By Lisa Schiffman
Entering Murray’s Cheese, at 257 Bleecker St., one is confronted by the strong odor of a multitude of different cheeses. Thick, triangular wedges, round balls, cone-shapes — a vast selection of cheeses from around the world is displayed behind a glass counter, on shelves lining the back wall and in the floor-to-ceiling refrigerator at the back of the store.
Cheese, pickled green olives, blood-red speckled plump sausages, boxes of crackers and Italian specialty foods are crammed tightly together, leaving only a small, narrow aisle in which customers stand in line, waiting to be served. Business is brisk, as clerks in crisply starched red jackets and perky white mesh caps step forward, waiting on customers.
“There are 250 to 400 different brands of cheese on a day-to-day basis,” said Everett Presley, the store manager. A computer database keeps track of cheeses that the store stocks. Swiss, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Irish, English, Scottish, Portugese and American brands are sold, from $4.99 a pound for basic cheddar to $34.99 a pound for Cone di Port, Aubry, a raw goat’s milk cheese from France with a milky, creamy consistency.
One of a dozen or so old-time neighborhood establishments, Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street in the West Village represents in microcosm the effect of gentrification on a longstanding ethnic community, a process that is going on all over New York City. Originally a simnple grocer that sold cheese, Murray’s has become one of the city’s most highly-specialized gourmet cheese shops, catering to an upscale clientele that includes many four-star restaurants.
Murray’s Cheese is at the heart of what a neighborhood popularly known as “The Other Little Italy.” South of Washington Square Park, it extends from West Houston Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, down Bleecker Street and up through Seventh Avenue.
The neighborhood gets its name because of the large numbers of Italian immigrants who settled in this part of Greenwich Village during the early part of the last century. After World War II, many of the younger generation became part of the mass migration to suburbs in New Jersey and Long Island. Despite this, however, a core group of immigrants remained, and with them the grocery stores, restaurants, butchers and shops that impart to the neighborhood a distinct Italian flavor. The historic Italian marketplace, having gone upscale, has since attracted a young, hip generation of followers.
“Here is a vanishing Italian neighborhood that still endures,”said Addie Tomeii, tour guide from the Culinary Arts Program at the New School University. Tomeii, who runs “Savory Sojourns, A Gourmand’s Guide to the Big Apple,”has close emotional ties to the area. During her childhood, Tomeii recalled her parents traveling from her home in Brooklyn to the West Village to shop. “My father would come to buy ravioli for Easter and it was terrific,”she said, referring to another well-known Italian store still in existence, Raffeto’s at 144 West Houston, between MacDougal and Sullivan streets.
At Rafffeto’s, a colorful convergence of sights, smells and sounds assail the eye and nose. In the back of the store, workers wearing starched white jackets hunched over industrial-size Dutch ovens, stirring the thick, tomato and bolognese sauces. Coils of sausage line the refrigerator. Chunks of romano cheese rest on a shelf. Against the wall, in wooden cupboards with glass windows, dry pasta is sold in a myriad of shapes, including corkscrew, rigatoni, radiotore, even dollar signs. Against a wall is an antique pasta machine, still in operation, that has since been electrified. A store worker deftly took a slab of uncut pasta from a large mound, and rapidly sliced it up into linguine.
“The food here is cheap, and its good,” Tomeii said. Raffeto’s, which primarily sells homemade pasta, sauces and Italian specialties, has remained a neighborhood fixture since opening in 1906.
Since it was first settled more than 150 years ago, Greenwich Village has remained a country village within a city, “a tight-knit community that embraces its nonconformists and fiercely opposes outside intervention,” wrote Terry Miller in “Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way.” Time is visible here like the strata of rock layers in a quarry, Miller wrote. “Villagers don’t destroy their post; each generation adapts this place into a community that suits its needs and taste.”
Manhattan is an island composed of thousands of small neighborhood units, many no more than two to three blocks long and a couple of blocks wide, that are self-contained, wrote E.B. White in his classic book “Here is New York,” in 1949. The truth in that statement can be seen on Bleecker Street, where, in the condensed space of a few blocks, a plethora of stores like Murray’s, many of them family-run for the past half century, serve a loyal clientele.
In contrast to Midtown and Uptown Manhattan, small narrow streets and quaint 19th-century brownstones contribute to the area’s homey, small-town feel. Area residents said they like the area around Bleecker Street because of that special quality. Fiore Derosa, whose last name in Italian means “flower of rose,” has lived on Charlton Street for the past 22 years. Derosa, who lives in an old converted tenement with a clawed bathtub in his kitchen, said that he likes knowing his neighbors. “I like knowing people, becoming friendly with them,”he said. “It is so easy to isolate yourself in a city. When my neighbors go on vacation I walk their dogs, take care of their cats.”
