They call it The Lake. You will not find that on any road sign, and the lake itself was filled in with rubble decades ago. But say “the Lake” anywhere in Newton, Massachusetts, and people know exactly which corner of this wealthy suburb you mean. They mean Nonantum, where the air on a July night smells of fried dough and gunpowder, where old men still greet each other as “mush,” and where the Italians in Nonantum, Massachusetts built a village inside a village and never let it go.
Nonantum: The Place
Nonantum is one of the thirteen villages that make up the city of Newton, tucked into the northeast corner along the Charles River, hard against the Watertown line. It is the smallest and the most working-class of the thirteen, a grid of modest frame houses and triple-deckers wedged among some of the most expensive real estate in Massachusetts.
The name comes from the Massachusett language and is usually translated as “I bless it,” given in 1637 to a settlement of Native converts. The commercial spine runs along Adams Street and Watertown Street, lined with bakeries, social clubs, and cafes. Once you turn onto Adams Street, the suburb falls away and something older takes over.
How Nonantum Became Italian
Before the Italians
Before it was Italian, Nonantum ran on water and wool. A paper mill opened on the Charles River in 1778, and for roughly 150 years the village center was dominated by wool, cotton, and rope mills.
The mills needed hands, and the hands came from everywhere. Irish, French Canadian, and Jewish immigrants all arrived to work the looms and the rope walks. Russian Jewish families settled near Silver Lake in the 1890s, building a synagogue locals still call “the Shul.” The Italians arrived into a place that was already a patchwork of newcomers.
The Italians Arrive
The first Italian immigrants came in the late 1800s and early 1900s. According to local history, the earliest were natives of Castelvenere, a hill town in the Province of Benevento in Campania, who found work in the mills along the river.
But the families who shaped Nonantum most deeply traced their roots to one specific place: San Donato Val di Comino, a mountain village in the Province of Frosinone in Lazio, about 110 kilometres east of Rome. So many residents descend from San Donato that many of them claim, only half joking, that it was their grandparents who first “discovered” the Lake.
This is chain migration in its purest form. One family from the Comino Valley settled, found work and cheap housing near the mills, then wrote home. A cousin followed, then a brother, then a neighbour from the same parish, until a single Lazio village had effectively reassembled itself across an ocean in a few square blocks of Massachusetts.
Nonantum at Its Peak
By the mid-twentieth century, Nonantum was as close to an Italian village as New England produced. Silver Lake, the body of water that gave the place its nickname, was still partly open, and children cleared the snow off it each winter to play hockey into the 1950s. It was filled with construction rubble over several decades and gone entirely by 1971, but the name stuck.
Two institutions held the community together. Our Lady Help of Christians, the Catholic parish at 573 Washington Street, anchored the spiritual life of the neighbourhood. And in 1935, eleven Italian-American men founded the St. Mary of Carmen Society to raise money to help newly arrived immigrants from the old country find their feet.
Daily life ran on the strip. Men played bocce and cards in the social clubs, women shopped for bread and cold cuts along Adams Street, and the whole village pointed toward one week in July when the Society’s festival turned the streets into Italy. This was a blue-collar enclave proud of its hands and its accent, sitting inside one of the richest suburbs in the country and refusing to be absorbed.
That refusal to assimilate produced something almost no other American neighbourhood can claim: its own private language. Lake Talk is a cryptolect spoken mostly among older residents, a stew of Italian, English slang, and Romany carnival cant. In the 1930s and 1940s, Lake men worked the traveling carnivals, picked up the carnies’ Romany-derived argot, and folded it into their own speech.
A “mush” is a guy. A “jival” is a woman, “wonga” is money, “divya” means crazy or foolish, and something excellent is “pissa.” Linguists have traced “mush” to Romany “mursh” and “chabby,” meaning a child, to Angloromani “chavo.” A 2001 Boston Globe article called it a blend of Italian and World War II code, but the carnival-Romany thread is the one scholars find most convincing. What is not contested is that you cannot fake it. Outsiders are spotted in a sentence.
The Change
The mills closed, the lake was buried, and Newton grew rich around Nonantum. The pressure on the Lake has never been a sudden collapse. It has been the slow arithmetic of property values.
As Newton became one of metro Boston’s wealthiest suburbs, the modest frame houses of Nonantum became valuable lots. Some old families cashed out, teardowns went up, and the children and grandchildren who grew up speaking Lake Talk increasingly could not afford to buy near where they were raised. The enclave did not empty. It thinned, and it aged, even as a core of third- and fourth-generation families held firm.
The Landmarks of Italian Nonantum
St. Mary of Carmen Festival, Pellegrini Park, 11 Hawthorn Street. The five-day Festa Italiana has run every July since 1935, the longest-running event of its kind in the area. It draws well over 10,000 people for rides, food, and music, and culminates on Sunday with a procession of the Madonna statue from Our Lady Help of Christians through the streets, lit by roughly a thousand candles and capped with fireworks. In 2025 the Society marked its 90th festival.
