New York to Correct Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge Misspelling

After fifty-four years, the misspelling of Italian explorer, Giovanni da Verrazzano’s name will be corrected on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge spanning Staten Island and Brooklyn through legislation signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Following Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the new world and the return of the Magellan expedition after circumnavigating the globe, Verrazzano was commissioned by the…

The 1911 Dillingham Immigration Commission Report

In 1911, the Dillingham Commission, consisting of bipartisan, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate members, produced a forty-one-volume report on immigration in the Unites States warning that the influx from Southern (overwhelmingly Italians) and Eastern Europe threatened America’s way of life and should be drastically reduced. The Commission’s conclusions provided the bases for immigration quota…

Christopher Columbus: Entrepreneur

Like a modern entrepreneur, fifteenth-century explorer, Christopher Columbus, raised capital for an expedition to discover a western passage to Asia. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 placed control of the land routes to the lucrative Asian spice trade in Ottoman-Turk hands. Columbus first proposed the Atlantic Ocean route to Joao II of Portugal in 1485.…

Italians in Wisconsin

Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal opened transportation for immigrants to the U.S. Midwest. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wisconsin expanded from a frontier territory into a fully functioning state (1848) mainly due to migration and immigration, the majority arriving from northern Europe and Germany, with a smaller number coming from southern…

Italians in Louisiana

In the early 1700s, Neapolitan born, Henri de (Enrico) Tonti, a colleague of Robert de la Salle, explored Louisiana and settled in the New France colony. A leader in the community, North Tonti Street in New Orleans honors him and is located just south of Lake Pontchartrain. After the Civil War, planters in southern states…

Italians in Texas

Like Christopher Columbus, Italians were often in the employ of the Spanish court during the era of discovery. On Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s 1540-42 epic expedition from Mexico to Kansas, later termed the search for the “Seven Cities of Gold,” his soldiers included men named Loro, Napolitano, and Romano. Neapolitan, Henri di Tonti, was an…

Italians in California

After gold was discovered in 1849, the first Italian immigrants left northern Italy, and settled in the Mother Lode near Sacramento. Domenico Ghirardelli was a Genoa confectioner’s apprentice. He arrived in California during the Gold Rush and opened a general store for miners. Eventually, his chocolate making operations occupied what is now Ghirardelli Square. Andrea…