The Fall of Little Italy: Manhattan’s Lost Italian Neighborhood

The Fall of Little Italy: Manhattan’s Lost Italian Neighborhood Manhattan’s Little Italy once packed roughly 10,000 Italian immigrants into two square miles around Mulberry Street — a neighborhood shaped by tenements, pushcarts, family businesses, regional Italian communities, and the Feast of San Gennaro. Today, Little Italy has been reduced to only a few blocks of restaurants north of Canal Street. This documentary tells the story of how one of New York City’s most famous immigrant neighborhoods gradually disappeared. There was no single disaster. Instead, Little Italy was reshaped by several forces over decades: a proposed highway that was defeated but still encouraged property owners to sell, changing immigration patterns after 1965, the expansion of neighboring Chinatown, the rise of the “Nolita” real-estate identity in the 1990s, and rising rents that pushed out businesses and families that had survived for generations. Along the way, we trace the people, businesses, traditions, and institutions that defined historic Little Italy — from Mulberry Street and the disputed origins of America’s first pizzeria to the Feast of San Gennaro and longtime residents who watched the neighborhood transform around them. The Feast of San Gennaro turns 100 this September. Almost none of the community it was originally created for is still there to see it. This is the story of Little Italy, Manhattan — how one of New York City’s most famous neighborhoods rose, changed, and nearly disappeared.