
therefore, to have constant recourse to the middle-man, who makes him
pay handsomely at every turn. He hires him out to the railroad
contractor, receiving a commission from the employer as well as from
the laborer, and repeats the performance monthly, or as often as he
can have him dismissed. In the city he contracts for his lodging,
subletting to him space in the vilest tenements at extortionate rents,
and sets an example that does not lack imitators." "The "princely
wages" have vanished with his coming, and in their place
hardships and a dollar a day, beheft with the padrone's merciless
mortgage, confront him. Bred to even worse fare, he takes both as a
matter of course, and, applying the maxim that it is not what one
makes but what he saves that makes him rich, manages to turn the very
dirt of the streets into a hoard of gold, with which he either returns
to his Southern home, or brings over his family to join in his work
and in his fortunes the next season.” Italian 'rag-pickers'
with their pickings, in their 'homes'. “The discovery was made by earlier
explorers that there is money in New York's ash-barrel (ed. this is a
garbage container of sorts that sat on the sidewalks, in which people
dumped the remains from their stoves, really all their burned up
garbage), but it was
left to the genius of the padrone to develop the full resources of the
mine that has become the exclusive preserve of the Italian immigrant." "Only a few years ago, when ragpicking was carried on in a desultory
and irresponsible sort of way, the city hired gangs of men to trim the
ash-scows before they were sent out to sea. The trimming consisted in
levelling out the dirt as it was dumped from the carts, so that the
scow might be evenly loaded. The men were paid a dollar and a half a
day, kept what they found that was worth having, and allowed the
swarms of Italians who hung about the dumps to do the heavy work for
them, letting them have their pick of the loads for their trouble." "To-day Italians contract for the work, paying large sums to be
permitted to do it. The city received not less than $80,000 last year
for the sale of this privilege to the contractors, who in addition
have to pay gangs of their countrymen for sorting out the bones, rags
tin cans and other waste that are found in the ashes and form the
staples of their trade and their sources of revenue." An Italian woman
'rag-picker' in her living space, with her packs of junk, few
possessions including her straw hat hung on the wall behind her, and a
child in her lap. "The effect has
been vastly to increase the power of the padrone, or his ally, the
contractor, by giving him exclusive control of the one industry in
which the Italian was formerly independent "dealer," and
reducing him literally to the plane of the dump. Whenever the back of
the sanitary police is turned, he will make his home in the filthy
burrows where he works by day, sleeping and eating his meals under the
dump, on the edge of slimy depths and amid surroundings full of
unutterable horror." "The city did not bargain to house, though it is
content to board him so long as he can make the ash-barrels yield the
food to keep him alive, and a vigorous campaign is carried on at
intervals against these unlicensed dump settlements; but the
temptation of having to pay no rent is too strong, and they are driven
from one dump only to find lodgement under another a few blocks
farther up or down the river. The fiercest warfare is waged over the
patronage of the dumps by rival factions represented by opposing
contractors” Tenements off the
street were often constructed of timber on un-sound foundations.
This is a view of barely-standing wooden rear-tenements in The Bend. “Ordinarily he is easily enough
governed by authority--always excepting Sunday, when he settles down
to a game of cards and lets loose all his bad passions. Like the
Chinese, the Italian is a born gambler. His soul is in the game from
the moment the cards are on the table, and very frequently his knife
is in it too before the game is ended." "No Sunday has passed in New
York since "the Bend" became a suburb of Naples without one
or more of these murderous affrays coming to the notice of the police.
As a rule that happens only when the man the game went against is
either dead or so badly wounded as to require instant surgical help.
As to the other, unless he be caught red-handed, the chances that the
police will ever get him are slim indeed. The wounded man can seldom
be persuaded to betray him. He wards off all inquiries with a wicked
"I fix him myself," and there the matter rests until he
either dies or recovers. If the latter, the community hears after a
while of another Italian affray, a man stabbed in a quarrel, dead or
dying, and the police know that "he" has been fixed, and the
account squared.” Children of Italian
immigrants playing on a coal 'slide'. The streets were their
play-ground until Mulberry Park was built, and later a children's
play-ground added to it. The second image is of children on
Mulberry street sleeping outdoors because of the heat indoors. A school principle
working near The Bend, hoped to fight the annual epidemics by having
his teachers begin each school day with the children responding to
this question: "What must I do to be healthy?". The
children were to respond with what was nearly impossible for them at
that time: "I must keep my skin clean, wear clean clothes,
breathe pure air, and live in the sunlight." “Italian immigrant has his redeeming traits.
