A gregarious local fixture, Capossela recently self-published Dom’s, An Odyssey, billed on Amazon as a true account of a single night at one of Boston’s most famous Italian restaurants of the 1970s, during which unfold stories of “sex, the Mafia, food, drugs,” the North End of the 1950s, “celebrities, sports betting, social revolution, rock ’n’ roll, wine, history, and child labor.” Today the streets are well-tended and photogenic, and for the final class, students and teacher gathered in a lovely green across from the Paul Revere House, where they were joined by North End native and historian Dom Capossela, proprietor for 37 years of the now-shuttered Dom’s Restaurant. The masses of Italians that flowed into the North End on the heels of the departing Irish and at the apex of the Jewish settlement in the late 19th and early 20th century found a neighborhood in physical decay, a rundown, overcrowded hodgepodge of tenements. North End historian and author Dom Capossela talks about the neighborhood to students in James Pasto’s MET summer course. Pricey boutiques are sprouting in what is being increasingly referred to as an extension of the city’s waterfront. Gone, Pasto notes, are most of the barber shops of his youth, and the butchers with skinned rabbits hanging in the windows. With an ever-morphing ethnic makeup, the once drug- and violence-plagued streets are now gentrified to the point where diminutive studio apartments are widely sought after, despite steep rents. Within the bounds of this one colorful and iconic neighborhood, where tourists from around the world queue up for cannolis at Mike’s Pastry, the class considered global, national, and local influences. The chefs and owners may commute from Quincy or Dedham, but the Old World trattoria culture continues to flourish. Those who doubt that need only partake of the ricotta pie at Modern Pastry or the pappardelle with wild boar sauce or steak tympano at Bricco. But unlike New York City’s Little Italy, which has been reduced to just a few blocks of Lower Manhattan and has been primped for tourists, Boston’s North End has retained its Italian authenticity-even if that authenticity is kept alive and vibrant by proxy, says Pasto. That generation is gone, and like Pasto, who commutes from Sandwich, its children have mostly moved out of the city.Īt its peak Italian population, the North End had 28 Italian physicians, 6 Italian dentists, 8 funeral homes, and along just one block of Hanover Street, 4 or 5 barbershops. He was born in the North End, his childhood mischief monitored by the paisan nonas and nonos parked in folding chairs outside the cheek-by-jowl brick walk-ups. Offered through BU’s Metropolitan College, the four-credit class, titled A Social History of Boston’s North End, examined “changes in the area from the first Puritan settlement to the current period of gentrification, with central attention given to the dynamics of culture change among the Italian immigrants,” according to the course description. So as the students learned more about the place, Pasto, a College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program senior lecturer, asked them to contemplate the following: “Is the North End still Italian?” It is now estimated at a scant 3 percent. But its Italian-American population peaked in the 1930s and continues to decline. The popular ad was filmed a few blocks from the former North End home of the Prince factory.īostonians and suburbanites continue to flock to the now-gentrified North End’s Italian restaurants. Mention the neighborhood to people of a certain age, and they’re likely to recall one of television’s longest running commercials: a young boy named Anthony being summoned home by his mama for his Wednesday Prince spaghetti supper. Spreading from the inviting, often tourist-clogged Hanover Street, the narrow streets date as far back as 1680, and have been home to a succession of immigrants, from the Puritans and American Revolutionary War patriots to Jews, Irish, and of course, Italians. By the final class, which was capped with a seven-course feast at Bricco, the students felt a kinship with the North End’s densely settled, cobbled byways. In James Pasto’s summer course on the history and culture of Boston’s North End, students explored the colorful neighborhood, famed for its Italian restaurants, bakeries, and religious street festivals, on foot and by studying a trove of firsthand written accounts. This is one of a series of articles about visits to one class, on one day, in search of those building blocks at BU. Twitter Facebook Class by class, lecture by lecture, question asked by question answered, an education is built.
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