On North Salina Street, the bread comes out of Di Lauro’s oven the same way it has since 1908, and the provolone hangs in Thano’s window the way it has for ninety years. The Italians in Syracuse, New York did not arrive in this hilly central New York city as merchants or landowners. They came laying rail, and they stayed to build a neighbourhood that still smells of fresh dough and tomato every morning.
The Place
Syracuse sits at the geographic heart of New York State, where the old Erie Canal corridor crossed the rail lines that knit the country together in the nineteenth century. It was a city of salt and industry, of factories that made suits and shoes and chemicals, drawing labour from everywhere.
The Northside rises just above downtown, a grid of brick and clapboard houses on streets that climb away from the old canal. It was a German neighbourhood first, then it was something else. North Salina Street runs through the middle of it, and for more than a century that street has been the spine of Italian Syracuse.
Today the city is home to nearly 22,000 people of Italian descent, most of them clustered on that Northside and the suburbs that spread beyond it. In 2010 roughly one in seven Syracusans claimed Italian ancestry. The neighbourhood has a name now, made official in 2003: Little Italy.
How It Became Italian
The railroad men, 1883
The first Italians came to Syracuse in 1883, and they did not come to stay. They came to build the West Shore Railroad, the line that ran up the western bank of the Hudson and across the state toward Buffalo. They worked in gangs under bosses of their own language, the only men on the crew who could translate between the immigrants and the company.
When the line was finished, many moved on to the next job. But some looked at the Northside, where rents were cheap and the Germans were beginning to leave for better housing, and decided this was as good a place as any to send for their families.
The community takes shape, 1890s
The growth was fast. By the end of the 1890s roughly 3,500 Italians lived in Syracuse, and by March 1897 the figure had nearly doubled to almost 7,000, a settlement pattern echoed in the Italian community of Ozone Park, New York and other downstate enclaves that grew the same way. Most were Catholic, and most were poor. The earliest arrivals were largely illiterate, and the language barrier kept them working in those labour gangs long after the railroad was done.
They settled first around Pearl Street, then spread along North State and North Salina streets, the two arteries that would become their business district. They opened bakeries and grocers and import shops, selling the cheese and olives and pasta that a homesick family needed. The Germans moved out as the Italians moved in, and the Northside changed hands one house at a time.
A church of their own, 1896
Faith came with them, and it needed a home. In 1896 the Italian congregation bought a building that had passed through several owners already. It had been built in 1853 as the Church of the Messiah by a Unitarian society, then served a German Lutheran congregation, and now it became St. Peter’s Italian Church. The parish would later relocate to 130 North State Street.
There were other missions too. A Methodist mission opened in rooms borrowed from the West Shore Railroad, and in December 1905 a Methodist school was established at the corner of North State and North Salina streets. But it was the Catholic parish that anchored the community, baptising and burying generation after generation.
Societies and lodges
The Italians organised quickly, building the mutual benefit societies that immigrants everywhere used to insure themselves against sickness and death. There was the Society Agostino Depretis, named for an Italian prime minister, and the Duci Degli Abbruzzi, established in 1907, which threw a gala celebration that May.
By 1929 the Order Sons of Italy in America had founded a lodge in the city, and around it gathered a constellation of others with names like Ruggiero Settimo, Onesta e Lavoro and Maria Montessori. These were the institutions that turned a labour camp into a neighbourhood, much as Italian fraternal life did in Belleville, New Jersey, and many of their descendants still meet.
The monument, 1934
The grandest statement the community ever made stands at the centre of downtown. The Columbus Monument was dedicated in 1934 at the heart of what was renamed Columbus Circle, a forty-foot structure designed by the Syracuse-born architect Dwight James Baum and topped with a bronze Columbus by the Italian sculptor Lorenzo Baldi.
It was paid for in nickels and dimes. The Italian community had funded it from wages earned building railroads, running small shops and labouring in factories and chemical plants, donations gathered over nearly a quarter of a century. The dedication drew more than 15,000 Syracusans and a parade a mile long. The monument has become contested ground in recent years, the subject of long civic debate, but for the families who built it the gesture was clear: they had arrived, and they meant to be counted.
Work and the long climb
The first generation laboured. They made Learbury suits and Nettleton shoes, two of the Northside’s signature products, and they worked the chemical plants and the construction sites that a growing city demanded. St. Joseph’s Hospital, with its affiliated college of nursing, became one of the neighbourhood’s great employers and remains so.
The second generation went further. By the time Roy Bernardi was elected mayor of Syracuse in 1994, a son of the community could lead the city. Bernardi, a Syracuse University graduate, served until 2001 and later joined the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington. The climb from railroad gang to city hall had taken roughly a century.
The Landmarks
Di Lauro’s Bakery, North Salina Street. Open since 1908, this is the oldest of the Northside bakeries, a place locals have gone for generations to buy Italian bread and rolls. It still turns out traditional loaves and breakfast pizza, the kind of plain excellence that does not need to advertise itself.
