New York City Heritage Neighbourhoods

The history of the Italian-American and Irish-American communities that built New York — for descendants researching family history

Italian-American Neighbourhoods

Manhattan

Little Italy

Mulberry Street, the Feast of San Gennaro, and the heart of Italian New York — from the 1880s tenements to today.

The Bronx

Arthur Avenue (Belmont)

The neighbourhood Italian-Americans call the real Little Italy — Calabrian, Campanian, still operating a genuine Italian market.

Brooklyn

Bensonhurst

The second-generation Italian-American Brooklyn — 18th Avenue, the brownstone row houses, and the Sicilian community that defined it.

Manhattan

Italian Harlem (East Harlem)

Once the largest Italian neighbourhood in New York City — 100,000 residents at its peak. The community that vanished.

Brooklyn

Carroll Gardens

The South Brooklyn longshoremen's neighbourhood with the deep-garden brownstones — and an Italian-American community that lasted longer than most.

Irish-American Neighbourhoods

Manhattan

Hell's Kitchen

The West Side Irish — dockworkers, longshoremen, and the political machine that ran New York's most Irish neighbourhood.

Queens

Woodside, Queens

The new Irish capital of New York — where the post-war and post-1980s Irish communities built their second city.

Manhattan

Inwood

Upper Manhattan's Irish neighbourhood — the northern tip of the island where Irish civil servants and educators settled.

The Bronx

Woodlawn

The most Irish neighbourhood in America — McLean Avenue, Connacht county associations, GAA football, and a community that keeps renewing itself with fresh arrivals from Ireland.

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