It’s 2 p.m. on a Saturday, and you’re standing in a line that wraps around the corner of Hanover Street. You rode the Green Line from Medford/Tufts to Haymarket for this spot your friends have been constantly hyping up. Behind you, a man who has been to Boston twice is explaining why Modern Pastry Shop is better than Mike’s Pastry. The wait is 25 minutes, and you’re staying because it’s for a cannoli.
While you’re waiting, you look up. Past the pastry boxes and the Italian flags, the brick buildings that stand above you have outlived at least four versions of this very neighborhood. Most of them had nothing to do with cannoli.
The North End is arguably Boston’s most historic neighborhood and has seen many changes. In the 1700s, it was home to merchants, ship captains and a silversmith named Paul Revere. Following the American Revolution, while wealthy families moved up to Beacon Hill, the North End became the place where those who arrived with the least money landed first. By 1850, after the Great Famine in Ireland, more than half the neighborhood was Irish. By 1895, it was roughly one-third Irish, one-third Jewish and one-third Italian, with Salem Street at the center of Jewish life. I challenge you to look closely at that street, and you can still find a Star of David set in stone.
By the 1920s, the Italians made up about 90% of the North End and owned more than half of the housing in one of the densest neighborhoods on the planet. My favorite neighborhood detail is the North Bennet Street Industrial School, where Italian women were taught to cook the ‘American’ way, which meant cutting back on garlic and oil. Yet, a century later, garlic and oil are the very reasons you’re standing in this line.
Historically, Boston planners considered the North End to be the city’s worst slum, and banks would not lend to families there. Journalist Jane Jacobs, however, described her amazement at the community in her 1961 novel “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” noting children playing in the streets, busy market life and buildings being fixed up through the pockets of its residents. When she asked Boston planners about the area, they remained adamant about its status as a slum despite their own numbers showing that it was one of the city’s healthiest neighborhoods.
Although the neighborhood survived, unlike the West End — which will be discussed in the next column — it was not untouched. In the 1950s, the elevated Central Artery walled the North End off from Downtown, reducing the quality of life substantially and keeping the city’s money out. But when the Big Dig buried the highway and the Rose Kennedy Greenway opened in its place in 2008, the North End suddenly became a short walk from the Financial District.
Today, roughly 3% of residents have Italian roots, and the features Jacobs was so captivated by — the tight blocks, the street markets, the corner shops, the free range of children’s play — are exactly what make the neighborhood expensive today. So yes, while the North End has become gentrified, it has always belonged to those who were about to leave. For a century, people left because they could finally afford something better, but now they leave because they can’t afford to stay.
You’ve finally made it to the counter. Get the ricotta, and while you eat on the curb, look up again — somebody still lives there.