Our Lady Help of Christians Church, 573 Washington Street. The parish roots in the village reach back to the 1870s, when the original church was built on land at the corner of Washington and Adams Streets. It remains the spiritual home of the Italian community, and the statue of the Madonna del Carmine is kept there year-round between festivals.
Antoine’s Pastry Shop, 317 Watertown Street. Family owned and operated since 1954, Antoine’s has sold cannoli, Italian cookies, and celebration cakes to generations of Lake families. It is the kind of counter where the staff know which family is getting married this weekend.
The Sons of Italy lodge, 196 Adams Street. The local chapter of the Order Sons of Italy in America gave the community a fraternal home on its main commercial street, a place for meetings, dinners, and the quiet machinery of mutual aid that immigrant communities run on.
Adams Street itself. The commercial heart of the Lake is less a single building than a strip: delis, cafes, and clubs where Lake Talk is still the house language. For decades the street’s center line was painted in the green, white, and red of the Italian flag, an unofficial tribute that became the most visible symbol of who lives here.
Where the Nonantum Italians Came From
The story of the Italians in Nonantum, Massachusetts is really the story of two Italian places stitched onto one American one. The first arrivals came from Castelvenere in the Benevento hills of Campania, drawn by mill work in the 1880s and 1890s when southern Italy was poor and emigration was a survival strategy.
The deeper and more enduring thread runs to San Donato Val di Comino, the mountain village in Lazio’s Comino Valley that sent so many families that Nonantum became, in effect, its New England annex. That same Lazio-and-Campania migration shaped Italian neighbourhoods all across the Northeast. You can trace it in the Italians in Boston’s North End, across the harbour among the Italians of East Boston, and down the coast in the tight Lazio-and-Campania world of Italians in Wooster Square, New Haven. Nonantum is a small, fierce variation on a story that played out wherever the southern Italian diaspora found work.
Nonantum Today
The Lake in the 2020s is still recognisably itself, which is the surprising part. Third- and fourth-generation San Donato families remain, the social clubs are still open, and Lake Talk has not died, even if it is now mostly spoken by the older generation. The Festa Italiana grows rather than shrinks, drawing crowds from across greater Boston each July.
And in 2025 and 2026, the village made statewide news over a center line. In June 2025, with the Festa three weeks away, city crews ground the green, white, and red stripe off Adams Street in the dark of night, citing federal road-safety standards and a crash rate the city said was more than double comparable roads. Residents were furious. Some repainted the Italian colours over the new yellow lines, and at least one person was reportedly arrested.
The fight outlasted a mayoral election. Newton’s new mayor, Marc Laredo, who took office in January 2026, made restoring the tribute an early priority, and by spring 2026 the city had agreed to repaint red and green stripes flanking a white reflective center line. “Not just paint,” as residents kept saying. It was a community insisting, in the most literal way, on being seen.
That is the truth of the Lake. The houses get pricier, the language fades a little each decade, but the procession still walks Adams Street every July behind the same Madonna, under the same Comino Valley candlelight. The journey from San Donato did not end here. It just kept going.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Italians settle in Nonantum, Massachusetts?
Italians first came to Nonantum in the late 1800s and early 1900s for work in the wool, cotton, and rope mills along the Charles River. Cheap housing and steady factory jobs made it an ideal landing spot, and chain migration from the Italian towns of Castelvenere and San Donato Val di Comino did the rest, with each new arrival pulling over relatives and neighbours from home.
Is Nonantum still Italian today?
Yes. The Lake remains one of the centers of Italian-American life in Newton, with third- and fourth-generation families, active social clubs, and a thriving July festival. Rising property values are thinning the old enclave, but its Italian identity is still very much intact in the 2020s.
What are the most famous Italian landmarks in Nonantum?
The best-known are the St. Mary of Carmen Festival at Pellegrini Park, running every July since 1935, and Our Lady Help of Christians Church on Washington Street. Adams Street, with its Italian-flag center line, bakeries like Antoine’s Pastry Shop, and the Sons of Italy lodge, is the commercial and cultural heart of the community.
Where in Italy did the Nonantum Italians come from?
The first Italian settlers came from Castelvenere in the Province of Benevento, in the Campania region. The largest and most influential group, however, traced their roots to San Donato Val di Comino in the Province of Frosinone, in Lazio, and their descendants still dominate the village today.
What is Lake Talk in Nonantum?
Lake Talk is a private slang spoken in Nonantum that mixes Italian, English, and Romany carnival cant picked up by Lake men working traveling carnivals in the 1930s and 1940s. Words like “mush” for a guy, “wonga” for money, and “divya” for crazy are still used by older residents, and it is considered nearly impossible for an outsider to imitate.
If your family’s story passed through Nonantum, or through any of the places the Italians made home, Atlas of Home can help you trace that journey. From the Comino Valley to The Lake, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Sources: Nonantum, Massachusetts (Wikipedia) and the St. Mary of Carmen Society.