Italian Settlement in Milwaukee and Bay View

Among the early ethnic groups to settle in Bay View, the Italians were relative latecomers who did not have a settlement of significant size in the survey area until the first decade of the twentieth century. There were two general phases of Italian immigration to America. During the pre-1880 period, Italian immigrants were predominantly from northern Italy, the most prosperous and powerful region in what became a unified country in 1870. These immigrants, who included well-educated professionals and skilled craftsmen, established small communities in many American cities. Early Milwaukeeans with Italian surnames included George Laurena, a watchmaker, and Nelson Francesco, a shoemaker, who were both listed in the first city directory published in 1847. By most historical accounts, however, the city’s first Italian immigrant of record was Michael Biagi who was born in Tuscany and settled in Milwaukee in 1860. He established the St. Paul Hotel on what is today South Second Street.

After 1880, the Italian-American communities began to change as large numbers of immigrants from southern Italy and Sicily began pouring into the American melting pot. These newcomers, compared with the earlier groups of Italian immigrants, tended to be less educated farmers. By 1910, Italian immigrants had established three small communities in Milwaukee. The majority lived in the city’s Third Ward in an area bounded by East Michigan Street, North Broadway, the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan. Italians began moving into this area during the early 1890’s after the Irish began leaving the neighborhood following a devastating fire in 1892 that destroyed many homes and businesses.

A second group of immigrants, primarily from Sicily, began moving into a neighborhood north of the central business district near the East Brady Street commercial strip about 1910. A third, small Italian community of immigrants from central and northern Italy was established in Bay View near the sprawling Illinois Steel Company rolling mill (formerly the Milwaukee Iron Company). It was common among the early Italian immigrants to group themselves in colonies according to the provinces or hometowns from which they originated.

Carlo Basso was reportedly the first Italian to settle in Bay View about 1890. Many Bay View Italians were called Marchegiani because they came from a large region in northern Italy called “Le Marche.” Within this region, many immigrants came from Ancona and Pessaro provinces. The towns in Ancona where these people lived included Fossombrone, Brugnetto, Santa Ehia, and Monte Burca. Some Bay View Italians also came from the Piedmont region, which contains the famous capitol city of Turin. Many Bay View immigrants from this region came from the town of Courgne’ and Bosconero. In 1926, the Milwaukee Journal reported that about 20 percent of Milwaukee’s 20,000 Italians (about 4,000) lived in Bay View. That figure evidently included first and second generation Italians born in this country in addition to the Italian immigrants.

The Italians, from the provinces of southern and central Italy, came primarily from the Puglia (provinces of Bari and Foggia), Abruzzi (provinces of Chieti and Aquila), and Campania (provinces of Naples, Salerno and Avelline). By 1910, the Italian population of Milwaukee could be divided as follows: Sicilians 65 percent, Southern Italians 20 percent, Central and Northern Italians 15 percent. Many Italians in Bay View worked as laborers in the rolling mill and in the Milwaukee street railway car shops at the corner of South Kinnickinnic Avenue and East Mitchell Street. Some immigrants found work in the large Pfister and Vogel tannery located on East Stewart Street at the north end of the survey area (MI 426-4, -5).

Fewer than 800 Italians lived in Milwaukee in 1900, although total Italian immigration to the United States by the turn of the twentieth century was estimated to be about five million. According to the 1910 U.S. Census, the Italian population of Milwaukee mushroomed to 4,685, of which 3,554 were born in Italy, and 1,131 were born in America. About 300 foreign-born Italians were living in Bay View in 1910, making it the second largest Italian community in the city outside of the Third Ward. After 1910, the Italian population in Bay View continued to increase.

In 1913, Gioconda Groppi, an Italian immigrant, founded a food market at 1441 East Russell Avenue (MI 392-33, see Commerce chapter) to serve the growing Bay View Italian population. This market survives today and is operated by descendants of the founder. The Groppis were one of several Bay View families from the Tuscany region of central Italy. The rapid increase in Milwaukee’s Italian population reflects an unprecedented period of immigration between 1900 and 1910, when ten million Italians settled in America.

Many of the Bay View Italians originally migrated to the mining camps of Northern Michigan and Wisconsin before journeying to Milwaukee at the turn-of-the-century to work in the Illinois Steel Company’s rolling mill (formerly the Milwaukee Iron Company). Some of the original Italian families in the survey area were the Bassos, Gardettos, Barbieris, Marinos, and Boggios.

The Bay view Italians lived in an area that previously was inhabited by Irish, English, Welsh, and Scottish immigrants and descendants. Most Bay View Italians lived within an area bounded by Lake Michigan, South Superior Street, the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad right-of-way, and East Russell Avenue.

For many years, Italian Roman Catholics living in Bay View worshipped at the Immaculate Conception Church on East Russell Avenue (MI 391-20). Initially, the Italian immigrants were not easily integrated into the English-speaking parish. As an alternative, in 1916, Father Fadanelli of Blessed Virgin of Pompeii Church (the city’s first Italian parish in the Third Ward) started a mission for Italian-speaking Catholics in a building at South Logan and East Conway Streets. Apparently, no services were offered, but several nuns gave religious instructions to Italian children. This program lasted about two years and was succeeded by another mission operated by the Jesuit Order and Father Lyons of the Catholic Instruction League. Sunday services were conducted and workers from the League taught religion classes. In 1920, a third mission was established in a store on the corner of East Russell and South Wentworth Avenues, across from the G. Groppi Market. Religious services were conducted by several priests from the St. Francis Seminary located south of the survey area in the suburb city of St. Francis. The mission faded within a few years as Italians began to be assimilated into the Immaculate Conception Parish. Although there was once some agitation in Bay View to create an Italian-speaking, so-called national parish, it was an idea that never garnered widespread popularity in the Italian community.

In 1934, a group of Italian women in Bay View founded the religious society of “Our Lady of Lourdes” at Immaculate Conception Parish, which worked toward a goal of bringing an Italian priest to the parish several times a year to hear the women’s confessions in their native language. During the early 1940s, their goal was realized. Italian families also became more active in the Immaculate Conception parish when they sent their children to the parish grade school.

By the mid-1920s, the Bay View Italian community was firmly established in the survey area, but the closing of the Bay View rolling mill (then known as the United States Steel Corporation) in 1929, coupled with the economic austerity of the Great Depression during the 1930s, left many Italians in the survey area without steady employment. With the return of economic prosperity during the post-World War II years, Bay View Italians began dispersing throughout the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Many of the descendants of the original Bay View Italian immigrants still make their homes in the survey area. Although Italian-Americans live throughout the survey area, the original immigrant neighborhood at the northern part of Bay View retains reminders of its Italian past in such businesses as the G. Groppi Market and Club Garibaldi, a popular tavern and meeting hall that hosted many Italian social and community gatherings since the 1930s

(La Pianai, 1915:5-63; Gurda, 1979: 39-45; Meloni, 1969:34-46; Carini, n.d.: 3-14; Andreozzi 1974: all of an unpublished manuscript.)