Taylor Street Archives Statement of Purpose
To preserve, for posterity, the names and memories of those immigrants who found their way from their Italian origins to the legendary Taylor Street's Little Italy, the port-of-call for Chicago's Italian Americans…the inner core of what Jane Addams had labeled "The Hull House Neighborhood."
To capture, through stories and pictures, how it was, for those emigrants and their offspring, growing up through a time and in a place unmatched by any other. History should include the stories of those who lived it. The Taylor Street Archives affords us the opportunity to preserve our history in the words of those who lived it.
To capture, through stories and pictures, how those Taylor Street children—nurtured through the Great Depression, the Great War, and other not-so-visible obstacles of similar magnitude by their immigrant parents and the visionary Hull House—reshaped and redefined that subculture, which had been imposed upon them by the dominant society.
If we do not act now, the following will be our epitaph:
"…and it came to pass that, for those who follow us, it will be as if we never were."
The primary purpose of the Taylor Street Archives (TSA) is to preserve that place in history that recognizes and confirms the existence of the Legendary Taylor Street's Little Italy–the port-of-call for Chicago's Italian American immigrants–as the inner core of what Jane Addams had labeled "The Hull House Neighborhood." Jane Addams herself described the inner core of that neighborhood as being Italians from the river on the east—Roosevelt Road on the south and Harrison Street on the north—on out to the western boundaries of Chicago's near-west side. The very first invitation sent to the residents of the Hull House Neighborhood (1890) was written in Italian, "Mio Carissimo Amico" and signed "Le signore Jane Addams and Ellen Starr."
Our neighborhood, with its enclave of 10,000 Italian-American immigrants (1895 census), became the laboratory upon which the Hull House elitists tested their theories. Their protests to the establishment were based upon the living conditions of the near-west side slum's immigrant population. The Hull House rolls (including their Bowen Country Club summer camp) confirm that, for most, if not all, of the history of Hull House, Italian Americans were the primary component of the Hull House Neighborhood. Therefore, the history of Jane Addams' Hull House, America's first settlement house, is not complete without acknowledging the synergy that resulted from the symbiotic relationship that existed with the Legendary Taylor Street's Little Italy. Neither is the history of Taylor Street complete without acknowledging the Hull House imprint.
Fact: The very first invitation (1890) sent to the residents of the Hull House Neighborhood was written in Italian. It begins with "Mio Carissimo Amico" and is signed, "Le signore Jane Addams and Ellen Starr." (Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1890)
Fact: The Bethlehem-Howard Neighborhood Center Records further substantiate that, as early as the 1890s, the inner core of "The Hull House Neighborhood" was overwhelmingly Italian. "Germans and Jews resided south of that inner core (south of Twelfth Street). The Greek delta formed by Harrison, Halsted, and Blue Island Streets served as a buffer for the Irish residing to the north and the Canadian-French to the northwest."
Fact: Of the 3 dominant immigrant groups, Jews and Greeks began their exodus from the neighborhood during the early part of the 20th century. Only the business sections of Greek town and Jew town (Maxwell Street) remained. The Italians were the only ethnic group that remained a vibrant community through the Roaring Twenties, the prohibition era, the Great Depression, WWII, and the physical destruction of the neighborhood by the UIC in 1963. Mrs. Hull's original house was spared as a museum and is now under the guardianship of the UIC.
Fact: The "Hull House Kids," a historic picture taken by Wallace K. Kirkland Sr., Hull House Director, on a summer day in 1924, circulated around the globe as a poster child for Jane Addams' Hull House. All twenty boys posing in the Dante schoolyard on Forquer Street (now Arthington Street) were first-generation Italian Americans. All of them have vowels at the ends of their names. "They grew up to be lawyers and mechanics, sewer workers and dump truck drivers, a candy shop owner, a boxer and a mob boss."
