Walk west out of downtown Providence, under a wrought iron arch hung with a giant bronze pine cone, and the city changes register. The Italians in Federal Hill built one of the most densely Italian neighbourhoods America ever knew, a quarter mile of Atwells Avenue where the bakeries opened before dawn and the dialect of southern Italy carried over the noise of the jewellery factories. More than a century on, the espresso machines still hiss and the festival still shuts the street.
The Place
Federal Hill sits just west of downtown Providence, bounded roughly by Westminster Street to the south, the highways of Routes 6 and 10 to the west and north, and Interstate 95 to the east. It is barely a mile from Narragansett Bay and the old harbour where the ships came in.
The neighbourhood takes its name from Atwells Avenue, the spine that runs up the slope, named for Amos Maine Atwell, who led its early development in 1788. Today the avenue carries more than twenty restaurants within a single quarter mile stretch.
The gateway to it all is the arch over Atwells near downtown, from which hangs La Pigna, a bronze pine cone. It is a traditional Italian symbol of welcome and abundance, and locals affectionately and mistakenly call it the Pineapple. It has become the emblem of the whole Hill.
How It Became Italian
Before the Italians: an Irish hill
Federal Hill was working class long before it was Italian. In the early 1800s its residents were largely Irish immigrants, many fleeing famine, who worked in the factories nearby. By the 1820s and 1840s the Irish presence was firmly established, and the Hill was theirs.
The shift came slowly, then all at once. In the 1870s the first immigrants from southern Italy began to arrive, and by 1895 the neighbourhood was, as one account put it, divided almost evenly between the Irish and the Italians. The balance would not stay even for long.
The jewellery city pulls them in
What drew Italians to Providence in particular was work. The city’s jewellery and silverware industry, one of the largest in the nation, was hungry for labour at the turn of the twentieth century. Italian immigrants settled close to downtown in Federal Hill, within walking distance of the workshops and the harbour.
The numbers tell the story of a flood. In 1885 there were only a few hundred Italian born residents in all of Providence. Twenty years later there were 18,014, and by 1920 the figure had reached 42,044. The first two decades of the new century saw the heaviest Italian American immigration the city had known, and Federal Hill became its informal Little Italy.
A church for the new arrivals
The Italians needed their own parish, and they got one early. On 22 September 1889 the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo established Holy Ghost Church to serve the spiritual needs of the new immigrants. Father Luigi Paroli, with permission from Bishop Matthew Harkins of the Diocese of Providence, was installed as the parish’s first pastor.
The congregation grew so fast that by 1901 it had outgrown its first home. Lots were purchased at the corner of Knight Street and Atwells Avenue, at the west end of the Hill, and plans were drawn for an Italian Romanesque church. It was completed in 1909 and still stands.
The Macaroni Riots
The community was not without its frictions. In 1914, anger over the price of pasta boiled over into what local history remembers as the Macaroni Riots, a vivid reminder that the Hill was a place of working people for whom the cost of a staple food was a matter worth fighting over.
By 1930, an estimated twenty percent of the entire population of Providence was of Italian extraction, and Federal Hill stood at the centre of it. It had become, by some measures, one of the most densely packed Italian neighbourhoods in the country.
The other reputation
For decades the Hill carried a second, harder reputation. In 1954 Raymond L. S. Patriarca moved the base of the New England Mafia from Boston to Federal Hill, running operations from premises on Atwells Avenue that were known internally, with grim simplicity, as The Office. That chapter has long closed, but it is part of the neighbourhood’s honest history, and residents do not pretend otherwise.
The Landmarks
The La Pigna Arch, over Atwells Avenue near downtown. The bronze pine cone suspended from the gateway arch is the single most recognised landmark in the neighbourhood. A symbol of welcome and abundance in Italy, it greets every visitor entering from the east, and locals defend its proper name against the affectionate misnomer of the Pineapple.
DePasquale Square, off Atwells Avenue. The cultural heart of the Hill is this small plaza, built around a grand central fountain and ringed with outdoor dining and colourfully painted buildings. The fountain was restored at a cost of roughly 500,000 dollars in July 2020, after a car collision damaged it the year before. On a summer evening it feels like a Mediterranean piazza dropped into New England.
Holy Ghost Church, corner of Knight Street and Atwells Avenue. The Italian Romanesque parish church, planned in 1901 and completed in 1909, has anchored the west end of the Hill for more than a century. Established in 1889 to serve Italian immigrants, it remains the spiritual heart of the community.
Scialo Bros. Bakery, 257 Atwells Avenue. Luigi Scialo and his brother Gaetano opened this bakery in 1916, and Luigi ran it until his death in 1993. Long considered the Hill’s last authentic Italian bakery, it closed during the pandemic in March 2020, then reopened in May 2021 under new owners who kept the name, the recipes, and a Scialo, Carol Scialo Gaeta, still at work.
Costantino’s Venda Ravioli, Atwells Avenue. Established in 1938, this Italian grocery and restaurant built its name on hand pressed ravioli and remains one of the Hill’s defining food halls, a place to buy imported cheeses and cured meats as well as to sit down and eat.
