The first New York neighborhood to be settled by large numbers of Italian immigrants – primarily from
Southern Italy (mostly from
Sicily) – was
East Harlem, which became the first part of the city to be known as "
Little Italy". The area, which lies east of
Lexington Avenue between 96th and
116th Streets and east of
Madison Avenue between 116th and
125th Streets, featured people from different regions of Italy on each cross street, as immigrants from each area chose to live in close proximity to each other. "Italian Harlem" approached its peak in the 1930s, with over 100,000 Italian-Americans living in its crowded, run-down apartment buildings. The 1930 census showed that 81 percent of the population of Italian Harlem consisted of first- or second- generation Italian Americans. This was somewhat less than the concentration of Italian Americans in the
Lower East Side’s
Little Italy with 88 percent; Italian Harlem’s total population, however, was three times that of Little Italy. Remnants of the neighborhood's Italian heritage are kept alive by the
Giglio Society of East Harlem. Every year on the second weekend of August, the Feast of
Our Lady of Mount Carmel is celebrated and the "Dancing of the Giglio" is performed for thousands of visitors. After
World War II, the original Italian settlements such as East Harlem declined as Italian Americans moved to the North Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn's southern tier. The geographic shift coincided with a new wave of Italian immigration. An estimated 129,000 to 150,000 Italian immigrants entered New York City between 1945 and 1973. Bypassing Manhattan, they settled in Italian American neighborhoods in the outer boroughs and helped reinvigorate Italian culture and community institutions. With the influx of postwar immigrants, Bensonhurst became the largest Italian community in New York City, with 150,000 Italian Americans in the 1980 census. The best-known "Little Italy" in Manhattan is the area currently called that, which centers around
Mulberry Street. This settlement, however, is rapidly gentrifying as the older Italian residents die and their children move elsewhere.
Arthur Avenue in
Belmont is now the largest Little Italy in New York City. As of the
2000 census, 692,739 New Yorkers reported
Italian ancestry, making them the largest European ethnic group in the city. In 2011, the
American Community Survey found there were 49,075 persons of Italian birth in New York. in Manhattan's
Little Italy. ==Italian-American neighborhoods in New York==