“It is very much a neighborhood kind of place,”said David Verruni, bartender at Le Gigot, a French bistro on Cornelia Street. Cornelia Street, dubbed “Restaurant Row,” is lined with charming, atmospheric cafes and restaurants, having quaint names like “Little Havana” and “Po,” all seating no more than 20 people.
Verruni, an easygoing man with his hair tied back in a ponytail, spoke while pouring drinks for customers sitting around the cozy bar. “You see people everyday, neighbors or store merchants,”he said. “It is easy to be on a friendly basis with people here.”
Verruni, who lives nearby, says he rarely leaves the Village. “All my shopping needs are met,”he said. “Between the butcher, the fishmonger, food and clothing stores, it is easy to stay close by.”
Until the 1860s, New York City had a small Italian population. Increasingly after 1870, thousands of immigrants left for the New World, motivated by a feudal economic system and a series of natural disaster in their native Italy. By 1880, 70,000 Italians had left for New York. By 1900, there were 145,000 Italians in the city.
By 1920, that number had risen to 391,000. Many Italians from Southern Italy at first settled on the Lower East Side, along Mulberry Street. Italians from Northern Italy established a smaller community in Greenwich Village, centering on Bleecker Street in the West Village.
The men, uneducated and poor with little or no English, found work in construction, digging the tunnels and ditches of the New York subway system; women found work in the needle trades.
Strong neighborhood ties bring people back to the stores, which in many ways have remained just as people remember from their childhood. Joe’s Dairy, at 156 Sullivan St., between Houston and Prince, is one example — a tiny store in the shadow of a massive stone church across the street, St. Anthony’s of Padua, founded in 1866. People come to Joe’s Dairy from all over the city and the tri-state area for their fresh mozzarella. “This is the place to buy mozzarella,”said Tomeii. At a large stove behind the counter, a worker kneaded a wet ball of cheese, then dropped it into a pot of boiling water, where it made a loud, sizzling sound.
“Anthony is making mozzarella in the back,”said Ro Pianoforte. Anthony Campanilli, the store owner, gets up at 3 a.m. every morning from his home in New Jersey to make the mozzarella. “Taste this,”said Pianoforte, as she deftly cut up a large square of plain and smoked mozzarella into thick wedges. “It is just 10 minutes old.” Volunteering to take the taste test, a visitor bit into the spongy, glistening white mozzarella and was surprised by its mild yet flavorful taste.
Down the street, at 201 Bleecker, the welcoming scent of freshly ground coffee greeted visitors at the Porto Rico Coffee. The coffee shop has been part of the neighborhood scenery since Patsy Albanese, an Italian immigrant, opened it in 1908. Sacks of coffee beans, still warm from roasting at the company’s Williamsburg, Brooklyn facility, take up most of the floor space. Also sold is an extensive collection of coffee and tea paraphenelia: infusers, filters, demi spoons, coffee machines. Among the selection of coffee: amaretto, organic Guatemalan, French Java, Hawaiian Kauai, and French Tanzanian Peaberry.
On Bleecker Street, the Main Street of the Italian West Village, the old traditional Italian storefronts mix with newer, trendy ones. Olive & Co. at 249 Bleecker and its companion store, L’Occitane, which just opened last year, sell different olive oils, specialty items and soap and body oils to an upscale clientele. Marissa Liplla, sales representative, is in charge of promotional olive oil tastings. One of their featured jams, she told a visitor, is an olive jam that was written up in the New York Times Magazine. She suggested it would be perfect as a chutney or a glaze when roasting roast lamb or beef.
Contrasting sharply with L’Occitane’s sophisticated décor and sleek product line, Zito’s Bakery, located in a sparse storefront on 259 Bleecker, with its loaves of Italian bread piled up against the front window, has remained virtually unchanged since it opened in 1924.
Across the street, Faicco’s Pork Store, at 260 Bleecker, is a neighborhood fixture. Stepping inside, one gets the feeling of having traveled though a time machine back to the 1950s. The white-tiled floor is original. Behind the gleaming glass counter, coils of fresh sausage, pork chops, ham, chicken and cold cuts are displayed in neat rows. The place is immaculately clean; the meat looks fresh. Behind the counter at least half a dozen men in white aprons and starched caps wait on the constant stream of customers coming into the store. Against the wall are jars of fat green olives, dried pasta and other Italian specialty foods.
