Aspects of Italian Immigration to Philadelphia
" \ T 7 H O L E STREETS formerly occupied by Irish-American \ / \ / families have become populated by Italians," noted an * • Irish priest of South Philadelphia in the ISCJO'S. A housing investigator studied the new community: "The black-eyed children rolling and tumbling together, the gaily colored dresses of the women, and the crowds of street vendors all give this neighborhood a wholly foreign appearance," she wrote. Because the newcomers included no historians and because few Philadelphians paid them any heed, the story of the Italian immigration to Philadelphia and the growth of the Italian-American colony from a handful of people in the colonial period to upwards of half a million Italian-Americans today has yet to be told. Why did the Italians come here? What were they leaving? What did they seek? What skills, attitudes, and contributions did they bring to the city? How were they received? So long have these questions gone unanswered and so complex are they that only a partial answer can be provided. The nineteenth-century histories of Philadelphia did not concern themselves with these immigrants; the immigrants themselves produced few journalists, and, if there were diarists, their diaries have yet to be discovered. Little exists to record what was a great wave of humanity. In the colonial era only a few Italians trickled into Philadelphia. Most of them, particularly the priests, the sailors, and the intellectuals, were from northern Italy; a few musicians came from southern Italy. By 1850 it is likely that there were about 200 Italians in the city—artists, singers, and political dissidents. In 1870, census records tabulated 300. By 1880, there were 1,656 within the city limits, a