Francesca’s Cucina, 545 North Salina Street. A family-owned restaurant in the heart of Little Italy, run on recipes passed down four generations. Voted one of the city’s favourite dining destinations, it recently bought the historic building next door to open a homemade pasta and pastry house.
Thano’s Import Market, North Salina Street. For more than ninety years this shop has sold the staples of an Italian kitchen: aged provolone, olives, homemade pasta. It is the sort of place that has outlasted three generations of customers, a constant on a street that has changed around it.
Columbus Baking Company, Pearl Street. Operating for over a century near the original Italian settlement on Pearl Street, the bakery specialises in a handful of bread types and supplies them across the region. It is one of the last working links to the neighbourhood’s first years.
St. Peter’s Italian Church, 130 North State Street. The parish that the Italian congregation founded in 1896 has anchored the community for well over a century. Its roots reach back to an 1853 building that served three faiths before becoming the spiritual home of the Northside’s Italians.
Columbus Monument, Columbus Circle. The forty-foot monument the community funded in nickels and dimes, dedicated in 1934 with a mile-long parade. Each year Italian American Syracusans still gather here for a wreath-laying ceremony, keeping faith with the men who paid for it.
North Salina Street Historic District. The commercial spine of Little Italy, lined with Italianate buildings from the mid-to-late nineteenth century. A streetscape investment programme beginning around 2009 rebuilt the sidewalks and lighting, betting public money that the old street had a future.
Where They Came From
Like most of the more than five million Italians who crossed to America, the families of Syracuse came overwhelmingly from the south. The regions that emptied into the United States in those decades were Sicily, Calabria, Campania, Abruzzo and their neighbours, the poor and crowded provinces of the Italian south.
You can read the origins in the names the immigrants chose for their societies. The Duci Degli Abbruzzi pointed back to Abruzzo, the Ruggiero Settimo lodge to Sicily. These were not random labels but the markers of chain migration, by which a man from one village would send for a brother, a cousin, a neighbour, until whole streets of Syracuse held people who had been baptised in the same Italian parish church.
What pushed them out was hunger and want: poverty, unemployment, a shortage of land, and the natural disasters that scarred the south, including the catastrophic Messina earthquake of 1908. The same regions and the same hardships sent families to the Italian neighbourhood of Commack, New York and to industrial towns like Norristown, Pennsylvania. What pulled them to Syracuse was simpler. There was work, there were others who spoke their language, and there was room on the Northside for one more family.
Syracuse Today
Little Italy is smaller than it was, and honest residents will tell you so. The grandchildren of the railroad men moved to the suburbs, to Lyncourt and beyond, where in the early 2000s the census found one of the most densely Italian American areas in the country. The Northside has taken in newer arrivals from other parts of the world, the latest chapter in a central New York story of migration that also runs through places like Ukrainian Cohoes, New York. The neighbourhood is more mixed than it once was.
But the street holds. North Salina Street still has its bakeries and its import market, its restaurants and its parish, and on a Saturday morning the bread is still fresh and the espresso is still strong. The Italians in Syracuse never abandoned the Northside even as they spread out from it.
Once a year the whole city is reminded. Since 1996 the Festa Italiana has filled downtown by City Hall for three September days, a quarter-century of food, music, bocce and historical displays. The crowds that come are the descendants of the men who arrived in 1883 with nothing but their hands, and the festival is their answer to the question of whether any of it lasted. It did.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Italians first settle in Syracuse, New York?
Italians first settled in Syracuse in 1883, after coming to build the West Shore Railroad across New York State. Many of the railroad workers settled on the Northside, where rents were low and the departing German population was leaving housing behind.
Where is Little Italy in Syracuse?
Little Italy sits on the Northside of Syracuse, centred on North Salina Street just above downtown. The neighbourhood was officially designated Little Italy in 2003, though Italians had lived and traded there since the 1880s.
How many Italians live in Syracuse?
The Italians in Syracuse, New York number nearly 22,000 today, concentrated on the Northside and in suburbs such as Lyncourt. In 2010 roughly 14 percent of the city’s population claimed Italian ancestry.
What is the Columbus Monument in Syracuse?
The Columbus Monument is a forty-foot structure at Columbus Circle downtown, dedicated in 1934 with a bronze statue of Columbus by Italian sculptor Lorenzo Baldi. The Italian community funded it in small donations gathered over nearly twenty-five years, and its dedication drew more than 15,000 people.
What festivals celebrate Italian heritage in Syracuse?
The Festa Italiana has been held in downtown Syracuse near City Hall every September since 1996. The three-day festival features Italian food, live music, a bocce tournament, historical displays and street performers, and the Italians in Syracuse still gather for a Columbus Day wreath-laying at Columbus Circle.
Where did Syracuse’s Italian immigrants come from?
Like most Italian immigrants to America, Syracuse’s families came overwhelmingly from southern Italy, including Sicily, Calabria, Campania and Abruzzo. The names of early societies such as the Duci Degli Abbruzzi and the Ruggiero Settimo lodge reflect those regional origins.
If your family’s story passed through Syracuse, or any of the places Italians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Sicily or Abruzzo to a brick house on the Northside, to wherever you are now.