Eddie Faicco, a courteous young man with dark hair and eyes who owns the shop, said that the store, founded in 1900, originally was located on Thompson Street in Brooklyn and was moved to the present location in 1945. The shop has been family-owned for four generations, Faicco said, first by his grandfather, then by his father, his uncle, and now himself. His other two brothers, Louis and Matthew, run the store’s other location, at 6511 11th Ave., in Brooklyn.
While still primarily selling pork and sausage, Faicco said that the store has expanded since first opening. “Though we specialize in homemade Italian sausage, we now carry pastas, olive oil, different tomato sauces,” he said. For Easter, Faicco’s makes “pizza rustica,” a stuffed pie with sausage, salami, prosciutto, ham, mozarella, grated cheese, and riccotta.
Faicco, who said his family immigrated here from Naples in the early 1900s, has seen many changes. “There are lots of new people around,”he said. “This neighborhood has become expensive to live in. The only old-timers left are those with rent-controlled apartments.” Likewise, he caters to a multi-ethnic clientele, including a sizable number of Hispanics and Asians.
Faicco’s also has many loyal customers who have patronized his shop for years. “I have been coming here 20 years,” said Dennis Basso, who commutes from 82nd Street, on Central Park West. “It is always perfect, fresh. The place reminds me of places when I was a kid in Brooklyn. The people behind the counter understand what their customers want better than they do themselves.” Another man on line, with a shock of curly gray hair and bushy moustache, said that he has been coming here for the past 50 years.
“I know 75 percent of the people who come in here,” said Faicco, who has worked in the store since he was 8. “We have many regulars, people we know by their first names.” His customers are more sophisticated these days, he said. Many of them watch cooking shows and want to prepare gourmet food.
One reason they shop here, he said, is the personal attention they receive. “Many stores are self-service. You come in here and you have your own person to take care of you. It makes for a more comfortable situation,”he said. “The customer likes seeing a familiar face.”
Sandwiched between the Italian grocery, butcher and bakery stores on Bleecker Street, Second Childhood, on 283 Bleecker St. has been a neighborhood fixture for the past 30 years. Van Dexter, proprietor of Second Childhood, said he gave up the theatre to go into the antique toy business. “Everything in the store is original,”Dexter said, “including myself.”
The store has one of the largest selections of vintage doll furniture in New York City, dating from the 1950s back to the 1860s, he said. The store also carries an impressive collection of French, German, Japanese and English toy soldiers dating back to the 1870s. Dexter said that he has customers from Japan, New Zealand and Australia. “I don’t have customers from the North or South Pole,”he said, “But I’m working on it.”
A colorful collection of hand-painted marionettes with papier-mache heads, dating from the 1930s, dangles from the ceiling. “They go for $200 to $295,” Dexter said. His most expensive item, a wooden merry-go-round dating from 1875, “you could swing your teddy bear around,” he said, sells for $3,500. Dexter, a small man with a wiry build, and pale blue eyes, is descended from an itinerant peddler who arrived in New York in the early 1800s from the Netherlands, he said.
In the 30 years he has lived and worked here, Dexter has witnessed many changes, he said. In the early 1950s, Dexter shared a three-bedroom apartment in the area for $105 a month. One of his roommates was a young Steve McQueen. Since then, “rents have skyrocketed,”he said.
Derosa, who lives in a rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment, pays $600 a month in rent. “You have to be here a long time to get that price,” he said. “Studio apartments go for between $1,000 to $2,000; a one-bedroom apartment costs $1,500 to $1,800 and two-bedroom apartments can go for as high as $2,600 a month.”
A few blocks from the church of St. Anthony, at 25 Carmine St. and Bleecker St. stands Our Lady of Pompei Church, built in 1926. The church stands on the site of an Abyssinian Baptist Church, built for freed African slaves who lived in the area around Minetta Lane in the early 1800s. In Italy in 1837, Bishop Giovanni Scalabrini founded The St. Raphael Society for the protection of Italian immigrants. (St. Raphael is the patron saint of travelers.) Archbishop Corrigan of New York wrote to Italy requesting missionaries to found a missionary here, and the parish of Our Lady of Pompei was founded in 1892.
The church is an impressive classical building finished with stone on its façade, topped by a high tower capped by a dome surmounted by a cross. Charles Borromeo (1538-84) patron saint of the Scalabrinians who is said to have set a standard of virtuous living, stands tall on the façade. The square across the street at the intersection of Carmine and Bleecker Streets and Sixth Avenue, was named after Father Demo (pastor here from 1899 until 1933) by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in 1941.
