By Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor, Blogfinger.net
Last month I posted a piece on a unique book, published 2020, by photographer Susan Meiselas who collected amateur generations-old photos taken on the rooftops of Little Italy in New York City. Here is a link to that introduction:
We are going to present some of those photographs which will resonate especially with those of you who are familiar with Italian immigrant life of the last century and still, even now, you may find images that you would understand echoing forward from that era.
Of course, I am not Italian, but I know what this is about coming from an immigrant family and experiencing life at the Lower East Side.
When Eileen and I lived in Manhattan we often took the subway to Little Italy, Chinatown and remnants of the lower east side Jewish neighborhoods.
When our boys were to be bar mitzvahed, we went there to ancient shops which sold yarmulkes and prayer shawls and we bought them from people who seemed like they had been there for a hundred years, and their families did. And we had lunch there in a Kosher restaurant that only sold dairy foods.
So this book resonates with us as well.
We met these book people in Little Italy still present in the 1960’s. We ate dinner in tiny trattorias where there were maybe 6 tables and where you could watch the chef magically creating incredible pastas and sauce and Italian cuisine, and with marvelous bread baked down the block that morning.
Jack and Nettie, 1942. No photo credit.
Susan Meiselas signed our book copy. (She signed all of them.) This is not just a photography remembrance book of a unique neighborhood, but many photos have brief notes by family members or friends who found the pictures among old albums and boxes of momentos.
Susan says, “I have lived on the same block in Little Italy since 1974. My own photographs of this community were made on the street or from my windows. I never even imagined what had been happening on the rooftops surrounding me.”
Martin Scorsese’s introduction is brief, but meaningful:
“The French historian Fernand Braudel referred to earlier historical epochs as “different planets.” The mid-century New York where I grew up is as different and distant from the New York of today, in every conceivable way, as Earth is from Jupiter.
“My old neighborhood on the Lower East Side is now a fashionable destination filled with high-end shops and restaurants, and our old apartment probably rents for an astronomical sum. And what was once Little Italy is now a few blocks of restaurants shops an cafes through which tour groups are led.
“And I wonder…do people still go up to the roof? And if they do what do they see?
“Because we saw heaven.”
LOUIS PRIMA. “Che La Luna.”
I was born in Washington Heights, New York City.
Tar Beach was the coolest spot. Of course it was hot and sometimes oozy in spots.
My mother and I would go up and hang out wash on clotheslines that were up there.
My mother’s friend Molly Meyers was there sunbathing every day when the sun was out . She was very tan and smelled like olive oil. Her hair wrapped in a bandana and smoking a cigarette. She lived into her 90’s. The sun and cigarettes didn’t hurt her.
I wish I had a photograph.
Perhaps you are wondering why Jack wasn’t overseas with millions of other American men. My mother’s 4 brothers were “over there.”
I don’t know why for Jack, but many men were rejected for medical reasons as trivial as bad teeth, flat feet, minor heart murmurs, etc. Others were not drafted because they had to work in defense factories or similar occupations. And there were a variety of social reasons like having small children to support, being a farmer or baker, or having other critical occupations like engineering. College students had to go, especially as the war’s end approached.
America then was a massive war support machine.