Drive south across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge on a Sunday morning and the air carries something familiar: the yeast of fresh bread, the garlic of a pork store, the bells of a parish church. The Italians in Staten Island did not so much settle the borough as remake it in their image. No county in the United States claims a higher share of Italian ancestry, and on the South Shore the figure climbs past two in three. This is the story of how a quiet rural island became, by percentage, the most Italian place in America.
The Place
Staten Island sits in New York Harbour like an afterthought, the city’s least understood borough. For most of its history it was farmland and oyster beds, separated from Manhattan and Brooklyn by water and from the rest of New York by temperament. People call it the Forgotten Borough, and for a long time the name fit.
At its centre rises Todt Hill, 401 feet of serpentine rock that is the highest natural point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine, the highest elevation on the Atlantic coastal plain. From its wooded crest you can see the harbour, the bridge, and the towers of Manhattan beyond. The Dutch named it from a word for “dead,” after the bare rocky exposures on its summit.
Today Todt Hill is one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in New York City, its Tudor and colonial mansions set on sprawling lots behind hedges. But the Italian story of Staten Island does not begin on the hill. It begins down at the water, in a small neighbourhood called Rosebank, more than a century ago.
How It Became Italian
The first arrivals, 1880 to 1920
Italians began settling Staten Island after 1880, drawn first to Rosebank on the eastern shore. They were part of the great southern Italian migration that emptied villages across the mezzogiorno, the regions south of Rome, and filled the tenements of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
But Staten Island offered something the crowded boroughs could not. It was rural, green, and cheap. Immigrants who had saved a little could buy a plot of land and build a house, plant a fig tree and a vegetable garden, and keep something of the village life they had left behind. Rosebank became the island’s first true Little Italy.
These early communities built their own institutions. In 1903 immigrants founded the Society of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, one of dozens of mutual aid societies that pooled money, paid out benefits, and organised the religious feasts that anchored the year.
The grotto and the feast
From 1937 the society began building a shrine in Rosebank by hand, a 30-foot grotto of concrete studded with stones, marbles, shells and glass. It was completed in 1938 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. Every July the society still holds the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, now more than a century old, with food stalls, bands, and processions through streets named for the old country.
The Verrazzano effect, 1964
Everything changed on 21 November 1964, when the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened between Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. For the first time the island was joined by road to the rest of the city. It was then the longest suspension bridge in the world.
What followed was one of the great internal migrations in New York’s history. Italian American families who had grown up in the crowded streets of Bensonhurst and other Brooklyn neighbourhoods now had somewhere to go. They wanted lawns, driveways, and detached houses, and Staten Island had room to build them. The borough’s population roughly doubled between 1964 and 2000.
The bridge carried more than cars. It carried a whole world of bakeries and pork stores, parish loyalties and dialects, from the older enclaves of Brooklyn into the suburban subdivisions of Staten Island’s South Shore. The migration was so visibly Italian that the span attracted an ethnic slur as a nickname, an ugly reminder that this community had to fight for its place even as it built it.
The South Shore generation
The newcomers spread south, filling Great Kills, Eltingville, Annadale, Tottenville and the surrounding neighbourhoods. They built ranch houses and split-levels, opened delis and pizzerias, and raised a generation of Staten Islanders for whom Sunday gravy and a Catholic parish were simply the texture of ordinary life. Today nearly seven in ten South Shore residents report Italian ancestry, and several neighbourhoods are more than ninety per cent Italian.
The Landmarks
Denino’s Pizzeria & Tavern, 524 Port Richmond Avenue. Opened in 1937 by a Sicilian family, Denino’s introduced pizza in 1951 with the thin, crisp, lightly sauced pies that came to define the Staten Island style. The corner outside was later renamed Carlo Denino’s Way after its founder. It remains family run and fiercely loved.
Joe & Pat’s Pizzeria, 1758 Victory Boulevard. Established in 1960, Joe & Pat’s built its reputation on a paper-thin crust that locals will argue about for hours. It is now a fixture of the wider New York pizza canon, with a Manhattan outpost carrying the family name across the harbour.
Lee’s Tavern, 60 Hancock Street, Dongan Hills. An unmarked neighbourhood tavern famous for small, crisp, charred pies served without ceremony. Lee’s is the kind of place that does not advertise and does not need to, passed down by word of mouth among Staten Islanders who treat it as a secret worth keeping.
The Garibaldi-Meucci Museum, 420 Tompkins Avenue, Rosebank. A Gothic Revival cottage from 1840 that once sheltered both Antonio Meucci, the inventor who built a working telephone years before Bell, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, the soldier who helped unify Italy and who lived here from 1851 to 1853. It is run by the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America.
The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto, Amity Place, Rosebank. The hand-built shrine begun in 1937 and still tended by the society that raised it. A folk-art cathedral of concrete and shells, it is the spiritual heart of the island’s oldest Italian neighbourhood and the focus of its summer feast.