Fact: Jane Addams herself, in the First 20 Years of Hull House, attests to all of the above-mentioned demographics: Italians occupied the area from the river on the east on out to the western end of… from Harrison Street on the north and Roosevelt Road on the south.
Fact: During the greater part of its 74-year history on the near-west side (1989-1963), Hull House and its summer camp, the Bowen Country Club (BCC), served a community that was almost entirely Italian American. The Hull House and BCC records substantiate as much. As an example, from the list of the 257 BCC alumni serving in WWII, all were Italians, except for a handful of non-Italian names.
The Hull House Museum is the primary outlet for the dissemination of information to the public about the history of Hull House and Jane Addams' "Hull House Neighborhood." Recently, in response to why the Museum rejected works that included stories written by Neighborhood writers, Lisa Lee, director of the Hull House Museum, stated, for the consumption of historians, scholars, and the public alike, in addition to the Italian community, Hull House also served 24 other ethnic neighborhoods." Medill School of Journalism, December 3, 2008. The entire UIC structure appears to be oblivious to the fact that it was only with the dismantling of the neighborhood by the expressways in the 1950s and the physical demise of Hull House and the neighborhood in 1963 that the Hull House Association, beginning as a shell organization operating out of storefronts throughout the city, came to the forefront in dispensing social services beyond the original Hull House Neighborhood. Editor's note: The Hull House Association has closed its doors and no longer exists.
The mission, therefore, of the Italian American community is two-fold:
1) to create and maintain the Taylor Street Archives as an alternative medium to offset historical distortions (by both omission and commission) being disseminated by the guardians of the Hull House Museum to both scholars and the public alike, thus thwarting the ethnic cleansing policy currently in place by the museum's leadership;
2) to encourage the UIC power structure to implement its own self-professed philosophy: "History should include the story of those who lived it," Lisa Lee, Director of the Hull House Museum, UIC College of Architecture, Spring 2007. The Hull House The museum does not have, in the multitude of references in their bibliographies and links to their websites, the work of a single Italian American writer who lived the experience of growing up in the Hull House Neighborhood. To date, the Taylor Street Archives are the only medium containing the stories of those who have lived the experience of growing up in the legendary Taylor Street's Little Italy.
We must ensure that our place in the history of Jane Addams' Hull House, as the laboratory upon which the Hull House elitists tested their theories and based their protests on the establishment, is neither usurped nor redefined by a power structure that chooses to ignore our place in the history of that phenomenon known as Jane Addams' Hull House, to be arbitrarily and capriciously eliminated.
Hull House's constituents reflected the demographics of the neighborhood. Among them were the Italians from Taylor Street's Little Italy, who constituted the overwhelming majority of those who attended the Hull House complex of 13 buildings and its summer camp, the Bowen Country Club, during its Camelot days. Upon the exodus of the Greeks and Jews during the first part of the twentieth century, the Hull House neighborhood was virtually wall-to-wall Italians.
We must ensure that our place in the history of Jane Addams' Hull House, as the laboratory upon which the Hull House structure tested their theories and based their protests on the establishment, is neither usurped nor redefined by those who were not part of that Taylor Street experience. These indisputable facts, confirming our legacy, must find a way to penetrate the agenda of the UIC trustees and the Hull House Museum.
Prologue
"I often pondered over the distance between us and the American Dream." Vincent J. Romano, Editor, Taylor Street Archives
Taylor Street lies in the shadows of Chicago's Loop. At the turn of the 20th century, a band of tribes from southern Italy — (Campania/Napoli, Sicillia/Palermo, Apuglia/Bari, Calabria/Reggio, Bassilicata, Molise, Abruzzi, etc.) immigrated to this country. They settled in Chicago's Taylor Street neighborhood, which later came to be known as Little Italy, the core of Jane Addams' Hull House Neighborhood. Those early inhabitants of Taylor Street, our immigrant parents/grandparents, sought, for themselves and their offspring, a new and better life. Centuries earlier, other Italians had also crossed the Great Ocean to the Americas. Those 15th-century Italians were the discoverers and explorers who first mapped and ultimately named this great country.
