Charlestown historian Dan Casey decided on the subject for his follow-up to “The Green Square Mile: The Story of the Charlestown Irish” while dining with a friend at Gioacomo’s Restaurant on Hanover Street. And with his wife’s support, Casey has begun work on a treatment for “America’s Italian Neighborhood,” a documentary that will, he hopes, offer a visual history of the North End, the city’s Italian enclave, in the same way his earlier film traced the origins of Charlestown’s Irish.
What the 70-year-old Brooklyn native didn’t expect, however, were the number of similarities between the immigration experiences of the Irish and Italian populations he discovered as he began researching the current project.
“The pattern was very close, even if the Irish came a generation before,” Casey said. “I just didn’t expect the parallels.”
According to U.S. Census, 134 “Italians” were living in Boston Proper in 1850, but the city was far smaller and Italy’s unification was a decade away. “We know there were at least 1,000 Italians in the North End by the 1880s, and more than 7,000 by 1895,” Casey said. “Like the Irish immigrants who came in droves into Charlestown after 1860, the first Italian newcomers were extremely poor. By 1910, there was a period of major change in the North End, as the Italian population swelled and eventually reached nearly 40,000. “
Over time, as the Italian newcomers emigrated to the North End from places, like Avellino near Naples, Sciacca in Sicily, and the southern provinces, a unique dialect and culture was born in the North End. Which merged native dialects and traditions.
Like Charlestown, Casey said the North End was home to scores of social clubs, societies and religious festivals honoring patron saints carried over from the “Old Country.”
Many Italian-Americans, among them hundreds of North Enders, enlisted in the Armed Forces during World War I, and, after “The Great War,” there was a second wave of Italian immigration. They, too, came to the North End, and they came to stay.
There was intense discrimination against Italian immigrants in the early years that persisted into later decades. The 1927 execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti at Charlestown State Prison was a travesty that highlighted the intensity. The two Italian-American laborers who were likely wrongfully convicted of the 1920 armed robbery and murder of two pay-clerks in South Braintree for which they were sentenced to death, Casey said.
In a display of solidarity, 200,000 mourners, including thousands from the North End, lined the funeral procession for the men. “Fifty years later, Gov. Dukakis would grant them pardons,” Casey said.
World War II brought more bad fortune for the North End.
“The Hitler-Mussolini War, with Italy on ‘the wrong side,’ was another event that slowed progress,” Casey wrote in his film proposal. “Despite the fact that over 300,000 Italian Americans were in uniform, and more than 11,600 died in combat, the war was a blow to North End pride. Though, in the end, they would again prove themselves loyal and patriotic, they experienced incredible humiliation. Some, including Gold Star mothers and parents of the military, were labeled ‘enemy aliens.’”
After World War II, there was another, though smaller, influx of Italian immigrants to the North End. And, many veterans and younger families were finding homes and new lives in the suburbs. “In a way, this was the beginning of a kind of regeneration of the neighborhood,” Casey said.
Like Charlestown, the North End soon faced new challenges in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s as the Callahan Tunnel, the Central Artery and urban renewal threatened the neighborhood. These drastic changes and, later, gentrification and “the Big Dig” would displace neighborhood residents, Casey said.
“There was still enough spirit in the North End to oppose dislocation and devastation that would destroy the integrity of the neighborhood. If there weren’t, there would be no North End today,” Casey said.
So far, Casey has interested Italy’s Consul-General in Boston Liborio Stellino, as well many others. He hopes to have appearances by State Speaker of the House Sal DiMasi, City Councilor Sal LaMattina and Mayor Thomas M. Menino. All have North End memories to share. They’ve seen how, in spite of change, neighborhood has preserved its character and traditions over the years, Casey said.
For LaMattina, whose grandparents emigrated to the North End from Sicily in the early 1900s, the project has personal significance.
“After viewing ‘The Green Square Mile’ and learning about the Irish, I’m really excited to see the North End get the same treatment,” LaMattina said.
Meanwhile, Casey is content to try to duplicate the success of “The Green Square Mile” by capturing the history of one of Boston’s great ethnic neighborhoods on film.
If you’re interested in contributing to “America’s Italian Neighborhood,” Dan Casey can be contacted at 617-242-5509.