He is as honest
as he is hot-headed. There are no Italian burglars in the Rogues'
Gallery; the ex-brigand toils peacefully with pickaxe and shovel on
American ground. His boy occasionally shows, as a pick-pocket, the
results of his training with the toughs of the Sixth Ward slums." "The
only criminal business to which the father occasionally lends his
hand, outside of murder, is a bunco game, of which his confiding
countrymen, returning with their hoard to their native land, are the
victims." "The women are faithful wives and devoted mothers.
Their vivid
and picturesque costumes lend a tinge of color to the otherwise dull
monotony of the slums they inhabit. The Italian is gay, lighthearted
and, if his fur is not stroked the wrong way, inoffensive as a child.
His worst offense is that he keeps the stale-beer dives. Where his
headquarters is, in the Mulberry Street Bend, these vile dens flourish
and gather about them all the wrecks, the utterly wretched, the
hopelessly lost, on the lowest slope of depraved humanity. And out of
their misery he makes a profit.” “…the stale-beer dive, is
known about "the Bend" by the more dignified name of the
two-cent restaurant. Usually, as in this instance, it is in some
cellar giving on a back alley. Doctored, unlicensed beer is its chief
ware. Sometimes a cup of "coffee" and a stale roll may be
had for two cents. The men pay the score. To the women--unutterable
horror of the suggestion--the place is free." "The beer is collected
from the kegs put on the sidewalk by the saloon-keeper to await the
brewer's cart, and is touched up with drugs to put a froth on it.
The
privilege to sit all night on a chair, or sleep on a table, or in a
barrel, goes with each round of drinks. Generally an Italian,
sometimes a negro, occasionally a woman, "runs" the dive." A back alley off which
many stale-beer dives could be found in the cellar rooms, and a cellar
room with women and men drinking stale-beer. "Their customers, alike homeless and hopeless in their utter
wretchedness, are the professional tramps, and these only... Repulsive as the business
is, its profits to the Italian dive-keeper are considerable; in fact,
barring a slight outlay in the ingredients that serve to give
"life" to the beer-dregs, it is all profit." "The
"banker" who curses the Italian colony does not despise
taking a hand in it, and such a thing as a stale-beer trust on a
Mulberry Street scale may yet be among the possibilities. One of these
bankers, who was once known to the police as the keeper of one
notorious stale-beer dive and the active backer of others, is to-day
an extensive manufacturer of macaroni, the owner of several big
tenements and other real estate; and the capital, it is said, has all
come out of his old business.”
Mulberry Bend Park opened in 1897.
(These images of before and after are from the Library of Congress
Site. Click on the image to go to the corresponding map.) Also called variously over the years: Five
Points Park, Paradise Park, and now Columbus Park. It is now
under renovation. Parks were off limits to the poor until Riis's
campaign to build more of them right in the worst areas. He
campaigned for years to get the horrible, un-fixable, tenements of
Mulberry Bend torn down and this park put in their place, to provide
some green, some light, some air to the families living there.
“I came upon a
couple of youngsters in a Mulberry Street yard a while ago that were
chalking on the fence their first lesson in "writin'."
