Italian American Museum opens in New York's Little Italy

Italian American Museum

The Italian American Museum in New York City is housed in a building that was Little Italy's community bank a century ago.

By Carlin Romano

Inquirer Book Critic

NEW YORK - When Italian Americans end today's uptown parade on Fifth Avenue for Columbus Day, Joseph Scelsa hopes they'll keep marching right down to the corner of Mulberry and Grand in Little Italy.

Little Italy, you see, is less little this week. A museum, so to speak, grows in Manhattan. After nearly 10 years devoted to what he calls his "labor of love, a passion," Scelsa, 62, a retired sociologist and professor emeritus at Queens College, presided over the opening Wednesday of the Italian American Museum, the first of its kind in New York or the Northeast.

The new museum's president expects plenty of foot traffic today at his shiny new institution, housed in the former Banca Stabile building near Ferrara's, the famous bakery/cafe, even though this is the first year that New York's Italian Americans have agreed on only one Columbus Day Parade - uptown.

"People have said to me, 'Aren't you afraid that people won't come down here?' " remarks Scelsa, elegant in sports jacket and tie as he welcomes visitors - an Indian couple, an Italian family from Denver, an African American couple.

"The answer is no," Scelsa replies. In other words, what are you crazy?

Scelsa points out that Little Italy is a tourist "destination in itself."

"A tour bus stops on the corner - this very corner - every hour," Scelsa continues. "We're also getting classes from schools, and people finding us through the Web."

Scelsa, born in the Bronx of parents whose roots go back to Sicily, Naples and Calabria, says the idea for the museum came in 1999 after he, as dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at City University of New York, put on an exhibit at the New York Historical Society titled, "The Italians of New York."

"It was the most successful one in modern times at the New York Historical Society," he says proudly. "We realized something was missing. There was no Italian American Museum in New York and, from what we understood, in the Northeast."

San Francisco, he concedes, offers the Museo Italo Americano, but it divides its agenda between Italian American history and Italian culture. New Orleans possesses an American Italian Renaissance Foundation Museum founded by businessman Joseph Maselli. Philadelphia, you might say, chips in with the Mario Lanza Museum.

Scelsa researched the title Italian American Museum and found it available. He won certification as a non-profit educational institution in 2001, then organized exhibitions through the Calandra Institute while looking for a permanent home.

The big break came when he met Jerome Stabile III, 77, a retired surgeon and great-grandson of Francesco Stabile, founder of Little Italy's "community" bank in 1885.

Stabile still owned the old bank's three buildings at 189, 187 and 185 Grand St. (also known as 155 Mulberry), and agreed that an Italian American Museum there made a perfect fit.

Scelsa's board of trustees and honorary chairpersons such as Matilda Cuomo, wife of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, helped him raise $4 million to get a mortgage on the three properties, which cost $9.4 million.

One great attraction of the Banca Stabile building was that almost all its artifacts and papers remained. Scelsa and guest curator Nancy Cataldi decided to shape the Museum's opening exhibition accordingly, as "Banca Stabile - Cornerstone of Little Italy."

From 1880 to 1920, the United States experienced the largest immigration of Italians in its history, some 5 million. Whereas only some 5,000 Italians lived in Little Italy in 1885, it's believed 1 million Italian immigrants did so by the 1920s.

Banca Stabile was "integral to the community," says Scelsa, selling steamship tickets, offering mortgages, wiring money, making loans.

He smiles when reminded that signs on nearby Centre Street announce a forthcoming "Museum of the Chinese in America." Scelsa acknowledges that only perhaps 1,000 or so older Italians still live in the neighborhood, now overwhelmingly Chinese-American. But Little Italy, he adds, is still "structurally an Italian neighborhood" because of its institutions, chiefly "restaurants and churches."

Sometime before next fall, Scelsa says, the museum, with a staff of five (Scelsa volunteers and takes no salary), will break through the wall of 187 Grand St. as part of continuing expansion in its three buildings.

Scelsa won't have trouble filling the space. "We have over 3,000 artifacts in storage," he says. "We have Matteo puppets, those life-sized marionettes - 10 of them. We have pushcarts, wine presses, shovels that dug the New York City subway system, wedding dresses."

Expansion, he feels, will reflect the growing pride in heritage among younger Italian Americans, part of the rise, he agrees, in ethnic pride among all groups in America in recent decades. Will the museum present both positive and negative aspects of Italian American history? Scelsa understandably prefers the positive and hopes to "provide a balance."

In that spirit, next year's big exhibition will be on "Italian Americans and Law Enforcement," marking a century since New York Police Lieutenant Giuseppe Petrosino, who went to Sicily in 1909 to investigate the Black Hand, was killed in Palermo.

"I recently met Frank Serpico," says Scelsa, referring to the New York "good" cop portrayed by Al Pacino. "He has become a big supporter. He's going to be giving us some of his memorabilia-his firearms, his badge, and his uniform."

"The museum's mission," Scelsa promises, "is to present the whole story, the true story, whatever that story is. When you say negative - unfortunately, there is some negative. But there's so little of it that it shouldn't overshadow everything else."