Cross the Mystic River from Boston, climb past the brick mills and the colonial squares, and you reach a city where the largest single thread in the population is Italian. The Italians in Medford, Massachusetts did not arrive all at once, and they never gathered in one famous block the way they did in the North End. Instead they settled a quieter stretch south of Medford Square, lined it with bakeries and food shops, and built a community that, by the 2020 census, still claimed Italian ancestry as the most common heritage in town.
The Place
Medford sits just two miles north of central Boston, in Middlesex County, on the banks of the Mystic River. It is an old place by American standards, settled in 1630, and for a long stretch of its history it grew rich on three industries: brickmaking, rum distilling, and shipbuilding along the river.
By the late nineteenth century the Bay State Brick Company on Riverside Avenue was turning out between fifteen and twenty million bricks a year. The wharves below Medford Square sent ships down the Mystic toward Boston Harbour and the wider Atlantic trade.
Today the city is home to roughly 59,659 people and to part of Tufts University, whose campus straddles the Medford and Somerville line. The grand colonial houses of Medford Square, the Royall House, and the brick mansions along the river are the ghosts of that early money. The Italian story belongs to a later, humbler chapter, and it is told mostly in the southern wards.
How It Became Italian
The wave from the south of Italy
Italians came to the United States in great numbers between the 1880s and the First World War, and they came again after both world wars. The overwhelming majority were southerners: families from Campania, from the province of Avellino, from Calabria, and from Sicily, leaving farms and villages where land was scarce and work scarcer.
Boston’s North End was the first landing place, the densest Italian quarter in New England. But the North End was small, crowded, and finite. As families found footing, they looked for room to spread out, and the towns just beyond Boston’s edge offered exactly that.
Crossing the river to Medford
In the early decades of the twentieth century, large waves of Italian and Irish immigrants began to settle in the towns ringing Boston. South Medford, the wedge of the city closest to Somerville’s Winter Hill and bounded to the north and east by the Mystic near Medford Square, became one of those new Italian quarters.
The newcomers carried the culture of what they called the old country, the same heritage they had pressed so deeply into the North End. They brought it across the river and laid it down again along Main Street, where bakeries, pastry shops, restaurants, and grocers began to crowd the storefronts.
Building a parish and a neighbourhood
What made South Medford work as a community was its compactness. A family could live, worship, shop, and find work within a few walkable blocks, and Italian was still spoken on the sidewalks well into living memory.
The Catholic church anchored the social life, as it did in every Italian-American settlement of the period. Saint Raphael Parish on High Street served Medford’s faithful, and the rhythm of the church calendar, the feast days and the saints, shaped the year for the immigrant families much as it had in their home villages.
The work was the work of newcomers everywhere: labouring jobs, the building trades, food shops opened with savings scraped together over years. The neighbourhood that resulted was, in the words of its own residents, tight knit, the kind of place where everyone knew the baker and the butcher by name.
A neighbourhood that fed a region
Food became South Medford’s signature, to the point that locals liked to boast the district held more Italian bakeries than the North End itself. That claim is hard to verify literally, but it captures something true about the place: this was a neighbourhood you travelled to for bread, for pastry, for pasta, for the imported tins and cheeses of southern Italy.
Some of those shops have stood for the better part of a century. Bob’s Italian Foods has held its corner on Main Street since 1936, run by the DiGiorgio family across three generations. Other names, like the old DePasquale’s, became local legends in their own right.
The Landmarks
Bob’s Italian Foods, 324 Main Street. Open on this stretch since 1936 and run by the DiGiorgio family into a third generation, Bob’s is the institution that anchors South Medford’s food culture. The deli counter, the butcher case, the homemade pasta, and the imported specialty goods have drawn shoppers from across Greater Boston for well over eight decades.
Bocelli’s Restaurant, 374 Main Street. An old-fashioned Italian restaurant known for its basement dining room, Bocelli’s occupies a space with a famous past. The location was formerly DePasquale’s, an old-school spot remembered as one of the oldest pizza houses in the area, where stories place Frank Sinatra and the boxer Rocky Marciano among the regulars.
Italo’s Bakery, 509 Main Street. For decades Italo’s was the kind of corner bakery that defined the neighbourhood, famous locally for its bakery-style pizza, Italian cookies, and scali bread. It closed in 2018 when a family illness called the owners overseas, and its shuttered front became a small reminder of how fragile these old institutions can be.
Saint Raphael Parish, 512 High Street. The Roman Catholic parish that has long served Medford’s faithful, Saint Raphael remains an active church with weekly Masses, a food pantry, and music ministries. For generations of Italian-American families it was the centre around which the calendar of feasts and sacraments turned.
