Drive the length of Ridgedale Avenue on a Saturday morning and you can read the story of the Italians in East Hanover in a single mile. There is a bakery selling lemon pie and biscotti by the pound, a kitchen advertising chicken parmigiana and fresh mozzarella, and a Catholic church whose first Mass was said in the local firehouse. In this affluent Morris County township, roughly four in ten residents trace their roots to Italy, the legacy of families who once crowded the streets of Newark and then drove west to build something quieter.
The Place
East Hanover is a township of about 11,100 people in Morris County, New Jersey, eight square miles of suburb wrapped by the Passaic River to the east and the Whippany River to the west. It split from the older Township of Hanover in 1928, taking its name from a colonial parish that honoured the British House of Hanover.
For most of its history this was farmland and crossroads, halfway between the produce of Sussex County and the markets of Newark. Then the highways arrived, and with them the corporations: Route 10 became a corporate corridor, and DeForest Avenue grew into the North American headquarters of Nabisco, now Mondelez International.
Today the township is comfortably middle to upper-middle class, with a median household income above 116,000 dollars and a Catholic, Italian-inflected character that locals wear plainly.
How It Became Italian
The Italians did not arrive in East Hanover first. They arrived in Newark first, and that detour explains nearly everything about the community they later built in Morris County.
The Newark beginning
Between the 1880s and the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of southern Italians and Sicilians poured into Newark, and the densest of their settlements was the First Ward, the city’s original Little Italy. It was a neighbourhood of tenements, pushcarts, mutual-aid societies, and saints’ day processions, anchored by parishes that recreated the religious life of the villages left behind in Campania, Calabria, and Sicily.
For a generation, the First Ward was the centre of Italian life in northern New Jersey. Families worked in factories and on construction crews, sent children to parochial schools, and saved. The ward was crowded and poor, but it was theirs.
The push out of the city
In the 1950s the First Ward was broken apart. Urban renewal cleared block after block to build the Columbus Homes, eight thirteen-storey towers, and the right-of-way for what became Interstate 280 cut straight through the old Italian streets. Over three thousand residents were displaced, and the tight geography that had held the community together was gone.
The timing aligned with a national shift. Newark’s white population fell by more than a quarter during the 1950s alone. The GI Bill and federally backed FHA mortgages made it possible for working families to buy a first home, and the new highways made it possible to live in Essex and Morris counties while still working east.
Italian families who could afford to leave did. Some stopped in the Essex suburbs, including the Italians of Nutley, just over the county line. Others kept driving west into Morris County and beyond, settling places like Wayne in Passaic County and the Bergen suburbs that became home to the Italians of Franklin Lakes. East Hanover, still half-rural in the postwar years, was exactly the kind of place a Newark family with a little savings could reach.
Building a township
The arrivals were not the established gentry of old Hanover. They were second and third generation Italian Americans buying split-levels and ranch houses on streets that had recently been farm fields. They brought their parishes, their food, and their family businesses with them.
The clearest marker of that arrival is the township’s Catholic church. By the early 1950s, East Hanover’s Catholics were still driving to Whippany or Florham Park for Mass, and as the postwar population swelled it became obvious the township needed its own parish. In October 1955 the Our Lady of Mercy parish of Whippany acquired two and a half acres on Ridgedale Avenue from the Vanacore family, an Italian name that tells its own small story about who already owned land here.
On 21 July 1957, Father Tuozzo celebrated the first Mass of the mission of St. Rose of Lima in the East Hanover firehouse. Two years later, in 1959, it became a full parish. A community that had worshipped in borrowed rooms now had a church of its own.
By the 2000 census, 35.6 percent of East Hanover residents claimed Italian ancestry, the fifteenth-highest share of any municipality in the United States. Later estimates put the figure around 40 percent, ranking the township among the most Italian towns in all of New Jersey. The Newark families had become a Morris County majority culture.
The Landmarks
St. Rose of Lima Church, 312 Ridgedale Avenue. The spiritual centre of Italian East Hanover, founded as a mission in 1957 on land bought from the Vanacore family and raised to a parish in 1959. Its first Mass was said in the town firehouse, a detail every long-time parishioner seems to know.
Sorrento Bakery and Deli, 36 Eagle Rock Avenue. Open since 1975, this is the kind of full-service Italian bakery and deli that anchors a town’s appetite. Regulars come for the bread and biscotti, the Italian cakes and lemon pie, and the long counter of Italian sandwiches that sells out on weekend mornings.
Luigi’s Restaurant, 434 Ridgedale Avenue. A neighbourhood Italian restaurant and bar on the same avenue as the church, the sort of red-sauce institution where the dining room fills with multi-generational tables on a Sunday afternoon.
Teresa’s Italian Kitchen, 90 Ridgedale Avenue. A market and kitchen rolled into one, selling prepared food, comfort dishes, and the staples a household needs to cook the way grandmothers did. It is the modern version of the corner Italian grocer the founders’ parents shopped at in the First Ward.
