The Taylor Street Archives (TSA) evolved in 2006:
   “If we do not act now, it will be as if we never were.”

We are more than artifacts and objects. Our legacy is the sum of our stories. The focus of the Archives is to preserve, for posterity, the stories of those who shared the near west side immigrant neighborhood that later came to be known as Chicago’s Little Italy.  That legacy, by definition,  includes the stories of those who had emigrated from the shores of  southern Italy at the turn of the twentieth century.   

The offspring of those who settled into Taylor Street, the port-of-call for Chicago’s Italian Americans, and who lived the Italian American experience of growing up Taylor Street, are a salient part of this anthology…a time, a place and a people that were and can never be again. 

It is to this end that the Archives preserves those memories that capture both the essence and spirit of growing up Taylor Street, the near-west side immigrant community that became the laboratory upon which Jane Addams tested her theories and formulated her objections to the establishment.   The immigrant neighborhood that Jane Addams labeled “The Hull House Neighborhood.”  

Vincent Romano, Editor

“We must never allow others to tell our story to their liking.”