The South Medford bocce court. In front of the South Medford fire station sits a bocce court, the open-air sign of an Italian neighbourhood as surely as any storefront. It has fallen into disrepair in recent years for want of city upkeep, but its presence marks the ground as Italian as plainly as the bakeries do.
Medford Square and the Mystic River. The colonial heart of the city, Medford Square stands where the wharves once sent ships down the Mystic. It is not Italian by origin, but it is the gateway through which South Medford connects to the rest of Medford, and the river that runs past it is the same one the immigrants crossed to get here.
The Royall House and Slave Quarters, 15 George Street. Older than the Italian community by more than a century, this eighteenth-century mansion and its surviving slave quarters tell a far harder chapter of Medford’s history. It stands near Tufts University as a reminder that the city the Italians arrived in already carried a long and complicated past.
Where They Came From
The Italians of Medford were, overwhelmingly, southerners. They followed the same migration paths that filled the North End: from Campania and the province of Avellino, from Calabria, and from Sicily, the regions that sent the great bulk of Italian emigrants to New England.
They came because the south of Italy at the turn of the twentieth century offered little: small plots, poor harvests, and the weight of an economy that had never recovered from unification. America offered wages, and Boston offered an Italian quarter already standing to receive them.
Chain migration did the rest. One brother sent for another, a cousin for a cousin, a village slowly reassembling itself a few streets at a time across the Mystic. By the time the movement had run its course, Medford counted more than ten thousand residents of Italian descent, roughly 16.9 percent of the city, the single largest ancestry group ahead of the Irish at 12.9 percent.
Medford Today
Medford in the 2020s is more mixed than it once was. Italian remains the largest ancestry, but the city now counts substantial Irish, Haitian, Brazilian, and other communities, and the student population around Tufts adds its own churn. South Medford is no longer the near-monolingual Italian quarter that older residents remember.
Some of the old anchors have closed. Italo’s Bakery went dark in 2018, and the building that housed Bocelli’s, the former DePasquale’s, has been the subject of redevelopment proposals that would replace the restaurant with apartments. The bocce court by the fire station waits on repairs the city has struggled to fund. These are the ordinary pressures of a hot housing market pressing on an old neighbourhood close to Boston.
Yet the memory is being defended. In recent years, members of the Medford City Council, including the council president Richard Caraviello and the vice president Adam Knight, introduced a proposal asking the Historic District Commission to study designating South Medford as an Italian-American historic district, with plaques and storyboards to mark its heritage. Bob’s Italian Foods still trades on Main Street, Saint Raphael still rings its bells, and the city’s largest single heritage is still the one the immigrants carried across the river. For families whose roots run through these streets, Medford remains, unmistakably, an Italian place.
The same New England diaspora map runs through nearby towns worth knowing. The Italians made strongholds in Revere, just up the coast, in Bristol, Rhode Island, and in East Haven, Connecticut, while in New York the most famous Italian enclave of all may be Dyker Heights in Brooklyn. The Irish, Medford’s second-largest heritage, built parallel communities in Quincy and Norwood, just south of the city.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do the Italians in Medford, Massachusetts live?
The historic Italian-American enclave is South Medford, the southern wedge of the city closest to Somerville’s Winter Hill, bounded to the north and east by the Mystic River near Medford Square. Its main streets, especially Main Street, have long been lined with Italian bakeries, restaurants, and food shops.
How many Italians live in Medford?
Italian ancestry is the largest single heritage group in Medford. As of the 2020 census, more than ten thousand residents, roughly 16.9 percent of the city’s population of about 59,659, reported Italian descent, ahead of Irish ancestry at 12.9 percent.
When did Italians settle in Medford?
The Italians arrived chiefly in the early decades of the twentieth century, part of the great wave of southern Italian migration that first filled Boston’s North End. As families looked for more room beyond the crowded North End, many crossed the Mystic River to settle in South Medford.
What are the best-known Italian businesses in South Medford?
Bob’s Italian Foods at 324 Main Street has operated since 1936 under the DiGiorgio family. Bocelli’s at 374 Main Street occupies the former DePasquale’s, a storied old restaurant, and Italo’s Bakery on Main Street was a neighbourhood landmark until its closure in 2018.
Where did Medford’s Italian families come from in Italy?
Like most Italian immigrants to New England, Medford’s came overwhelmingly from the south of Italy: from Campania and the province of Avellino, from Calabria, and from Sicily. Chain migration drew relatives and fellow villagers across the Atlantic over several decades.
Is South Medford recognised as an Italian-American district?
Not formally, though the idea has been raised. Members of the Medford City Council, including council president Richard Caraviello and vice president Adam Knight, proposed that the Historic District Commission study designating South Medford as an Italian-American historic district, complete with plaques and storyboards honouring its heritage.
If your family’s story passed through Medford, or any of the places Italians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Avellino or Calabria, to a bakery on Main Street in South Medford, to wherever you are now.