A developer’s proposal to change the usage of a building slated for Parcel 39A on First Avenue in the Navy Yard was met with opposition at a Charlestown Neighborhood Council Development Committee meeting last week as representatives expressed concern about financing for the project, parking provisions and other issues.
Boston-based Kenney Development Company Inc. has announced plans to build a 44,381 square-foot, four-story residential building at a lot adjacent to the Constitution Inn YMCA. The estimated cost of the project is $22 million. The developer recently filed a Notice of Project Change with the Boston Redevelopment Authority to amend its original proposal to build an office building on the site, which won the approval of the Neighborhood Council in 2001.
Kenney Development Executive Vice President and Principal Robert F. Kenney maintained that while the usage of the building had changed, its envelope would remain consistent with the plan that was approved by the BRA and National Park Service in 2001.
“It’s substantially similar, and that’s the main factor we have to address today,” Kenney said.
CNC representative Bill Galvin criticized Kenney, a former BRA director, for not moving forward with the project immediately following its initial approval.
“You have land-banked this building for seven years with the approval of the BRA while other offers have been rescinded,” Galvin said. “Charlestown’s interests would have been better served by issuing a new [Request for Proposals] and bidding process. Planning is about designating certain places for certain uses for the common good.”
In response, Kenney said: “As someone who has developed four buildings in the Navy Yard, we don’t land-bank. As soon as we can get financing, we’ll be ready to go.”
Kenney added that he had received a commitment for the project from Sovereign Bank in 2004 and that he expected financing would be in place for a spring 2009 groundbreaking.
CNC representative Dave Whelan questioned building more residential units in the Navy Yard in the aftermath of the troubled HabrorView development and suggested that the developer explore retail or mixed use instead.
“There are 224 high-end condo units doing nothing,” Whelan said. “What makes you think this is going to do any better?”
Kenney countered: “If HarborView is going to be condos, we couldn’t even think of starting [construction] until they’re substantially sold. Any financial institute wants to know what’s going to happen with HarborView.”
Parking provisions also posed concerns for some CNC members, since only 34 of the 64 parking spaces for 49 residential units would be located in an on-site, below-grade garage; the remaining 30 spaces would be master leased from nearby Building 199.
“We don’t have a contract, but [Building 199 tenant] MGH is obligated to provide parking,” Kenney said.
BRA Project Manager Geoff Lewis added that the BRA was in the process of finalizing the parking allocation for Building 199 and the issue would be resolved this summer.
This came as little consolation to Whelan, however. “I think it’s a little premature to be voting on this now,” he said.
Meanwhile, CNC Chairman Tom Cunha requested that the developer provide documentation of the parking agreement prior to its next meeting with the Neighborhood Council.

CREDIT: Courtesy of Regan Communications Group.

CAPTION: An aerial view of HarborView in the Navy Yard.

A subsidiary of Newark, N.J.-based Prudential Insurance Company of America foreclosed on the troubled HarborView development in the Navy Yard in December and has taken ownership of the property, according to a June 24 Boston Redevelopment Authority memorandum to its board of directors. The BRA board of directors was scheduled to vote on the matter Tuesday.
HarborView is an 11-story, 325,000 square foot development, located at 250 First St.,, that contains 224 residential units, 29,000 square feet of residential space and 334 below-grade parking spaces.
According to the document, the BRA entered into a Land Disposition Agreement with Navy Yard Four Associates LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, in November of 2004. Navy Yard Four Associates LLC completed construction on HarborView last summer, but was unable to market the units for sale at this time due to “the decline in the housing market and turmoil in the mortgage business,” the document states.
In regard to project changes, the document further states that the Prudential-owned subsidiary “has explored all options regarding the project including but not limited to, selling [it] to another party, attempting to market [it] as condominium units as previously approved or repositioning [it] as a rental properties.” The subsidiary has opted to offer the units as rental units at this time and “will convert back to home ownership when the market allows,” according to the document.
In August of 2007, Turner Construction Company of New York City filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court against the Trammel Crowe Company alleging that the Dallas developer misled the construction company into finishing the project, even though it lacked sufficient funding. The lawsuit also claims that Trammell Crowe defaulted on loan payments to Prudential and Eurohypo AG, an international bank that specializes in real estate and public finance.
Also in August, Trammel Crowe announced that HarborView, which was originally developed as a condominium complex, would be “repositioned for sale as an upscale, mixed-use rental community,” partly in response to slow unit sales.

Super Duck Excursions scored a landmark victory last week when the First Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a July 2007 decision ordering the Autoport-based venture to change its name and cartoon duck logo because of a copyright infringement against rival Boston Duck Tours.
The appellate judges ruled against the decision handed down by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton that granted Boston Duck Tours a preliminary injunction prohibiting the fledgling company, then known as Super Duck Tours, from using the term “duck tours” and its cartoon duck logo in promotional materials. Immediately following Gorton’s decision last year, Super Duck Tours changed its name to “Super Duck Excursions” and replaced its duck logo with a cartoon sea captain.
Super Duck Excursions spokesman Lanny Johnson expressed satisfaction with the appellate court’s decision.
“The lawsuit, from our perspective, maintains the basic tenets of competition and being able to provide tourists and visitors to Boston with a fully-described choice of tour ventures,” Johnson said. “We appreciate the restoration of the right to move forward as Super Duck Tours, and we will evaluate whether to make an immediate name change.”
Despite the loss for Boston Duck Tours, Cindy Brown, the company’s general manger and part owner, said confusion between the two companies is no longer as prevalent as it was before the preliminary injunction was filed last summer.
“We were disappointed that the judge overturned the injunction, but we’re relieved that it’s all over and we can both go forward with our own businesses,” Brown said.
Boston Duck Tours was launched in 1994 and uses modified World War II-era amphibious vehicles to navigate the Charles River, while Super Duck Tours had its maiden voyage in Boston last June and uses state-of-the-art Hydra Terra vehicles to tour the Boston Harbor.