Today, New York State has the largest population of Italian Americans in the United States, while Rhode Island and Connecticut have the largest population of Italian-American Americans. California · Connecticut · New Jersey · New York. Nearly 16 million people living in the United States (nearly 6% of the population) identify themselves as Italian-American, according to the U.S. Department of State.
UU. Where do they live and how do they keep their traditions alive? While most of Little Italy's neighborhoods were established in many of the U.S. Cities have lost their strong Italian features and population, often still have a concentration of Italian restaurants and shops, and often host Italian festivals and cultural events. Most Italian immigrants arrived in New York City, passing through Ellis Island.
Today, New York City and New York State are still the areas with the largest Italian-American population, descendants of the first immigrants. Wherever they have been established in the U.S. This is how many Little Italys were born. Between the 19th and 20th centuries, New York's Little Italy was often the first neighborhood in the United States that many of Italy's new immigrants saw or settled in.
In 1910, Little Italy had nearly 10,000 Italians. Once spanning more than 50 square blocks, with Mulberry Street as the main street, today Little Italy covers just three blocks of Italian restaurants and cafes. Chinatown began to invade the neighborhood in the 1960s. As the area became more expensive, much of the original Italian population was eventually expelled.
This doesn't mean that you still can't find a little piece of Italy. Here are some of the highlights. If Ferrara was the first to offer espresso bars, Lombardi's (32 Spring St. Recognized by the Pizza Hall of Fame (no joke) in 1905, giving rise to the famous New York-style pizza.
Gennaro Lombardi founded the business in 1897 as a grocery store on 53½ Spring Street; he sold tomato pies wrapped in paper to workers in the area's factories at lunchtime. In 1905, Lombardi received a business license to operate a pizza restaurant and soon had an enthusiastic clientele, including the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. Like an old school pizza place, Lombardi's only serves whole cakes (not slices) and only accepts cash payments. The Ottomanelli %26 Sons Meat Market (285 Bleecker Street) is an old style butcher shop.
Inaugurated by Onofrio Ottomanelli in the 1950s, the store quickly distinguished itself from other butcher shops for the quality of its meats, which are still served by his son Frank. Every year, for 10 days in September, New York's Little Italy celebrates the Feast of San Gennaro (this year it is celebrated from September 15 to 2). The street fair, created to greet the patron saint of Naples, is a celebration of Italian culture and the Italian-American community and generally attracts more than a million people to the neighborhood. Stay connected to Italy and get the best news, culture, language, recipes and more delivered straight to your inbox every week.
Many of the original members of New Haven's Italian community were from Naples, giving rise to a distinctive pizza culture that peaked with the local specialty, white clam pizza. These areas are still associated with Italian culture and are often home to several Italian restaurants and businesses. Today, New York State has the largest population of Italian Americans in the United States, while Rhode Island and Connecticut have the highest overall percentages relative to their respective populations. As for the metropolitan areas with the highest number of Italian-Americans, New York City is finally asserting itself.
There are few concentrations of Italians and Italian-Americans in many metropolitan areas of the United States, especially in the industrial cities of the Northeast and the Midwest. It was followed by Philadelphia, with more than 800,000; Boston, with more than 650,000; Chicago, with just under 650,000; and Los Angeles, the city of Los Angeles, with almost 400,000 Italians. New Orleans, Louisiana, was the first place for Italians to immigrate to the United States in the 19th century, before Italy was a unified nation-state. This was before New York Harbor and Baltimore became the preferred destinations for Italian immigrants.
In fact, New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University, has the highest percentage of Italian-Americans, representing 21.2% of the metropolitan area's population. .