Angelo’s Civita Farnese, Atwells Avenue. Opened by Angelo Mastrodicasa in 1924, Angelo’s has been ladling out old school pasta fagioli to the neighbourhood for a full century. It is the kind of place that has outlasted fashions, owners, and the demographic changes around it.
Camille’s, 174 Atwells Avenue. This dining room opened in 1914 as Marconi’s, owned by Pasquale Parolisi. In 1952 his son took it over and renamed it Camille’s Roman Gardens after his wife. More than a century after its founding it still serves at the same address, one of the oldest continuously operating restaurants on the avenue.
The Hill’s restaurant culture has cousins across the region, echoing the dense Italian dining streets found among the Italians of Clifton, New Jersey and the old enclaves like the Italian community of Hawthorne, New York. What sets Federal Hill apart is the sheer concentration: dozens of family kitchens packed into a quarter mile.
Where They Came From
The Italians of Federal Hill came overwhelmingly from central and southern Italy. The strongest streams flowed out of Campania, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria, the regions that fed almost every American Little Italy of the era.
The province of Caserta, north of Naples, was among the southern districts that saw sharp spikes in emigration during the hard years of the late 1880s, when poor harvests and crushing rural poverty pushed families towards the ports. They left the Mezzogiorno not because they wanted to abandon home but because home could no longer feed them.
What carried them specifically to a hill in Providence rather than anywhere else was chain migration. One villager wrote home about the jewellery factories and the cheap rooms near Atwells, a cousin followed, then a brother, then a whole paese, until streets on the Hill were populated by people who had been neighbours in Italy. The community reassembled itself, parish by parish and family by family, three thousand miles from where it began. The same pattern repeated wherever Italians landed in the Northeast, from the Italians of Bloomfield, New Jersey to the Italian families of New Rochelle, New York, each enclave knitted together by letters home and the slow pull of cousins.
Federal Hill Today
Federal Hill is more diverse now than it has ever been. Many of the Italian families who built the neighbourhood have moved out to the Italian community in Cranston, the Italians of nearby Johnston and the wider suburbs, and the population of the Hill itself, just under 8,000 people in around 3,400 households, reflects a far broader mix than it once did.
Yet the neighbourhood remains the undisputed centre of Italian American culture in Providence, and the proof is on the plate. Atwells Avenue still carries its dense run of Italian eateries, from upscale seasonal kitchens to the unchanging pasta fagioli at Angelo’s, and the bakeries still bake zeppole for the Feast of St Joseph, when custom asks everyone to wear red.
The calendar keeps the heritage loud. The Columbus Day Festival each October closes the avenue for four days, with more than eighty vendors, three stages and a Sunday parade, drawing crowds counted well into the tens of thousands. In June the Federal Hill Summer Festival fills the street again, and on summer Saturday evenings Al Fresco on the Hill turns Atwells into one long outdoor table. The Italians may have spread out, but they come back to the Hill to eat, and so does everyone else.
Many of the people you will see linking arms under the La Pigna arch in October have roots that pass through this quarter mile of Providence. Some of them can trace their line back across the Atlantic to a village in Campania or Calabria. Some are still working out how to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are there so many Italians in Federal Hill, Rhode Island?
The Italians in Federal Hill arrived chiefly to work in Providence’s huge jewellery and silverware industry at the turn of the twentieth century. They settled on the Hill because it was cheap, close to downtown and the harbour, and through chain migration whole villages from southern Italy reassembled there street by street.
When did Italians first settle in Federal Hill?
The first immigrants from southern Italy began arriving in the 1870s. By 1895 Federal Hill was roughly split between Irish and Italian residents, and the heaviest Italian immigration came in the first two decades of the 1900s, by which point it had become Providence’s Little Italy.
What is the La Pigna arch on Atwells Avenue?
La Pigna is a large bronze pine cone hanging from the gateway arch over Atwells Avenue near downtown Providence. The pine cone is a traditional Italian symbol of welcome and abundance, and it has become the emblem of Federal Hill, though locals affectionately and incorrectly call it the Pineapple.
Where did the Italians in Federal Hill come from?
They came overwhelmingly from central and southern Italy, especially the regions of Campania, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria. Areas such as the province of Caserta near Naples saw sharp emigration during the difficult years of the late 1880s, pushing families towards America.
Is Federal Hill still an Italian neighbourhood today?
Federal Hill is more diverse now, and many Italian families have moved to the suburbs, but it remains the traditional centre of Italian American culture in Providence. Atwells Avenue still holds dozens of Italian restaurants and bakeries, and festivals like the Columbus Day Festival keep the heritage alive.
What is the best time to visit Federal Hill for Italian culture?
The Columbus Day Festival each October is the highlight, a four day celebration that closes Atwells Avenue for vendors, music and a Sunday parade. The Federal Hill Summer Festival in June and the Al Fresco on the Hill dining series on summer Saturdays are also strong choices.
If your family’s story passed through Federal Hill, or any of the places Italians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Campania or Calabria, to a cold water flat off Atwells Avenue, to wherever you are now.