Our parents carried within them, on those ships embarking from their Italian ports, a precious cargo: a gene pool that sprang from the loins of the Caesars and the Michelangelo. Yes, these immigrants, our parents, were the descendants of a noble people who, for a millennium, had nurtured, defended, and ultimately passed on all that had come to be known as Western Civilization.
It is important that we preserve the memory of those original immigrants who made this fateful journey and settled in Chicago's Little Italy. It is equally important that we preserve the memories of their first-generation offspring—those who were born and raised in this subculture that came to be known as Taylor Street's Little Italy. The story of our people's successes and our people's failures cannot be fully appreciated without the knowledge and understanding of the subculture that had been created for those immigrants and their offspring by the major society into which they were cast. Those first-generation Italian-Americans, nurtured through the Great Depression and the Great War by their immigrant parents, reshaped and redefined that subculture, enabling future generations of Italian-Americans to claim their share of the American dream and eventually earn a place in the executive suites of corporate America.
We will leave it for future generations to examine and explain the subculture that has evolved for us. To ponder the distance that existed between the Italian American experience and the American Dream. For now, we will simply attempt to describe it.
Much of that subculture was ordained for us by the larger society via the media, e.g., movies, radio, television, etc. We will leave it for a future generation to examine and explain why Allistair Cooke, in a major TV presentation called "America: The Immigrant," selected Alphonse Capone as representative of the contributions made by the Italian immigrant and why the likes of Enrico Fermi were not selected as representative of the contributions made by our people. Pressing further, they may even demand an explanation as to why George "Bugs" Moran, the Gusenberg brothers, Meyer Lansky, Dion O'Banion, the Leopold and Loeb's, Llewellyn Murray "the camel" Humphreys, John "Jake" Guzik, and a host of other notable and nefarious characters were not pulled from the Immigration Files in Washington, D.C., by Alistair Cooke, as being representative of the contributions made by their ethnic groups.
We will leave it for another time and another place to explain the impact this form of psychological genocide had upon the residents of our Little Italy and all of the Little Italies throughout America; another time and another place to explain how the media had programmed the larger society to think of us as a people, encouraging many Italian-Americans, refusing to remain servants to the American Dream, to castrate the vowel from the end of their names in order to become participants in that Dream. We will leave these and other issues for our children and the fullness of time to address.
We will also leave it for future generations to document the journey of the survivors (the children) of this media-induced plague. Psychological genocide is a label more frequently used by those astute in the development of human behavior. For now, let us memorialize this phenomenon of a generation and a people who excelled in virtually everything that the larger society had ordained for them—from digging sewers to enterprises in which only the most talented and courageous could excel. For now, let us simply capture, for posterity, the building matter of an "Once Upon a Time" trilogy—a trilogy that must eventually culminate with our children (our posterity) gaining admittance to and excelling in the executive suites. For now, let us capture, for posterity, a place, a time, and its people! Questa e Cosa Nostra!
Vincent Romano
Aside: Upon my return to Taylor Street, after decades of being away to raise my family, I am reintroduced to everyone as follows: "You remember Josie from Sheridan Park? Well, this is Josie's son." When I won the raffle (a brand-new BMW car) at the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii's Annual Summer Fest, the word that passed through the crowd and the neighborhood was, "Josie’s son won the BMW.”
This site, the Taylor Street Archives, is dedicated to the memory of those Taylor Street mothers who nurtured their Taylor Street children through a time and place unmatched by any other. The Profiles of those strong-willed mothers who nurtured us through the Great Depression (and other, not-so-visible obstacles of similar magnitude) will be found in these archives.
