This will sure make you a little nostalgic for the "old neighborhood"!!!.
If you were never there, you can't imagine what you missed.
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THE HILL IN ST. LOUIS: MORE THAN GREAT ITALIAN FOOD

Cheryl Wittenhauer
San Francisco Chronicle
Associated Press Writer
Monday, September 22, 2003

On a late Friday afternoon, the old men of The Hill gather at the upscale Italia-America Bocce Club, a center of life in what is arguably the last viable ethnic neighborhood in St. Louis.

Men in their 80s, most of them boyhood friends, play cards at small tables, joke easily with each other, and play bocce (pronounced BOH-chee) -- an ancient sport popularized in modern Italy -- on sand-covered alleys.

If men like 82-year-old Oreste Zoia are The Hill's older face, the neighborhood's future can be found down the block at Milo's Bocce Garden, a casual beer and pizza bar. There, 38-year-old Mark Garanzini plays in a weekly bocce league, a happy returnee to the neighborhood where he grew up.

"I can go block by block and tell you who lives in every other house, same as when I was growing up," said Garanzini, who lived for a while in another part of St. Louis. "It's a neighborhood. I don't have to get into a car to go to a restaurant or bakery or grocery store."

The Hill, a heavily Democratic enclave of Italian immigrants and their descendants, is the premier destination for Italian food in St. Louis.

Ask Oprah Winfrey, a recent guest of Giovanni's on the Hill, which created a pasta dish -- "Pappardelle ala bella Oprah" -- for the daytime television diva.

But while The Hill abounds in Italian restaurants, pizza parlors, bakeries, delicatessens and specialty shops, food is only part of its allure.

A buoyant urban community in southwest St. Louis, The Hill has flourished over the last century and somehow managed to repel the decay, neglect and suburban flight that have wracked other neighborhoods.

Of all the ethnic-immigrant settlements in late 19th century- and early 20th century-St. Louis -- including German, Irish, Czech and Polish -- The Hill is the only one that remains intact.

"It's the only viable ethnic neighborhood left in the city and state," said former Missouri Baking Co. owner Joann Arpiani, who was born on The Hill 85 years ago.

The area originally was settled by English Quakers, and German and Irish immigrants drawn by the discovery of clay deposits in the late 1830s. Later, a French socialist commune settled there for 10 years before disbanding.

Italians came in the 1890s to work in the clay mines and smelters, and built frame shanties and tenements to accommodate the influx of immigrants.

The Hill, so named because it is the city's highest point, recalls a bygone era with its quiet and tidy residential streets, brick bungalows and shotgun houses. Some homes, according to Rosolino "Roland" DeGregorio, a local historian, are framed with free lumber that immigrants hauled in wagons from disassembled 1904 World's Fair exhibits.

At 81, DeGregorio has moved only four blocks in his lifetime. His tours of The Hill include the 5400 block of Elizabeth, where baseball Hall of Fame greats Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up, and later, sports announcer Jack Buck lived.

The Hill's streets are virtually free of litter and crime. Its homes are modest but impeccably cared for, and recall an era that predates the three-car garage and bedroom for every child. Yards are lovingly embellished with small flower and herb gardens, fountains, brightly painted flower pots, strings of lights, and statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Across from Missouri Baking Co., Salvador Palmeri, an immigrant from Sicily, hoses the alley behind his home every day, because, he said, "I like to keep it clean." His wife, Josephine, paints ceramic flower pots and animal figures for a patio menagerie.

"I love the area," said Frank DiGregorio, 49, who arrived from Italy as an 8-month-old baby and helps run family-owned DiGregorio's Imported Foods. "I can walk up and down the streets and talk to Italian people. It's a community We're a small town in a big city."

Bill Holland, who married into the family that runs the 101-year-old John Volpi Co. Inc., an Italian meats company, says The Hill is St. Louis' only 24-hour neighborhood, a fragile ecosystem that has been immune to urban blight and whose anchor is St. Ambrose Catholic Church.

