Little Italy

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:20 AM -0400 10/1/01, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>LITTLE ITALY--
>NYHT, 24 December 1946, pg. 15, col. 7: "The little Italys of the
>city hum with holiday spirit."
>WORLD, 17 November 1901, pg. 9, col. 3:  "PICTURESQUE 'LITTLE ITALY'
>AND ITS PEOPLE"
>    "LITTLE ITALY" in Harlem does not bear any resemblance to the
>Italian quarters in Mulberry street, Macdougal street, or any of the
>other Latin quarters in the older part of the city.
>    The section which boasts the name in Harlem lies between Third
>avenue and the East River and runs from One Hundred and Twelfth
>street to One Hundred and Sixteenth street.
>
Thanks, Barry.  Obviously I was hasty in my conjecture that Italian
neighborhoods outside the Mulberry Street one in lower Manhattan
would not have been known as "Little Italy".  Growing up in
Washington Heights in the late 40's and early 50's and going to
junior high school in Harlem, I thought I'd have been familiar with
the use of this sobriquet for the East Harlem Italian neighborhood,
but either I missed it or it had largely dropped out by then.  (I'd
also never heard "Little Italy" in the plural as in the 1946
Herald-Tribune quote.)  I stand corrected, although I wouldn't mind
sitting corrected (perhaps at Rao's) instead.

Larry