Mulberry Street and Little Italy

The street where Neapolitans built their own Naples and still celebrate San Gennaro every September

Local name: Mulberry Street, Little Italy

Collection: The Lower East Side and Chinatown · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

Mulberry Street, with the Empire State Building in the distance · Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is Mulberry Street, the main street of Little Italy. It has appeared on maps since at least 1755. It was named for the mulberry trees that grew along its bend. During the Revolution it was called Slaughter-house Street, for the slaughterhouse at the corner of Bayard Street. From the 1870s on, immigrants from southern Italy began arriving. They settled with people from their home regions: the Genoese on Baxter Street, Sicilians on Elizabeth Street, and Neapolitans on Mulberry. In 1896 a New York Times reporter wrote that the people, the signs and the goods here were as Italian as in any city in Italy. Vendors sold from pushcarts: lemons, fish, cheese, cigars. The Catholic Church in New York was Irish at the time, and noisy Italian processions were frowned upon. In nearby churches Italians were sent to worship in the basement. So they built their own, the Church of the Most Precious Blood. It was begun in 1891. Around 1910 almost ten thousand Italians lived in Little Italy. Later families moved to other neighborhoods, and from the late 1960s Chinatown grew up from the south. But every September Mulberry Street closes to cars for eleven days for the Feast of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples. Neapolitans have celebrated it here since 1926. And at the corner of Grand Street, where the Banca Stabile once stood, is the Italian American Museum.

Visiting

Mulberry Street between Canal Street and Broome Street, at Grand Street. The street is always open; it is full of tourists day and night. The Feast of San Gennaro is in September, when the street is closed and very crowded. The San Gennaro shrine is in the Church of the Most Precious Blood, 113 Baxter Street.