And this is what they wrote: "Keeb of te Grass." They
had it by heart, for there was not, I verily believe, a green sod
within a quarter of a mile. Home to them is an empty name. " "A gentleman
once catechized a ragged class in a down-town public school on this
point, and recorded the result: Out of forty-eight boys twenty had
never seen the Brooklyn Bridge that was scarcely five minutes' walk
away, three only had been in Central Park, fifteen had known the joy
of a ride in a horse-car. The street, with its ash-barrels and
its dirt, the river that runs foul with mud, are their domain.” “As
the green dies out of the landscape and increases in political
importance, the police find more to do. Where it disappears altogether
from sight, lapsing into a mere sentiment, police-beats are shortened
and the force patrols double at night. Neither the man nor the
sentiment is wholly responsible for this. It is the tenement unadorned
that is." "The
changing of Tompkins Square from a sand lot into a beautiful park put
an end for good and all to the Bread and Blood riots of which it used
to be the scene, and transformed a nest of dangerous agitators into a
harmless, beer-craving band of Anarchists. They have scarcely
been heard of since. Opponents of the small parks system as a
means of relieving the congested population of tenement districts,
please take note.” These two images from
Earth-orbiting satellites show Columbus Park today (former Mulberry
Bend Park). The image on the right has added outlines of all the
buildings next to the park, to show that the housing shortage in New
York is just as chronic as it was a century ago. The spaces
between the buildings are required by law for light and air, otherwise
they would surely be built up as well. The biggest difference
between then and now, is indoor plumbing. A century ago, outdoor
water-closets were located in the alleys and courtyards around
buildings, and a fire-hydrant served as the only water source for most
tenements. And to make it all worse, animals were often stabled
in the same courtyards and alleys, adding to the rancid smells that
wafted up the light and air shafts. A special law had to be
passed to stop people housing pigs in the city and letting them
'graze' freely on the street trash. Unlike many others during his time, Mr. Riis
believed that moral citizens, given a chance to improve their lives,
will take that chance and rise out of poverty into the middle
class. He insisted that organized, systematic charity, sponsored
by private wealth, together with strict laws setting high standards
for decent living conditions and outlawing exploitation could work
miracles in slum areas. He saw much of that happen in his
lifetime, as a direct result of his efforts.
“Such an impulse toward
better things there certainly is. The German rag-picker of
thirty years ago, quite as low in the scale as his Italian successor,
is the thrifty tradesman or prosperous farmer of to-day. The
Italian scavenger of our time is fast graduating into exclusive
control of the corner fruit-stands, while his black-eyed boy
monopolizes the boot-blacking industry in which a few years ago he was
an intruder.”
This is a beautiful tribute via YouTube to Jacob Riis's haunting photographs of
turn-of-the-century New York City. My only suggestion would be
to let the images remain on the screen longer for better reflection
of the amazing contents of each frame.
Here's a
link to
an audio file of a jazz number at the Internet Archive, from
1919 called 'Night Time in Little Italy' by the Frisco Jazz Band.
This instrumental jazzes up Italian popular music classics like 'Torna
al Sorriento'. It's fast, fresh, funny, and a ball to listen
to! Show how Italian immigrant culture could blend into the
perfectly American culture of jazz.
Here's a mystery novel is set in
Mulberry Bend at the turn of the last century. Novels are good
ways to bring history to life, and so are these books on social
history.
More immigrant experience books on my
Non-Fiction page
Visit my Enrico Caruso, Gigli, Tetrazzini
page Visit my Photo Tours of
Italy page See two views of NYC from 1885 and 1905
Italian
Immigrants in New York in the 1890s
Italian Immigrant 'Haves' and 'Have-nots"
Poverty was a relative term...
Skilled Farm Laborers
Bankers
One "industry" that had it's roots in
Italy became a famous business for some Italian immigrants:
banking. Experienced, multi-lingual bankers joined the
ranks of the investment houses in New York and San Francisco. A.
P. Gianninni set up shop in San Francisco, establishing The Bank of
Italy, later to become The Bank of America. Mr. Gianninni's bank
was instrumental in the reconstruction of San Francisco after the
catastrophic earthquake and fire of 1906.
When
Ernesto died
young, Egisto took responsibility for the widow and the eight
children, sending them back to Italy, to a life of
luxury in Florence, but the boys eventually returned to the U.S. (Images of
Palazzo Capponi, the family home at that time, and
today
as a stupendous venue for events in Florence.)
One of those five children, also named
Ernesto, married another famous New Yorker, Edith Shepard,
the great-grand-daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad
billionaire. Naturalists and
Inventors, Designers and
Artists
Two of Ernesto's brothers also emigrated back
to the U.S. 
Alessandro Fabbri became a noted naturalist
and inventor, most famously backing Giulielmo Marconi's work with
radio waves. General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Soldier, Diplomat,
Archeologist
Perhaps one of the most distinguished Italian
immigrants of that period was General Luigi Palma di Cesnola. First Director of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art
Poor Italians in New York
Sadly, the
vast majority of Italian immigrants
who remained in New York City were poor and lived in appalling
conditions.
Mulberry Bend
Lodging Houses
Tenement Buildings
The Padrone
Waste Disposal as
an Italian Trade
Gambling and
Own-Justice
Italian Immigrants
as Opposed to Other Immigrants
Stale-Beer Dives
From Slum to
Paradise Park
Social Climbing
