A Brief History of Italian Americans in Belleville & Nutley, New Jersey

By Anthony Buccino

The first ten years of my life, my family lived in a four-room cold-water flat on the second floor of the house Grandpa Domenic built on Gless Avenue. Coal furnace days.  

Oct. 2023 - Nutley NJ -- More than a century ago, Italians came to our towns, following the 400-year-old example of Christopher Columbus, in search of a better life. Our Italian ancestors left the old country with little more than a suitcase or what they could carry away from a land that failed to feed them. In America, they found they could work and raise a family. And, with hard work, each generation would prosper from the Italians to the Italian Americans to the American Italians.

The family names up and down MY STREET were virtually all Italian: Lardier, Dimichino, Gingerelli, Troino, Francisco, Bonano, Buccino, Cerami, D’Ambola, Zaino, all the way to the dead end. Such was our enclave at that time. My grandmother’s brothers would visit and share the wine from our grapes.

In the Italian neighborhoods, from Silver Lake in southern Belleville to Avondale in northeastern Nutley, and the neighborhoods in between, street life was the same as vendors called out to the houses from horse-drawn carts. The "bianca-lina" man sold bleach to make the linens white. Salesmen knocked on doors to sell insurance, Fuller brushes, and I remember a legless man yelling from the street to sharpen knives.

The trades brought most of the Italian immigrants to Belleville and Nutley. The Italians worked hard, in the pre-Velodrome quarries of Nutley, in the factory sweatshops in Belleville. They broke their backs digging trenches for the towns’ water mains and sewer systems. They built and worked the Morris Canal along the western border of our towns.

In the Belleville-Nutley neighborhood on Gless Avenue where I grew up sixty years ago, we had a few Polish families and there was one woman who only spoke Greek. My grandmother lived downstairs. She spoke no English. However, when the old women got together they all nodded in their own language. It is no wonder the 25 of us Baby boomers on the block all thought that when we got old we would have to speak another language.

The first ten years of my life, my family lived in a four-room cold-water flat on the second floor of the house Grandpa Domenic built on Gless Avenue. Coal furnace days.

My parents moved in after the war as newlyweds. Dad said he really enjoyed his Army life in California but wanted to be home to look out for Gram. Grandpa Domenic died of pneumonia on February 4, 1929, he was 59. He left five young children, Connie, Dottie, Joe, Angelo, and Val. The last two, my dad and uncle, were born here.

My dad said he was born on Columbia Avenue in Nutley. But Gram lost that to taxes.

Years ago, I was speaking with someone in town about the great Nutley history we have about the vast records on various families – and were there any about the Italian families?

He said he inquired about that with legendary Nutley historian Ann Troy, who said, ‘we don’t keep records on those people.’ So, good luck finding a birth certificate for ‘those people’ from 1918.

By the time I played on the paved street Gless Avenue had become civilized, paved and full of two-family houses. But not too long before, life was different in Grandma’s house in the country.

Grandma owned our house, and the house next door, and the property all the way to the next block. It seemed like paradise to me.

She bundled the fig trees, she swept the dirt and tended the grapevine arbor seemed to go on forever. It was Grandma’s little piece of Italy. I remember the two hand-dug wells in our back yard, and the chickens too. My dad swore by the taste of goat’s milk! I saw no goats. But I digress.

When my grandparents (literally with horses and wagons) moved to Gless Avenue from Passaic Avenue, they continued to live a simple existence as if still on the farm in Laviano, east of Naples, Italy. She harvested vegetables, figs, pears, grapes, and eggs.

My older cousin Marie, who lived in a three-room cold-water flat on the fourth floor, front, on Fifth Street in Newark, said her siblings thought Grandpa was rich because he and Grandma ‘had good food to eat and there was food available all the time and they lived in a big house with a big, big yard and could run as much as they liked and not worry about getting run over and no one seemed angry. And when they left, they carried bags of vegetables and fruits.’

Marie recalled Sunday visits, (long before my time), when Grandma would cut the head off a chicken and hang it to drain in the sink, or later the bathtub, then cook it and serve it with macaroni to the family with garden tomato gravy (we never called it sauce) for Sunday dinner.

