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I wish I could go back in time and see how Newark's Little Italy looked like but unfortunately I can't. Does anybody know how it was like back then or have any stories?
That's where my Italian great grandparents immigrated to. I found some great info reading the census records from that time. They had occupational info, sometimes whether they owned a home, household members. One of my family's occupations said "vegetable peddler, head of household." Very interesting! Not sure if you're looking that far back or not.
A terrific documentary from many years ago called The Sopranos touches on this subject in some of its episodes.
While many episodes of the Sopranos may have stated or hinted they were in one part of NJ, scenes were actually shot elsewhere. Nutley, NJ for instance flat out refused permission for filming of that show within their town.
For instance the "Newark Church" that Tony takes AJ to see when explaining about how Italians built things to last because they "gave a s**it), is actually located in Jersey City.
Keeping on the Soprano's theme, a few funerals/burials take place in cemeteries where you can clearly see highways running through. Well the state of NJ when citing highways and such wasn't going to let a pesky detail such as internments stop them; and often land was taken anyway with remains in whole or part dug up and removed.
The "part" is that in some instances only enough land was taken to do what that state wanted to do; that and or no one is exactly sure even when supposedly all remains were moved that is what truly happened.
See Michael B. Immerso's Newark's Little Italy: The Vanished First Ward. It has lots of old photographs of the neighborhood, and some commentary on daily life. Unfortunately their are few physical remains of the old neighborhood, most of which was flattened to make room for 280, the Pavilion and Colonnade apartments, and public housing. A visit to Nutley or Lydnhurst is as close as you're going to get in the region.
See Michael B. Immerso's Newark's Little Italy: The Vanished First Ward. It has lots of old photographs of the neighborhood, and some commentary on daily life. Unfortunately their are few physical remains of the old neighborhood, most of which was flattened to make room for 280, the Pavilion and Colonnade apartments, and public housing. A visit to Nutley or Lydnhurst is as close as you're going to get in the region.
Route 280 did in many ways what the Cross Bronx Expressway did; flatten, level, disrupt and or split apart a once thriving community.
But that was "progress" from the 1950's through 1970's; it was all about motor vehicles and highway construction.
No rioting went on in the Italian section during the riots.
They knew better than to screw around with The Boys.
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