Little Italy

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Little Italy
Neighborhoods
World map of first level subdivisions (states, counties, provinces, etc.) that are home to Little Italys or Italian neighbourhoods
Flag

Little Italy is the catch-all name for an ethnic enclave populated primarily by Italians or people of Italian ancestry, usually in an urban neighborhood. The concept of "Little Italy" holds many different aspects of the Italian culture. There are shops selling Italian goods as well as Italian restaurants lining the streets. A "Little Italy" strives essentially to have a version of the country of Italy placed in the middle of a large non-Italian city. This sort of enclave is often the result of periods of Italian immigration, during which people of the same culture settled or were ostracized and segregated together in certain areas. As cities modernized and grew, these areas became known for their ethnic associations, and ethnic neighborhoods like "Little Italy" blossomed, becoming the areas they are today.

Etymology

Before the popularization of the name "Little Italy", Italian ethnic enclaves were most often referred to in English as the “Italian colony”. The term "Little Italy" was coined in the mid-1880s, and its oldest recorded use was by The New York Times in 1886, in reference to the Italian ethnic enclave that had developed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The name "Little Italy" is modeled after "Little Germany" (Kleindeutschland), a historic German ethnic enclave in Manhattan that predated the newly emerging Italian one located nearby. Only after 1900 did "Little Italy" replace "Italian colony" as the most frequently used label for immigrant Italian ethnic enclaves.

List of Little Italys

Canada

• Little Italy, Edmonton, in Alberta
• Little Italy, Montreal, in Quebec
• Little Italy, Ottawa, in Ontario
• Little Italy, Toronto, in Ontario
• Little Italy, Vancouver, in British Columbia
• Little Italy, Windsor, in Ontario
• Little Italy, Winnipeg, in Manitoba

United States

See also: List of Italian-American neighborhoods

• Several Little Italys exist in New York City, including but not limited to:
  • Little Italy, Manhattan
  • Italian Harlem
  • Arthur Avenue, Bronx
  • Morris Park, Bronx
  • Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
  • Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
  • Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn
  • Italian Williamsburg, Brooklyn
  • Ozone Park, Queens
  • Howard Beach, Queens
  • Middle Village, Queens
  • Rosebank, Staten Island
• Philadelphia, home to the second-largest Italian-American population in the United States, also has several Little Italys:
  • South Philadelphia – largely Italian
    • Bella Vista
    • Central South Philadelphia
    • Girard Estate
    • Italian Market
    • Marconi Plaza
    • Packer Park
    • Passyunk West
    • St. Richard
    • Whitman
  • Overbrook/West Philadelphia
  • Areas of Kensington
  • Sections of Northeast Philadelphia
    • Mayfair
    • Tacony
  • Sections of Southwest Philadelphia
  • Areas of West Kensington
• New England:
  • Little Italy, Millinocket, Maine
  • North End, Boston, in Massachusetts
  • Little Italy, Bridgeport, in Connecticut
  • Federal Hill, Providence, in Rhode Island
  • Little Italy, Waterbury, in Connecticut
  • Wooster Square, in New Haven, Connecticut
• New York:
  • Dunwoodie, Yonkers, New York
  • Little Italy, Schenectady, in New York
  • Little Italy, Rochester, New York
  • Little Italy, Syracuse, in New York
  • Little Italy, Poughkeepsie, New York
  • Little Italy, Troy, New York
  • Mansion Hill, Albany, New York
• Pennsylvania:
  • Bloomfield, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • Little Italy, Connellsville, in Pennsylvania
  • Little Italy in Erie, Pennsylvania
  • Roseto, Pennsylvania
• New Jersey:
  • Chambersburg and South Trenton, New Jersey
  • Little Italy, Paterson, New Jersey
• California:
  • Little Italy, San Diego
  • North Beach, San Francisco
  • San Pedro, Los Angeles
• Other:
  • Little Italy, Clinton, Indiana
  • Little Italy, Chicago, in Illinois
  • Little Italy, Arkansas
  • Little Italy, Baltimore, in Maryland
  • Little Italy, Wilmington, in Delaware
  • Little Italy, Cleveland, in Ohio
  • Little Italy, Omaha, in Nebraska
  • The Hill in St. Louis, Missouri
  • West Seventh in St. Paul, Minnesota
  • Independence, Louisiana
  • Little Italy, Clay County, West Virginia
  • Little Italy, Randolph County, West Virginia

Other Italian neighborhoods

Some Italian neighborhoods may have other names, but are colloquially referred to as "Little Italy", including:

See also

• Chinatown
• Ethnic enclave
• Italian diaspora

References

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Little Italys.

• Buzzelli, Michael (2001). "From Little Britain to Little Italy: an urban ethnic landscape study in Toronto". Journal of Historical Geography. 27 (4): 573–587. doi:10.1006/jhge.2001.0355. S2CID 55546856.
• Frunza, Bogdana Simina. Streetscape and Ethnicity: New York's Mulberry Street and the Redefinition of the Italian American Ethnic Identity (ProQuest, 2008)
• Gabaccia, Donna R. (2007). "Inventing 'Little Italy'". Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 6 (1): 7–41. doi:10.1017/S1537781400001596. JSTOR 25144462. S2CID 162485743.
• Gabaccia, Donna R. (2006). "Global Geography of 'Little Italy': Italian Neighbourhoods in Comparative Perspective" (PDF). Modern Italy. 11 (1): 9–24. doi:10.1080/13532940500489510. S2CID 56372320.
• Harney, Robert F. "Toronto's Little Italy, 1885-1945." in Robert F. Harney and J. Vincenza Scarpaci, eds. Little Italies in North America (1981): 41-62.
• Immerso, Michael. Newark's little Italy: The vanished first ward (Rutgers University Press, 1999).
• Juliani, Richard N. Building Little Italy: Philadelphia's Italians Before Mass Migration (Penn State Press, 2005)
• Pozzetta, George E. "The Mulberry District of New York City: The Years before World War One." in Robert F. Harney and J. Vincenza Scarpaci, eds. Little Italies in North America (Toronto: The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1979) pp: 7-40.
• Sandler, Gilbert. The Neighborhood: The Story of Baltimore's Little Italy (Bodine & Associates, 1974).
• Worrall, Janet E. (2004). "The impact of the Ku Klux Klan and prohibition on Denver's little Italy". Journal of the West. 43 (4): 32–40.