From The Peopling of New York City

Since Italian immigrants came to America in search of work and money and not in search of a new life and a new home Italian Americans settled wherever there was work available. Italians Americans usually settled in big cities where jobs were easy to find. “The most popular cities [for Italian Americans to settle] were Boston, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Rhode Island.” Later generations of Italian Americans settled more in South America then in North America. ^[1]

City	Number of Italian American Immigrants*	Percent of total population*
New Jersey	1.5 million	18.5
Connecticut	653,000	19.8
Rhode Island	202,735	20.0
New York	2.7 million	14.8
Massachusetts	890,000	14.5

• According to the 2000 census ^[2]

Over one-third of all the Italians who came to America called New York City “home”. One historian states “They scattered all over the New York region, settling in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and nearby New Jersey. Perhaps the greatest concentration of all, though, was in Manhattan. The streets of Lower Manhattan, particularly parts of Mulberry Streets, quickly became heavily Italian in character, with street vendors, store owners, residents and vagrants alike all speaking the same language—or at least a dialect of it.” ^[3]

During the 20th century Italians started to immigrant as a whole family and not just the males of the family. In fact some times a whole Italian neighborhood would make the journey to America together. When this mass migration of whole neighborhoods occurred these immigrants ended up settling together and brought into their new neighborhood all the costume and traditions they had while in the old neighborhood back in Italy. They created “a near replica of their old town”. ^[4]

Citations

1. ↑ Italian American. April 12,2009. [1]
2. ↑ Italian American. April 12,2009. [2]
3. ↑ Immigration…Italian. April 11,2009. [3]
4. ↑ Italian American. April 12,2009. [4]

• Return to Residential Patterns
• Return to Italians