He said the neighborhood has a healthy balance of homes, businesses and entertainment that spins positive energy around the clock.

"When the restaurants shut down at midnight, the bakers all come in at 2a.m.," Holland said. "We start our business at 6 a.m. There's always something positive in the neighborhood."

This summer, The Hill was the backdrop for "The Game of Their Lives," a feature film about the St. Louis-dominated soccer team that scored a historic upset in the 1950 World Cup. The Hill produced four of the five St. Louisans on the team that defeated Britain.

Hill customs hark back to an earlier time: a neighborhood procession on the religious Feast of Corpus Christi, the annual Columbus Day parade, a soapbox derby and the"Giro della Montagna" Bicycle Race on Labor Day weekend.

What's the magic?

"I don't know. Maybe it's the way our mothers raised us," said Mary Torno, 88, the child of northern Italian immigrants.

A lean woman with light blue eyes, Torno was taking her nightly walk as she spoke. Around her neck she wore a medal and relic of St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost items. "That guy is always helping me," she said of the saint

For the Hill's overwhelmingly Catholic residents, St. Ambrose Church and grade school are the center of life, a throwback to the role of churches in Italian villages.

"It's the social, religious and educational center for that whole neighborhood," said Monsignor Sal Polizzi, former associate pastor. "Everything centers around that church."

In the 1960s, The Hill had become "a stodgy old lady, complacent," and ill-prepared for threats to the community, he said. Polizzi saw them coming, organized the community and founded what would become today's Hill 2000 Inc., an organization dedicated to preserving the neighborhood.

The Hill lost 100 homes to construction of Interstate 44, which divided The Hill's northern tip from the rest of the neighborhood. But Polizzi's group successfully fought for a highway overpass to bridge the community.

The group also defeated development of a drive-in theater and illegal underground dumping of wastewater from a nearby manufacturing plant.

Today's challenge is maintaining The Hill's ethnicity, so that "it doesn't become a neighborhood that used to be known for its Italian heritage," Hill 2000 Inc. president Tom Stremlau said.

While some offspring of longtime residents seek bigger houses in the suburbs, others are moving back. The demand for homes is so strong that they're often not listed, but rather exchanged by word of mouth at the church, the funeral home, or by Hill 2000.

Eric Sandweiss, a native St. Louisan who teaches urban and architectural history at Indiana University, said that aside from a national trend toward bigger homes, the Hill has all the traits many Americans want in a community: Relatively low crime, street life, proximity to goods and services, and a feeling of community.

"I can't imagine it doesn't have a bright future," he said.

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If You Go...@
GETTING THERE: Go south from the Hampton Avenue exit off Interstate 44.
COLUMBUS DAY PARADE: Sunday, Oct. 12, starting at noon at Southwest Bank at the corner of Southwest and Kingshighway,ending at Berra Park (named forYogi). Call (314)837-8830 for more information.
ST. AMBROSE CATHOLIC CHURCH: 5130 Wilson Ave., (314) 771-1228,
www.archstl.org/parishes/131.shtml. On Oct. 5 the church hosts its annual
festival, La Festa, 12 noon to 6 p.m., featuring Italian food.
MILO'S BOCCE GARDEN: 5201 Wilson Ave., (314) 776-0468.
GIOVANNI'S ON THE HILL: 5201 Shaw Ave., (314) 772-5958.
MISSOURI BAKING CO: 2027 Edwards St., (314) 773-6566.
DiGREGORIO'S IMPORTED FOODS: 5200 Daggett Ave., (314) 776-1062.
JOHN VOLPI CO.: 5250 Daggett Ave., (314) 772-8550.
THE HILL 2000: Visit www.italystl.com/hill2000

THE HILL IN ST. LOUIS: More than great Italian food
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/09/22/travel1137EDT0105.DTL