Taylor Street Groups and Clubs
About the Editor: Vincent J. Romano
Vince grew up in and is a product of Taylor Street, Chicago’s Little Italy, the port-of-call for the Chicago area’s Italian American immigrants. Like many generations of Italian Americans who were the offspring of immigrant parents arriving at the turn of the 20th century, his identity was, in part, the creation of the neighborhood and its institutions—and, in a larger sense, the dictates of the larger culture as orchestrated by the media.
Among those institutions was the Jane Addams Hull House, America’s first settlement house, founded in 1889. The Taylor-Halsted area became known as The Hull House Neighborhood, the laboratory upon which Jane Addams tested her sociological theories and formulated her protests against the establishment. As early as 1895, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr described the inner core of the Hull House neighborhood as wall-to-wall Italians.
Later, armed with his graduate degree, Vince was hired as a social worker at Hull House. Included in his duties was being a counselor at the Hull House summer camp, purposefully named the Bowen Country Club, as detailed in the stories of both Jane Addams’ Hull House and the Bowen Country Club. Reversing roles, he now became a contributor to the fashioning identities of waves of first- and second-generation Italian Americans that followed.
It is this unique perspective, which evolved from having been both the recipient of and contributor to that Taylor Street phenomenon, that sets Vince apart from most writers and historians of the Italian American experience.
The Taylor Street Archives reflect his distinctive perspective of a time, a place, and a people that were and can never be again. While lacking political correctness at times, it strives for historical accuracy. The Taylor Street Archives was designed to go beyond family values and the work ethic so often espoused by those who report the Italian American experience.
Vince’s personal odyssey includes his serving as president of the Gregorians, an Association of Italian American Educators. During his presidency, he addressed the media and other institutions via lectures and workshops on the impact of the media on the Italian-American experience. As a result of those efforts, Chicago hired its first TV newscaster of Italian heritage, and the Chicago Tribune was shamed into removing its prologue from its editorial page: “The purpose of a modern-day newspaper is to guide and lead public opinion.”
Vince left the college ranks in 1983 and embarked on a career in the Financial Services industry. Holding the title of Senior Vice President at Morgan Stanley, the Romano Group served the financial and investment needs of businesses and individuals.
His avocation and his passion are the construction and preservation of the history and legacy of the Taylor Street phenomenon—a time, a place, and a people that were and can never be again. A people who defied the profound failure prophecy of our sociological soothsayers. A people and a subculture who, against all odds, had transitioned from having been cast as servants to the dream to participants in it. The Taylor Street Archives, a chronicle of those who lived the Italian American experience as it unfolded for those immigrants who settled into the Legendary Taylor Street, made its debut in 2006.
In 2010, Vince petitioned the 33-member UIC Trustees to address the issue of the Jane Addams’ Hull House Museum’s flawed history being dispensed by the museum to historians, educators, writers, and the public itself. Intentionally ignoring the history and synergy that existed between Jane Addams and the Italian American community, the Museum’s administration refused to even mention that the first invitation to the immigrant community (1891) was written in Italian and signed Signorine Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.
The presentation won over 33 members of the University’s trustees, along with its president, Christopher Kennedy. The UIC Chancellor and the UIC student body were equally impressed. They had determined that the Taylor Street Archives were to be given their rightful place in the Hull House Museum.
Editor: Vincent J. Romano
Associate Editor: Vincent W. Romano
The stories of other contributors and corroborators are recorded in these Archives. They can be located via the “Search” engine. Feel free to reach into your memory bank and add to the legacy of our legendary Taylor Street. I mention a few of the early contributors, corroborators, and collaborators here.
Eleanor Camardo, contributing writer
Luke Capuano, contributing writer
John “Johniie Boy” Parise, corroborator
Ralph Di Lorenzo, corroborator
Fred Mancini, contributing writer
Nick Balice, corroborator
Nick Caruso, corroborator
Frank “Horse” Caruso, corroborator
Joe “Joe Skornz” Esposito, corroborator
Mike “Wacker” Alesia, contributor and corroborator
Sarah Loconte, contributing writer
…and a host of others whose brains were picked in telling our story as they had lived it.