The Last Remaining Street In The Neighborhood Once Known As Italian Harlem

At its peak in the 1930s, Italian East Harlem was New York City’s biggest Little Italy—a tenement neighborhood stretching from about 96th Street to 125th Street between Lexington Avenue and the East River.

It’s been several decades since East Harlem was a predominantly Italian area. Following World War II, Italian Americans began moving to the outer boroughs or the suburbs, and Italian Harlem became known as Spanish Harlem, or El Barrio.

But there’s one remaining street that reflects a bit of the neighborhood’s Italian past. That would be Pleasant Avenue, which runs from 114th Street to 120th Street east of First Avenue.

It’s sort of an afterthought of a street. Once the northern end of Avenue A, Pleasant Avenue got a name change in 1879, according to NYC Parks. The new name reflected its then-rural character and was a “nod to its attractive waterfront setting,” wrote Michael Pollack in a 2004 New York Times column.

Those attractive waterfront days were on the wane. “The first Italians arrived in East Harlem in 1878, from Polla in the province of Salerno, and settled in the vicinity of 115^th Street,” stated Gerald Meyer, Ph.D., formerly of Hostos College, City University of New York.

Rows of dumbbell tenements were hastily constructed, along with a handful of elegant walkup buildings. Commerce and industry, including stone works and coal yards, rose along the East River.

Through the early 1900s, an influx of Italians from other regions arrived. (Below, Pleasant Avenue looking west to 115th Street, 1930s)

“In Italian Harlem there was on East 112^th Street, a settlement from Bari; on East 107^th Street between First Avenue and the East River, people from Sarno near Naples; on East 100^th Street between First and Second Avenues, Sicilians from Santiago; on East 100^th Street, many northern Italians from Piscento; and on East 109^th Street, a large settlement of Calabrians,” wrote Meyer.

Rather than being known for the Italian origins of its new residents, Pleasant Avenue earned its rep as a Mafia stronghold. The street’s first murder was reported in 1882, when a man was found on the street with his skull crushed. A New York Times article described the crime and called the street “a misnomer, for it is everything but pleasant.”

That murder never made it back into the news cycle and was apparently unsolved, so it’s impossible to tie it to organized crime. But by the mid-20th century, “Pleasant Avenue would become known as one of the most famous gangland stretches in the history of the mob,” wrote Manny Fernandez in the New York Times in 2010.

“It was where Anthony Salerno, known as Fat Tony, ran the Genovese crime family before he was convicted of racketeering in 1986,” stated Fernandez. “It was where Francis Ford Coppola filmed the scene in The Godfather when Sonny Corleone beats up his brother-in-law.” (Above, off 118th Street in the early 1970s)

Today, the organized crime influence has faded, if not disappeared completely—just like almost all the Italian American residents and businesses that made the area so rich and vibrant. But Pleasant Avenue keeps the neighborhood alive in small ways.

First, there’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel church (third photo), still an active Roman Catholic congregation and one of the first churches in Manhattan that served Italian immigrants. Completed in 1885, the church holds court on 115th Street just off Pleasant Avenue.

Then there’s the Giglio Feast. Held since 1908 (with a recent hiatus), this outdoor festival every August along Pleasant Avenue features the Dancing of the Giglio—a massive decorated tower carried through the Avenue by several men with very strong shoulders. It’s a tradition brought to many U.S. cities, but this is the only Giglio fest to my knowledge in Manhattan.

Finally, Pleasant Avenue also has one of Italian Harlem’s most famous and fabled restaurants, Rao’s (top photo). Originally a saloon owned by beer baron George Ehret, Rao’s became a restaurant when Charles Rao bought it in 1896.

Over the years this family-run space became a haunt for celebrities and the heads of various crime families, according to a 2015 New York Post article.

Rao’s southern Italian cuisine isn’t the main draw. Instead, it’s the restaurant’s regular crowd of power brokers, its unusual way of booking and reserving a table, and the sense of exclusivity that makes it the hardest place to get a dinner reservation in all of New York City.

[Second image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; Fourth image: NYPL Digital Collections; fifth image: mubis.es]