I do have memories of headless chickens but I had to be very young!

Belleville must have seemed like Colorado to my Newark relatives!

All through the Depression and long after, Grandma had rents coming in, and her “farm” full of fresh food in the dead end that was Gless Avenue. On her open-air back porch, she left on the railings in the sun her tomatoes, peppers, and gourds. She grew vegetables galore and raised chickens, pigs and had a cow, too.

Small farms, such as my grandfather’s, provided food, goat’s milk, chickens, eggs, and families drew water from hand-dug wells on many of these streets. Grapevines were familiar in town and compare’ gathered each fall to make the wine of their forefathers.

In the later days of the 1800s, when the largest influx of Italians immigrated to Belleville and Nutley, the town border was an imaginary government line, as most Italian families in one town had relatives in the other town.

Nutley and Belleville were similarly dotted with old-family mansions and crowded apartments. In the Italian neighborhoods, among the extended families living within a few houses of each other, there were always gardens, fig trees, tomato plants, other favorites.

Italians crisscrossed town borders, attending celebrations and patron saint feasts, religious celebrations, communions, confirmations, and weddings.

The towns had their social clubs where men from the same villages and dialects gathered to talk about the old country and politics, while sipping espresso and smoking stogies.

Sometimes I swear in Italian. Or, I think I’m swearing in Italian. As second/third generation Italian, my family didn’t push me to learn Italian. It was the language they used when they DIDN’T want us to know what they were saying to each other.

Many of our "mitigan" friends learned the slang of our fathers as we did, and also appreciated our cooking. Pulitzer Prize winner Russell Baker wrote about his time growing up in Belleville and his best friend Nino! And his friend’s Italian foods.

By the time we baby boomers grew up, the farms were mostly gardens. On our street, two-family houses sprouted on all but two lots – where we played tackle football without any equipment!

I’m sure we all could tell a similar tale of our Italian ancestors. And through sites like Ancestry dot com, we can learn more and more and possibly trace our great-great grandparents in ‘the old country’.

What we really need to do now. Today, tomorrow, is preserve our family history for future generations.

I blinked and virtually all of my older relatives are gone. Don’t be the wish some day your child or grandchild makes, If Only I sat down with mom and dad …”

We Italian Americans of Nutley and Belleville are proud of our ancestors and their sacrifice to make a better life for us. We continue many traditions from the old country, especially with meals at holidays. And we continue to work towards the goal of a better life that our forefathers gave up so much to make real for us.

Preserve that heritage. Share your history … starting with your own family.

THANKS, NUTLEY UNICO

Thanks again to Nutley Chapter of Unico National for inviting me to speak on my Nutley Belleville Italian Heritage at the Christopher Columbus ceremony ahead of the parade.

Many folks asked afterwards about the book I mentioned when the mic cut out. My presentation was based on four essays. Two essays After the Titanic and Moving Down Meacham are included in Greetings From Belleville. Grandma’s House in the Country is included in Sister Dressed Me Funny. Italian American Roots in Belleville and Nutley, New Jersey is online.

Photo Gallery: Nutley-Belleville Columbus Day & Italian Heritage Month Parade 2023

WW2 Letters Home From
The South Pacific

Cherry Blossom Press

A Father's Place - An Eclectic Collection

Sister Dressed Me Funny

Rambling Round - Inside and Outside at the Same Time

Retrieving Labrador Days dog tales in prose and verse

Greetings From Belleville, New Jersey collected writings

This Seat Taken? Notes of a Hapless Commuter

Nutley Notables, Volume One

Nutley Notables, Volume Two

Nutley, NJ, Books

Belleville, NJ, Books

WW2 Letters Home From The South Pacific

Military History

WW2 Letters Home From The South Pacific

American Boy: Pushing Sixty 

Canned

Retrieving Labrador Days

Sixteen Inches On Center

Sometimes I Swear In Italian

Voices on the Bus

Yountakah Country

Shop Amazon Most Wished For Items