Boston's North End from 1877 to 1960

Looking at Boston's North End neighborhood today, one can see signs mainly of its most recent group of immigrants-the Italians. From its "spaghetti-inspired city planning" to its myriad Italian restaurants. As one writer states, "The North End is Boston's oldest residential neighborhood now home to many Italian immigrants, but formerly the home of nearly every population at some time since being established in the 1630s" (Olson n.d.). Another writer declares, "If Boston is the most European of American cities, then the North End is undoubtedly Boston's most Italian of neighborhoods" (Gaffin 2008). Adam Gaffin describes the Italianate essence of the neighborhood today:

Walk along its narrow, curving streets and catch quick glances of hidden courtyards and flower-bedecked fire escapes. Listen to the animated Italian conversations of the retired gentlemen sitting outside the Caffe dello Sport. Breathe in the scent of the nearby sea - when you're not taking in the scent of garlic or olive oil from the seemingly inexhaustible supply of restaurants.

The North End has undergone an evolution through many years and many ethnic groups, however, culminating in the Italian-Americans. This paper will trace the history of the North End's immigrant population from 1877 through 1960, ending with the now-ubiquitous Italian-American influence in the neighborhood.

The character of Boston's North End may be definitively Italian now, but it has "welcom

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o, changed. With the Irish influx came Irish Catholic churches, but as the Jews populated the North End, these gave way to Orthodox Jewish synagogues, or "shuls," and Talmudim Torah ("Houses of Bible Study") in the North End, as well as two Hebrew schools "located on alleyways off Salem Street that also served the Jewish population" (Nichols 2003). By the early 1920s, however, "all but a few signs of this very strong Jewish presence in the North End had faded away," as the Jews moved on to other neighborhoods such as Boston's West and South Ends and the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Brookline, and Newton (Nichols 2003). Nichols (2003) notes that "What remains to this day is one barely visible Mogen (Star of) David high on a building at Baldwin Place and the barely discernable block letters of 'Hebrew School' over an arched doorway on Jerusalem Place off Salem Street." Nichols states, "Thus, the North End's Jewish heritage has been subsumed within the overpowering embrace of today's Little Italy." When the Italians arrived in the North End, "on the heels of the departing Irish and at the apex of the Jewish settlement," they were greeted by "a rundown, overcrowded slum of deteriorating tenement b

Category: History - B