Casa Belvedere, the Italian Cultural Foundation, 79 Howard Avenue, Grymes Hill. An Italian Renaissance mansion from 1908, saved by founder Gina Biancardi and restored over fifteen years at a cost of around five million dollars. Today it is one of the country’s most important Italian American cultural centres, offering language and cooking classes, opera, film and lectures, with a terrace that looks out over the Narrows.
Pastosa Ravioli, Eltingville. A salumeria and fresh-pasta counter of the kind that anchors every Italian neighbourhood on the island, where mozzarella is pulled by hand and ravioli is made fresh. Pork stores like this one, alongside countless bakeries selling lard bread and seeded loaves, are the daily infrastructure of Staten Island’s Italian life.
Where They Came From
Like almost all of Italian America, Staten Island’s families came overwhelmingly from the south. After 1890 the great wave of emigration drew from Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Abruzzo, Molise and Sicily, the poor agricultural regions where land was scarce and harvests failed.
Sicily sent some of the earliest and most numerous arrivals, including the Denino family who opened their tavern in Port Richmond. Sicilian names, foods and feast-day saints remain woven through the borough.
Campania, the region around Naples, gave Staten Island much of its kitchen: the thin-crust pizza, the long-simmered Sunday gravy, the pastries and the espresso culture that fill its bakeries and cafes.
Calabria and Puglia, the toe and heel of the boot, sent farming families who took naturally to Staten Island’s gardens and small plots, planting figs, tomatoes and grapevines in suburban backyards just as their parents had in the hill towns back home.
Migration ran in chains. One family wrote home, a cousin followed, then a whole village street reassembled itself a few thousand miles away. That is how a single Calabrian or Sicilian town could end up with more of its descendants in one corner of Staten Island than in the place it came from.
Staten Island Today
Staten Island remains the most Italian county in the United States, with roughly thirty-six per cent of all residents claiming Italian ancestry and far higher concentrations on the South Shore. The percentage has held remarkably steady even as the borough has grown and diversified.
The institutions endure. The Mount Carmel feast still fills Rosebank each July. Casa Belvedere teaches Italian to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants who arrived speaking dialect. Denino’s still has a line out the door, and the pork stores still sell fresh mozzarella on a Saturday morning.
Some of the old enclaves have changed, as enclaves always do. The first generation has passed, the dialects have faded, and the island is home to many communities now. But the Italian inheritance is not a museum piece here. It is the accent of the borough, the food on the table, the parish on the corner, the family name on the awning. On Staten Island, being Italian American is simply what the place is.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Staten Island really the most Italian place in America?
Yes. By percentage, Richmond County, which is Staten Island, has the highest share of residents claiming Italian ancestry of any county in the United States, roughly thirty-six per cent borough-wide. On the South Shore the figure rises to nearly seventy per cent, and some neighbourhoods are over ninety per cent Italian.
Why did so many Italians move to Staten Island?
The decisive event was the opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in 1964, which connected Staten Island to Brooklyn by road for the first time. Italian American families from crowded Brooklyn neighbourhoods crossed the bridge in search of lawns, driveways and detached houses, and the borough’s population roughly doubled by 2000.
What part of Staten Island is most Italian?
The South Shore, including neighbourhoods such as Great Kills, Eltingville, Annadale and Tottenville, has the highest concentration. The historic core of the community, however, is Rosebank on the eastern shore, where Italians first settled after 1880.
Where did Staten Island’s Italians come from in Italy?
Overwhelmingly from southern Italy, the mezzogiorno. The largest groups traced their roots to Sicily, Campania around Naples, Calabria and Puglia, with families from Abruzzo, Molise and Basilicata as well.
What is Todt Hill?
Todt Hill is a wooded ridge at the centre of Staten Island and, at 401 feet, the highest natural point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine. It is one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in New York City, with grand homes set on large lots, and is part of the wider story of Italian American success on the island.
What is the Mount Carmel feast?
The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is an annual July celebration held in Rosebank by a society founded in 1903. It centres on a hand-built grotto shrine begun in 1937 and now on the National Register of Historic Places, and remains one of the oldest continuous Italian religious feasts in New York.
If your family’s story passed through Staten Island, or any of the places Italians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Sicily or Campania to a house with a fig tree and a garden on the South Shore, to wherever you are now.
The Staten Island story did not happen in isolation. It was the suburban second act of an Italian New York that began in places like Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, the neighbourhood that emptied across the bridge after 1964. The same migration shaped Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, while in the Bronx the community gathered around Arthur Avenue and in Manhattan around East Harlem. To understand Staten Island is to understand where its families came from before the harbour.
For more on the bridge that made the modern borough, see the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and for the cultural institution at the heart of the community, Casa Belvedere.