Bronx Oldtimer Embraces the New “Little Italy”
Latino and Albanian Immigrants Bring Different flavor to Bronx’s “Little Italy”
Gene DiSilvio, 63, walked into the Arthur Avenue Retail Market in the Bronx with a large box of Italian cookies and offered them to anyone who looked interested. Beside him stood a life-size plastic figure of Al Capone smoking a cigar, and a display case with pictures of family and famous visitors like Tony Bennett. DiSilvio’s son, Paul DiSilvio, 33, owns “La Casa Grande Tobacco Shop,” a store in the market. At the tobacco counter five Latino employees each hand roll a cigar every thirty seconds.
“This will be here forever,” said DiSilvio, a retired police officer, opening his arms and looking around him. As he smiles his wrinkles are drawn up into their own individual smiles.
The Italian market has been around since before the construction of its current incarnation. In 1940, Mayor LaGuardia built the moderate sized market place for the dozens of immigrants that were selling fresh Italian goods from carts along Arthur Avenue in the Fordham section of the Bronx. Like the market, many of Arthur Avenue’s current businesses were started generations ago by Italian immigrants and are continued by children and grandchildren today.
But the Dominican cigar rollers, Albanian restaurateurs and other groups of Hispanic, and Caribbean people in the area make up today’s generation of immigrants. Some of these non-Italian ethnic groups have become both the backbone and competition for the Italian business owners whose sons and daughters have taken different career paths and moved to surrounding suburbs.
“My friends from growing up all thought they were bettering themselves, moving out to Jersey or Westchester,” said DiSilvio. “Now, when they come back they say, ‘Look what’s happening to the neighborhood.’ And I say to them, ‘Well, where’d you go?’ When people move out, new people are going to move in.”
DiSilvio likes his new neighbors, he said. Three Hispanic couples recently moved on to his street near Pelham Bay and they are very nice families with little kids, he said.
“People are scared of minorities,” DiSilvio said. “I’m not.”
As a retired New York police officer, DiSilvio is not anxious about the growing Albanian presence on Arthur Avenue as competition. But, some locals worry that the Albanian immigrants opening shop in the “real Little Italy” may erode the Italian heritage that their ancestors established years ago, he said.
DiSilvio thinks that the Albanian and other foreign presence is “a good thing.” Many of the Albanian run restaurants on Arthur have “kept the Italian flavor,” said DiSilvio, “because they are Albanians that are actually from Italy.”
Small red flags with a two-headed eagle, Albania’s emblem, are on display in some stores but Italy’s red, green and white still dominate the sidewalk’s canopies and windows. Many Albanian restaurants serve traditional Italian food. Very few places offer strictly Albanian cuisine.
Just south of Arthur Avenue the old-fashioned charm disappears. Cars sit in traffic on East Fordham Road, a stretch lined with gas stations, fast food restaurants, and discount furniture and retail stores.
As many Italian families have moved out of the Bronx, the smell of salsa drifts out of kitchen windows more than the smell of tomato sauce.
The playground on Arthur Avenue, where DiSilvio grew up shooting hoops and hanging out, is now used by mostly Latinos doing the same things.
“They built bocce courts for the Italians,” said DiSilvio. “I don’t think there is anybody who is going to use it.”
