The double-headed eagle is painted on the inside of a café window on Arthur Avenue, between the Italian salumeria signs and the espresso machines. Walk past at the right hour and you will hear Gheg Albanian over the foam jugs. On the calendar by the register, Skanderbeg sits on horseback under his goat-horn helm, a fifteenth-century warrior watching over a Bronx coffee bar in 2026. This is the largest Albanian-American community in the country, and most New Yorkers walking these blocks still think they are in Little Italy.
Belmont and Pelham Parkway, the Italian-then-Albanian Bronx
Belmont is a small triangle of the central Bronx, bounded by Fordham University to the north and the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Garden to the south. Arthur Avenue and East 187th Street form its commercial spine. The housing is six-storey brick walk-ups and tight rows of two-family houses, the streetscape still branded as Little Italy on the awnings and the lamppost banners.
A short walk east, past Bronx Park, sits Pelham Parkway. It is a different rhythm. Pre-war apartment buildings line a broad green boulevard that runs from the Bronx Zoo to Pelham Bay Park. The 2 and 5 trains stop at Pelham Parkway and Bronx Park East. Between Belmont, Pelham Parkway, and the smaller residential streets of Morris Park and Throgs Neck, you are inside the densest Albanian neighbourhood in the United States.
How It Became Albanian
Before the Albanians
For most of the twentieth century, Belmont was Italian. Workers from southern Italy arrived to build the Bronx Zoo and the Jerome Park Reservoir in the 1890s and 1900s, and a Little Italy formed around Arthur Avenue. By the 1950s the neighbourhood was at its peak: parochial schools full, the bakeries and salumerias four-deep at the counter on Saturday mornings.
Then the children of those immigrants began leaving. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Italian-American families dispersed out to Westchester, Long Island, and the New Jersey suburbs. The apartments emptied. The supers got older. The neighbourhood needed someone to take it over.
The first wave: the highlands, 1960s and 1970s
The first Albanians began arriving on Arthur Avenue in the late 1960s. They were not, for the most part, from Albania proper. They were Gheg Albanians from across the border in what was then Yugoslavia: Kosovo, Montenegro, and western Macedonia. A second tributary came from the Malësi e Madhe, the North Albanian highlands around Shkodër, the area that had stayed Catholic through centuries of Ottoman rule.
They moved in alongside the ageing Italian community, not against it. The two groups shared a Catholic parish, an Adriatic coastline, and a familiarity with hard mountain work. Many of the first Albanian arrivals took jobs as building superintendents, then started Italian-style pizzerias under the previous owner’s name, then bought the building.
The first Albanian business on Arthur Avenue, a small store selling goods imported from the homeland, opened at the end of the 1960s. By the mid-1970s, after Tito’s grip on Yugoslavia loosened, the trickle from Kosovo and the Malësi became a steady stream.
The Kosovo wave, 1998 and 1999
The second great wave arrived as refugees. The Kosovo War of 1998 to 1999 displaced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes in Drenica, Peja, Prizren, and the villages around them. Many made their way through Albania and Macedonia and then on to the Bronx, where cousins and brothers-in-law already held leases, ran kitchens, and could vouch for a name.
One of them was Ramiz Kukaj. He arrived in 1999 during the war and eventually opened Çka ka tëllu, a Kosovar restaurant on Arthur Avenue that the New York Times would later name one of the ten best new restaurants in the city. Stories like his repeated across the neighbourhood. By the 2000s, blocks of Belmont that had been Italian on every census line were Albanian-majority.
The succession
By the 2010s, Albanians owned an estimated third of the privately held buildings in the Bronx and at least 60 of the businesses on and around Arthur Avenue. The streetscape stayed Italian-branded. The pizza ovens kept their old names. But the families pulling the dough were from Kelmend and Drenica.
The Landmarks
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, 627 East 187th Street. Built in 1906 as the Italian parish of Belmont, on the corner of Belmont Avenue. Today it offers Sunday Mass in English, Italian, Spanish, and Albanian. For the Albanian Catholics who walked here from the Malësi e Madhe by way of three continents, hearing the readings in their own language is the closest thing in the Bronx to going home.
Our Lady of Shkodra, 361 West Hartsdale Avenue, Hartsdale. The regional Albanian Catholic parish, just outside the city in Westchester. Its origins go back to the founding of the Albanian-American Catholic League in 1962, and an earlier centre on Park Avenue in the Bronx. Sunday Masses run at 10am and noon, in Albanian.
Çka ka tëllu, 2911 Arthur Avenue. Ramiz Kukaj’s Kosovar restaurant, opened in 2017. Pite, flija, qebapa from the wood grill. The name translates roughly as “whatever’s on the spit”. It put Kosovar food on the map of New York dining.
Prince Coffee House, 2204 Arthur Avenue. A young Albanian café that became the daytime meeting point for the community. The espresso is European, the WiFi is fast, and the regulars are arguing about Albanian league football.
Tony and Tina Bakery, on Arthur Avenue. Run for over three decades by Filip Kajtazi, whose family came from the Has region on the Kosovo-Albanian border. Italian bread and cookies for the old customers, Albanian byrek and pastries for the new ones.
The Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu Street Fair. Held every spring at the corner of Crescent and Arthur Avenue. Thousands turn out for traditional food, valle dancing, and the double-headed eagle flags. The first edition ran in 2022; by 2025 it had become one of the largest Albanian gatherings in the United States.
The Albanian-American Society Foundation. The community’s main civic body, with offices and a public-facing presence in the Bronx. It tracks the New York Albanian population at over 100,000 and acts as the connective tissue between the church parishes, the businesses, and the schools that have begun offering Albanian-language instruction.
Where They Came From
The Bronx Albanian community has two main tributaries, both Gheg-speaking, both from the rugged north.
The first is the Malësi e Madhe, the “Great Highlands” of northern Albania, around Shkodër. This is the homeland of the Kelmend, Kastrati, Shkrel, and Hoti tribes. It is Catholic country, mountainous and poor, with a tradition of emigration that long predated the Bronx. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s and 2000s, families chain-migrated to Belmont and Pelham Parkway one cousin at a time.
The second is Kosovo, particularly the Drenica valley west of Pristina, the cities of Peja and Prizren, and the villages of Has on the Albanian border. The catalyst was the war of 1998 and 1999, when Serbian forces drove ethnic Albanians out of their homes by the hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands made it to the United States as refugees of war. New York, and the Bronx in particular, absorbed more of them than any other American city.
A smaller stream came from Albanian-majority villages in Montenegro and western North Macedonia. Together they form a single mountain culture that the border lines of the Balkans never quite contained.
Belmont Today
Walk Arthur Avenue on a Saturday morning in 2026 and the Italian shopfronts are still there. Mike’s Deli, Madonia Brothers, Casa Della Mozzarella, the indoor Arthur Avenue Retail Market that Mayor La Guardia opened in 1940. The pushcart photographs in the windows are real.
But step inside Prince Coffee House, or Noya Café, or any of the cafés on East 187th Street, and the language at the next table is Gheg. The drivers double-parked outside are arguing in Albanian. The young couples pushing strollers down Crescent Avenue learned their first words in Drenica or Tropojë.
Pelham Parkway, two stops east on the 2 train, is where many of those families actually live. The pre-war buildings along the boulevard have the highest concentration of Albanians of any neighbourhood in New York: roughly 4,800 by the 2016 American Community Survey, more than three times the next-densest tract in Bedford Park.
This part of the Bronx is layered. Puerto Rican families have lived alongside Italians and Albanians on these blocks for decades. Mexican and Central American families have moved in around Fordham Road. Bangladeshi and West African neighbours fill the streets either side. The Albanian succession on Arthur Avenue is the most visible of those layers, but it is not the only one.
What makes Belmont and Pelham Parkway distinctive is that the Albanian story is still being written here. The Skënderbeu fair grew every year. The Mount Carmel Albanian Mass is full on Sundays. The kids in Albanian-language classes at the local schools are the grandchildren of the supers who first walked off the Yugoslav planes in 1972.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Albanians settle in Belmont and Pelham Parkway?
Albanians began arriving in the late 1960s as Italian-American families were dispersing to the suburbs. They moved into the same Catholic parishes, took over the building-superintendent jobs and pizzerias, and chain-migrated relatives in from Kosovo, Montenegro, and the Malësi e Madhe. By the 2000s, Belmont and Pelham Parkway held the densest Albanian population in the United States.
Is Belmont still Italian, or is it Albanian now?
Both, in different layers. The streetscape, awnings, and major institutions are still Italian-branded as Little Italy, and Italian-American families still own many of the historic businesses on Arthur Avenue. But Albanians now own at least 60 businesses in the neighbourhood and a significant share of the residential buildings, and many blocks are Albanian-majority by population.
Where in Albania and Kosovo did the Bronx Albanians come from?
The two main origin regions are the Malësi e Madhe in northern Albania around Shkodër, home of the Kelmend, Kastrati, and Hoti tribes, and Kosovo, particularly the Drenica valley, Peja, Prizren, and the Has region on the Albanian border. Smaller numbers came from Albanian villages in Montenegro and western North Macedonia.
Where can I hear an Albanian Mass in the Bronx?
Our Lady of Mount Carmel at 627 East 187th Street in Belmont offers Sunday Mass in Albanian alongside Italian, English, and Spanish services. The regional Albanian Catholic parish, Our Lady of Shkodra, is at 361 West Hartsdale Avenue in Hartsdale, just outside the city in Westchester County.
What is the Skënderbeu Street Fair?
The Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu Street Fair is an annual celebration of Albanian culture, named for the fifteenth-century military commander who led Albanian resistance to the Ottoman Empire. It is held each spring at the corner of Crescent and Arthur Avenue in Belmont, and has grown into one of the largest Albanian gatherings in the United States.
How many Albanians live in New York City?
The Albanian-American Society Foundation estimates the New York City Albanian population at over 100,000, with the largest concentration in the central and northeast Bronx around Belmont, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park, and Throgs Neck.
If your family’s story passed through Belmont, Pelham Parkway, the Malësi e Madhe, or a village in Kosovo, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the highlands around Shkodër to a six-storey walk-up on Arthur Avenue, to wherever you are reading this now.