Mondelez International, 100 DeForest Avenue. Not an Italian landmark, but central to the township’s story. The North American headquarters of the company that owns Nabisco turned East Hanover from a farming township into a corporate address, and the steady paycheques it and its neighbours offered helped a generation of Italian families settle into the suburbs.
The Ellis Cook House, East Hanover. Built in 1752 as a tavern and owned by Colonel Ellis Cook of the Morris County militia, this is the oldest landmark in the township. It stood as a halfway house between Sussex farms and Newark markets two centuries before the Italians made the same journey in reverse.
Joseph G. Lurker Memorial Park, East Hanover. The township’s 89-acre recreation centre, the kind of open green space that drew city families west in the first place. On warm evenings it fills with the children and grandchildren of the Newark generation.
Where They Came From
The Italians of East Hanover descend overwhelmingly from the great southern migration: Campania, Calabria, Sicily, Abruzzo, and the provinces of the Mezzogiorno that sent millions to America between the 1880s and the 1920s. These were farmers, labourers, and craftsmen leaving land that could no longer support them.
Their first American home was almost never East Hanover. It was Newark, and above all the First Ward, where chain migration clustered families from the same villages on the same blocks. A man would send for his brother, the brother for a cousin, and a whole hill town in Calabria could be reassembled across a few Newark streets.
East Hanover was the second move, not the first. The families who came in the 1950s and 1960s were already American-born, already a generation removed from Naples or Palermo, looking for a lawn and a good school rather than a boat ticket. They carried the south of Italy with them, but at one remove, filtered through a Newark childhood.
East Hanover Today
East Hanover today is a quiet, prosperous suburb that does not advertise its heritage so much as live it. There is no Little Italy here, no festival street, no arch over a main drag. The Italian character is in the ordinary texture of the place: the bakeries, the parish bulletin, the surnames on the township roster, the Sunday gravy simmering behind closed front doors.
The numbers have held remarkably well. While the old First Ward in Newark has all but vanished as an Italian neighbourhood, the descendants of those families remain a plurality in East Hanover, somewhere around four in ten residents by recent estimates. That is rare. Most diaspora communities thin out by the third and fourth generation; here, enough stayed and intermarried within the township to keep the identity intact.
The Saturday line at Sorrento Bakery is the most honest census of all.
East Hanover today
The pattern echoes elsewhere in northern New Jersey, where Italian families pushed out of the cities re-rooted in commuter suburbs, from the Italians of Cresskill in Bergen County to dozens of Morris and Essex towns. East Hanover is one of the most durable of them.
It is changing, of course. The 2020 census records a township that is now roughly 13 percent Asian and growing more diverse each year, and the global headquarters of Mondelez has shifted to Chicago even as the East Hanover campus remains. The Italians who built the modern township are aging, and their grandchildren may move to Florham Park or out of state entirely. But for now, the Saturday line at Sorrento Bakery is the most honest census of all.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Italians live in East Hanover, New Jersey?
The Italians in East Hanover make up a very large share of the township. The 2000 census recorded 35.6 percent of residents claiming Italian ancestry, the fifteenth-highest of any municipality in the country, and later estimates put the figure around 40 percent of roughly 11,100 people.
Why did so many Italians move to East Hanover?
Most came from Newark, especially the First Ward Little Italy, which was broken up in the 1950s by urban renewal and the construction of Interstate 280. Backed by GI Bill and FHA mortgages and connected by new highways, Italian families moved west into Essex and Morris counties, and East Hanover offered larger lots and good schools within commuting distance.
What is the main Italian Catholic church in East Hanover?
St. Rose of Lima at 312 Ridgedale Avenue is the township’s Catholic parish. It began as a mission in 1957, with its first Mass celebrated in the East Hanover firehouse, and became a full parish in 1959 on land bought from the Vanacore family.
Where can you find Italian food in East Hanover?
Ridgedale Avenue and the surrounding streets are lined with Italian establishments. Sorrento Bakery and Deli on Eagle Rock Avenue has sold bread, biscotti, and Italian sandwiches since 1975, while Luigi’s Restaurant and Teresa’s Italian Kitchen on Ridgedale Avenue serve the township’s classic red-sauce and prepared-food appetite.
What is East Hanover known for besides its Italian community?
East Hanover is a corporate centre. It is home to the North American headquarters of Mondelez International, the parent company of Nabisco, on DeForest Avenue, along with a major Novartis pharmaceutical presence. The Route 10 corridor made the township one of Morris County’s important business addresses.
Is East Hanover still an Italian town?
Yes, to a notable degree. While the township is growing more diverse, the descendants of the Newark Italian families remain a plurality, near 40 percent by recent estimates. The Italians in East Hanover are aging, but their bakeries, restaurants, and parish keep the identity present in daily life.
If your family’s story passed through East Hanover, or any of the places Italians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a tenement in Newark’s First Ward, to a split-level on Ridgedale Avenue, to wherever you are now.