by PolackTony » Sun Feb 23, 2025 4:59 pm
Pmac2 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 23, 2025 3:54 pm
is it true bostons little Italy was actually bigger then nyc? I should say, north end.. but it's more of a neighborhood
In population or geography? Hard to say as a general statement, as an apples to apples comparison because it depends on time period and how one defines the neighborhood boundaries. I’m assuming that you mean Lower Manhattan’s “Little Italy”, though that kind of bled over into adjacent neighborhoods like the Village, East Village/LES, etc. If we’re just talking about the core area around Mulberry, circa 1930 (peak of the Italian immigrant population in the US), then the North End did have a significantly larger population than the Mulberry St neighborhood.
But neither of these came close to rivaling East Harlem, which in its heyday had an Italian population ~100k and was by far the single largest Italian community in the US. After East Harlem, the North End was one of the larger ones though. North End, South Philly, and Taylor St on the Near Westside of Chicago all had somewhere around 50-60k Italians around 1930, based on what I know, and these were all top contenders for “biggest” after East Harlem (though South Philly and Taylor St might have been just a bit bigger in population than the North End). After these, you had important but somewhat smaller communities like Mulberry, South Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Federal Hill in Providence, The Hill in STL.
In terms of *total* Italian population in a single city, I think most figures would have — after NYC, of course — Philly and Chicago followed by Boston. Dynamics were a bit different across these cities too, as NYC and Chicago had multiple distinct “Little Italies” while the Italian population in the City of Philadelphia was more strongly concentrated in South Philly (in all these cases, you also had Italian communities in neighboring satellite cities and suburbs, as well rural hinterlands, with close ties to the central nodal communities in the metropolis). NYC and Chicago had larger total populations, however, so in terms of Italian proportion of the total city population, Philly and Boston were on top (Italian proportion circa 1930 roughly ~10-12%) with NYC and Chicago having somewhat smaller relative numbers (~7-8%).
Now, if you’re talking about a later time period like the 60s, 70s, 80s, that’s a totally different question. Though the North End (like parts of South Philly), as I understand it, remained more intact than many other inner city core Italian “old neighborhoods” in other cities (eg, by the 80s, the East Harlem and Taylor St Italian communities were a shell of what they had been historically, having been heavily impacted by demographic changes and “urban renewal” initiatives like the construction of large housing projects).
[quote=Pmac2 post_id=290069 time=1740351257 user_id=6636]
is it true bostons little Italy was actually bigger then nyc? I should say, north end.. but it's more of a neighborhood
[/quote]
In population or geography? Hard to say as a general statement, as an apples to apples comparison because it depends on time period and how one defines the neighborhood boundaries. I’m assuming that you mean Lower Manhattan’s “Little Italy”, though that kind of bled over into adjacent neighborhoods like the Village, East Village/LES, etc. If we’re just talking about the core area around Mulberry, circa 1930 (peak of the Italian immigrant population in the US), then the North End did have a significantly larger population than the Mulberry St neighborhood.
But neither of these came close to rivaling East Harlem, which in its heyday had an Italian population ~100k and was by far the single largest Italian community in the US. After East Harlem, the North End was one of the larger ones though. North End, South Philly, and Taylor St on the Near Westside of Chicago all had somewhere around 50-60k Italians around 1930, based on what I know, and these were all top contenders for “biggest” after East Harlem (though South Philly and Taylor St might have been just a bit bigger in population than the North End). After these, you had important but somewhat smaller communities like Mulberry, South Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Federal Hill in Providence, The Hill in STL.
In terms of *total* Italian population in a single city, I think most figures would have — after NYC, of course — Philly and Chicago followed by Boston. Dynamics were a bit different across these cities too, as NYC and Chicago had multiple distinct “Little Italies” while the Italian population in the City of Philadelphia was more strongly concentrated in South Philly (in all these cases, you also had Italian communities in neighboring satellite cities and suburbs, as well rural hinterlands, with close ties to the central nodal communities in the metropolis). NYC and Chicago had larger total populations, however, so in terms of Italian proportion of the total city population, Philly and Boston were on top (Italian proportion circa 1930 roughly ~10-12%) with NYC and Chicago having somewhat smaller relative numbers (~7-8%).
Now, if you’re talking about a later time period like the 60s, 70s, 80s, that’s a totally different question. Though the North End (like parts of South Philly), as I understand it, remained more intact than many other inner city core Italian “old neighborhoods” in other cities (eg, by the 80s, the East Harlem and Taylor St Italian communities were a shell of what they had been historically, having been heavily impacted by demographic changes and “urban renewal” initiatives like the construction of large housing projects).