Benvenuti in America
A 13-mile stroll through Manhattan, today and yesterday
I’m back in the U.S. for the first time since mid-2018, and I gotta tell you it’s a strange experience. I keep forgetting I can speak English, I keep looking for $1 coins in my wallet, and I’ve bitten back more “buongiorno”s than I can count. But after two days, my brain has made the shift in all respects except one: money. My god, is this country brutally expensive.
Dealing with sticker shock has made me think, a lot, about the all-kinds-of-shock my grandparents and their extended families must have experienced when they passed through Ellis Island and stepped onto Manhattan soil. My family didn’t stay long in New York City, but I’m sure it was long enough for them to be wowed.
As I walked a 13-mile swath of Manhattan with one of my sons (Broadway in Chinatown to the World Trade Center Memorial, then up through Tribeca, Soho, the Village, midtown, Central Park, and the Upper West Side to 85th St.), little glimpses of the past emerged, which got me wondering what the New York of my ancestors’ day would have looked like. So I did a little research, and it turns out the 1900s were a building boom. My family got there too early to see most of that century’s accomplishments, though. So what wouldn’t they have seen in the year 1900? Lots of places that we might now describe as iconic New York. Here’s a sampling:
Flatiron Building (opened in 1902)
Macy’s at Herald Square (1902)
New York Public Library (the organization was founded in 1895, but construction at the Fifth Avenue site began in 1902)
NY Stock Exchange Building (1903)
New Amsterdam Theatre, home to the Ziegfeld Follies, among other extravaganzas (1903)
Williamsburg Bridge (begun in 1896, completed in 1903)
the subway system (1904)
the New York Times building at Times Square (1905)
Manhattan Bridge (begun in 1901, completed in 1909)
Grand Central Station (1913)
Chrysler Building (1929)
Empire State Building, NYC’s tallest building when it was built and, for a time, after 9/11 (1931)
Rockefeller Center (1933)
Some of my ancestors did get back to New York from time to time, on vacation or to ship out back to Italy, so they would have seen the city grow. But what was already standing in their first early days there, at the turn of the 20th century? Among the city’s oldest structures are three Lower East Side churches, which certainly, at least for some immigrants facing hatred, hostility, and poverty on foreign soil, would have provided both community and comfort.
St. Paul’s Chapel, an outreach chapel of Trinity Church, is near the heart of immigrant territory, on Broadway at Fulton. Built in 1776, it’s the oldest church building in New York City. (Fun fact: George Washington worshipped there.) It survived the Great Fire of 1776, which destroyed the Trinity (see below) along with 10 to 25 percent of the southwest portion of the city, as well as the collapse of the nearby World Trade Center towers on 9/11.
As my ancestors sailed into New York Harbor on their ship from Italy, they might have spotted the cross-topped gold spire of Trinity Church. Situated on Wall Street facing the Hudson River, the church was built and rebuilt three times between 1698 and 1846. The third version (by Richard Upjohn, famous for his Gothic Revival designs), is considered the first and finest example of Gothic Revival architecture. From 1854 to 1890, the Trinity was the tallest building in NYC and until 1869 it was the tallest building in the U.S. (Fun fact: the tower contains 23 bells, the largest of which weighs 2,700 pounds.)
Another church that’s significant in the history of early-20th-century immigration is St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral (now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places) on Mulberry Street in the Bowery. Built in 1809, it was a spiritual and social congregation point for Irish immigrants and, starting at the turn of the century, Italians as well.
Another lower Manhattan fixture, this time a secular one, that my immigrant family might have admired is City Hall, built in 1812 and, according to Wikipedia, the oldest continuously operating center of city government in the United States. Designed by Joseph-François Mangin and John McComb Jr., it was modified nine times between 1860 and 1998. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places (and with that track record of renovation, I’d say it should also be in the Guinness World Records).
Most immigrants who arrived in New York City made their homes on the Lower East Side, in tenements barely fit for human habitation. Families crowded into two or three small rooms with filthy coal-burning stoves, little light and ventilation, and no running water. The lack of water made good hygiene difficult and led to outbreaks of diseases. Thanks to the Tenement House Act of 1867, tenements were required to have one outhouse for every 20 people and a fire escape; however, the requirements were poorly enforced and the fire escapes shoddily built. Later, air shafts for ventilation were required.
Clearly, if anyone was in need of healthcare and social services back then, it was immigrants; fortunately, Henry Street Settlement was there to help. Founded in 1893 by Lillian Wald, a humanitarian-minded nurse, the Settlement occupies a stretch of beautiful row houses that otherwise would have been demolished to make way for more tenements.
If my ancestors had wandered farther uptown, they would have seen the Brooklyn Bridge (1883), Carnegie Hall (1891), and the Park Row Building (New York’s tallest from 1889 to 1908). At 59th Street they would have entered Central Park, under construction as of 1858. First came the Lake, between 71st and 78th Streets, with the rest of the park evolving over the next 15 years.
Unfortunately, by the early 1900s the park was already in decline. Still, my family might have admired the bust of Giuseppe Mazzini, an activist in the unification of Italy, which was placed in the park in 1878, or strolled along Bethesda Terrace (built in 1859).
Emerging from the park at 72nd Street and Central Park West, my family would have seen the Dakota, a castle-like luxury apartment building built in 1884, where such luminaries as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Rosemary Clooney, Gilda Radner, Paul Simon, Rudolf Nureyev, and John Madden later lived.
Perhaps my ancestors’ stroll through old New York would have ended where mine did, at the Museum of Natural History, which opened at its Central Park location in 1877. If the original plan for an 18-acre construction of 12 pavilions, 8 towers, and a large dome had been realized, it would have been the largest building in North America and the largest museum in the world. Even though the museum fell short of its goal, I imagine my 10-year-old grandfather would have been impressed.
I’m finishing up this piece in Vermont, at a lake where I spent my childhood summers; yesterday we day-tripped to Barre, where my father’s family went after arriving at Ellis Island and (I hope) spending some time in New York. (My mother’s family ended up in Syracuse, NY.) Barre is loaded with my family’s history and it’s the setting of my latest novel. I’ll be writing about all that later, but for now I want to sit with my thoughts of my family’s emigration from Italy and all that entails—a family split apart for the sake of a new beginning.
As an immigrant myself, I know what it’s like to adapt to an alien world. But I had it easy. My ancestors’ emigration brought challenges they couldn’t have imagined, opportunity and defeat, hopes dashed and realized, lives and livelihoods transformed. They came full of hope to a new world filled with promise. They came to New York, which opened its arms to immigrants with the words of Ellen Lazarus, written in 1883:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free[.]”
Books of the week:
La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience by Jerre Mangione
Italians Swindled to New York: False Promises at the Dawn of Immigration by Joe Tucciarone and Ben Lariccia
Poem of the week:
“The New Colossus” by Ellen Lazarus
Film of the week:
There is an old Irish song that starts, "In the year of our lord eighteen hundred and six, we set sail from the cold bay of Cork. We we sailing away with a cargo of bricks for the grand city hall in New York." Seeing your photo of the 1812 city hall made me think of the contibutions made by so many from so many places. THANK YOU for another great read.
Give us your tired feet.... what a journey! Complimenti!