The Rev. Joseph Cogo, pastor here for the last three years, said the congregation originally consisted of Genoese Italians. “The congregation started in 1892 in a storefront on Waverly Place,” Cogo said. “The priest at the time went to Ellis Island to greet new immigrants.” The change in the ethnic makeup of his parishoners can be seen in the percentage of Italian school children in the church’s school, pre-K to eighth grade. “There were 800 children in the school wheras now we have 250,” Cogo said. “The other half come from outside. Of the 700 members in attendance, 50 percent are Italian-American, the rest mixed. Mass is down now to 70 people,”Cogo said.
“The older generation is dwindling. However, although the population is not primarily Italian-American anymore, it has retained the Italian taste and its traditions in its restaurants and shops that cater to Italians,”he said. “The generation that moved out in the ’60s returns here to visit family and to shop.” That spirit is kept alive by an Italian language program held at the church, popular with young urban professionals, Cogo said. Also, The Italian-American Committee on Education, of which he is a co-founder, fosters the Italian language and culture throughout the metropolitan area.
“There are a lot of new people now who are members, including many artists, yuppies, students, businessmen, as well as singles and married couples,”he said. This year, he said he performed 50 baptisms, and 30 weddings, many of them Italian. “It is a beautiful constituency — nobody predominant. Twenty to 30 years ago, if you weren’t Italian, you wouldn’t feel comfortable here.”
The chapel, with marble floors, delicately-colored frescoes covering its walls, and stained-glass windows, inspires awe and respect. On a gray, cloudy afternoon in early spring, a steady stream of people came to kneel before statues of the saints, and to light candles. An elderly woman, kneeling before St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless cases and policemen, angrily admonished a young Jamaican woman who stopped her devotion to answer her cell phone.
Generations of immigrants have come to pay their respects to Francis Xavier Cabrini, Saint Rita, Saint Theresa, and others. One effigy demands particular attention. It is Saint Lucy, who stands carrying a plate of eyeballs dripping with blood. “Legend says she was a beautiful woman in Sicily,” Cogo said. “A chieftain in her village was enamored of her, but she wanted to be a nun. To stop him from pursuing her she plucked out her own eyes.” Fittingly, Lucy is the patron saint of eye-related illnesses. “Sicilians in particular are devoted to her,” Cogo said.
Greenwich Village is the most significant square mile in American history, said author Ross Wetzsteon in his book, “Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village, The American Bohemia, 1910-1960.” Every major movement in American intellectual history had its beginnings here, “socialism, feminism, pacifism, gay liberation, Marxism, Freudianism, avant-garde fiction and poetry and theatre, cubism, abstract expressionism, the anti-war movement and the counter-culture of the ’60s,” Wetzsteon said.
The writers, artists, poets and iconoclasts who moved into the West Village beginning in the early 1900s provided the resident Italian immigrants with an important source of income. “These people needed places to eat and to shop,” said Mary Brown, social historian and author of “Greenwich Village: Our Lady of Pompei 1892-1992.” “The Italians fed them and helped nurture them,”she said.
“Layers of tradition were established, by the Bohemian arts crowd and the Italian immigrants,” Brown said. “This gave the neighborhood its distinctive flavor.”
For example, because of people like Judith Schwartz, who was active in the suffragette movement and Max Eastmen, editor of the left-wing monthly, “The Masses,” the area acquired a reputation as a free-spirited place, she said. “Now many people in the arts can’t afford to live here, so they are moving to places like Chelsea, Dumbo and the South Bronx.”
As the West Village grew more upscale, so did the demand for high-end shops such as Murray’s Cheese. “Entire families used to live in rent-controlled apartments paying $300 per month. Now one person pays $3,000 per month,” said Rob Kaufelt, who owns Murray’s. “The neighborhood has become more gentrified, not as Bohemian. Places have been renovated, are nicer looking.”
The evolution of Murray’s Cheese, from neighborhood grocery to high-end food store, reveals the degree of change in this fascinating neighborhood. From immigrant enclave, to Bohemian stronghold, to yuppie locale, the Italian West Village has managed to maintain its distinctive character while adapting to changing times.
When Murray Greenberg (himself a Jewish immigrant) first opened the store back in 1940 as a wholesale butcher and grocery shop, his customers were primarily working-class Italian immigrants. If he were alive today, Greenberg would doubtless be surprised and probably impressed with the store’s and the neighborhood’s metamorphosis.
