New history of Bay View’s (and Milwauke’s) Italian heritage

The unique patterns of Italian and Sicilian emigration are writ large in Anthony M. Zignego’s new book, Milwaukee’s Italian Heritage: Mediterranean Roots in Midwestern Soil, as are the social, economic, and political forces in Italy that impelled the Italian diaspora in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Based on his UW-Milwaukee master’s thesis, the academic underpins Zignego’s narrative. However, his text is colorful, infused with stories and anecdotes of Milwaukee’s Italian immigrants drawn from oral history and newspaper accounts, letters and memoirs, and supported with data from church and census records. The text is richly illustrated with photos, some that will make Bay View hearts flutter.

A distinguishing feature of the Italian communities in North America, Zignego stresses, was their transient nature. Chain migration and return migration characterize the pattern of many Italians who traveled and worked in Milwaukee, Chicago, Buffalo, and New York City. Some worked in the United States for part of the year, and then returned their native village. Others made several trips back and forth.

Between 1905 and 1920, more than 50 percent of Italian immigrants in America returned to their homes in Italy, often in November. They stayed in Italy until spring when they returned to the States with one or more family members. Astonishingly, 13 million people left Italy between 1880 and 1915, Zignego writes, the largest emigration from any country in recorded history.

Zignego points out that the majority of Italian immigrants settled in the Third Ward, migrating from southern Italy and Sicily, while another, considerably smaller population settled in Bay View, migrating predominantly from central Italy and the Piedmont in northwestern Italy. In 1910, there were 4,788 Italians in the Third Ward and over a thousand in Bay View. Among the Bay View settlers were Giocondo Groppi, who opened a grocery story at Delaware and Russell avenues in 1912; Remigio (Charlie) and Eleanora Cialdini, also grocers, whose store was on Delaware Avenue; and Baptiste Gardetto, who established a bakery on St. Clair Street in 1932 (which grew and grew and was sold to General Mills in 1999).

Zignego devotes three of the book’s five chapters to the experience of Milwaukee’s Italian immigrants, exploring the neighborhoods, living conditions, work, and the social tensions between those in the Third Ward and Bay View.  He delves into family life within the Italian community, including an exploration of the role of women in the development of the Italian culture in Milwaukee, both inside their own ethnic community and among other ethnicities via their roles as shopkeepers who served their neighbors. The final chapter demonstrates how the first and second world wars served to solidify Italian immigrants’ identity politically as Americans while retaining their cultural identity as Italian. During that same period, feste celebrations became popular, which celebrated aspects of their American and Italian identity and heritage.

The book is a fascinating exploration of the Italian migration, including the transient nature of thousands of those émigrés, which disguishes their immigration pattern. Especially appealing are the sections about the establishment of their communities in Bay View, Milwaukee’s Third Ward, and in the Brady Street neighborhood.

Regrettably, the publishers did not include Zignego’s index, which diminishes the book’s utility as a reference work. Despite that lamentable omission, the work is a rich contribution to our knowledge of Milwaukee history, and a fine tribute to the legacy of the people of Italy and Sicily who made Milwaukee their home.

Zignego’s forebears emigrated from Portovenera, Italy (in Luguria, on the Mediterranean, south of Genoa). He grew up in Milwaukee. Leroy Zignego and his brother Vernon Zignego (the author’s grandfather and great uncle) established Zignego Company, Inc. in 1955, a construction company in Waukesha. See calendar for his forthcoming appearances at Boswell Book Company and the Italian Community Center.

Milwaukee’s Italian Heritage: Mediterranean Roots in Midwestern Soil

Anthony M. Zignego
The History Press
Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-59629-836-1
$19.99