The local monument to Italian heritage, Piazza d’Italia, once crumbling and verging on extinction, is enjoying a rinascimento with it's future assured with American-Italian Renaissance Museum housed in a building at the edge of the piazza, and the new hotel next door, and the W Hotel and Harrah’s casino across the street.

'Piazza d’Italia' with it's graceful Fountain, and unique Pool shaped like a map of Italy that is elevated at the top and then slanted as though descending toward the Mediterranean. Children gleefully slide down the Italian landscape toward Sicily.

Another smile crosses my face when the article states: "Thankfully, it was the Sicilians and not the Irish who influenced the city’s neighborhood restaurants"
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Speaking Out
THE SICILIANS

New Orleans Magazine
March 2004

Rome, too, once suffered its decline and was able to bounce back. As local Italians prepare to celebrate the feast day of St. Joseph, there is good news this year. Their prayers have been answered. The local monument to their heritage, the Piazza d’Italia, is following in Rome’s chariot tracks. The Barbarians will no longer be at the door. With the conversion of the former Lykes office building into a Loew’s hotel comes the restoration and maintenance of the once grand piazza. In the sometimes troubled saga of the Italians in New Orleans, this year should be one of the high points.

Because the feast days of St. Patrick and St. Joseph, March 17 and 19, fall so close to each other, the celebrations of the Irish and the Italians are often lumped together as our own version of March madness, but the sagas of the two groups are totally different. Compared to the Irish, the Sicilians were late arrivals to New Orleans, coming in droves during the 1890s. Like the Irish, for whom acceptance also came slowly, the Sicilians had the additional problem of a language barrier.

Thankfully, it was the Sicilians and not the Irish who influenced the city’s neighborhood restaurants, introducing thick red sauces, stuffed artichokes, muffulettas and cannolis. And while the Irish’s St. Patrick’s Day parade is a Mardi Gras knockoff decorated with green, the Sicilian tradition of St. Joseph’s Day altars is marked by heavy spirituality and lots of symbolism.

Though both the Irish and the Italians have lost political power in urban politics, both groups maintain economic strength. For the Sicilians though, there has been one major piece of unfinished business – a badly needed renaissance for the Piazza d’Italia.

Once the piazza radiated in its grandeur. The square, located near the river end of Poydras Street, was distinguished by the glow of its showpiece – a magnificent fountain. Architecture magazines of the late ’70s gushed about the fountain, which gushed sprays of water and created ripples in the pool at its base. The fountain, on one level, was described as a breakthrough example of “historic modernism” architecture and on another level was just something to behold and play in. A pool shaped like a map of Italy was elevated at the top and then slanted as though descending toward the Mediterranean. Children’s bare feet sent splashes of water as they plopped down the Italian landscape toward Sicily.

Though it is located at the toe of the old country, Sicily was very much at the heart of the piazza. It was young Sicilian men looking for work in the Louisiana cane fields who began the mass Italian migration to Louisiana. So there were two busy times at the piazza. One was the celebration of Columbus Day in October. But that explorer was a mere Genoan, a neighbor, not blood. The true celebration was in March, honoring St. Joseph, the patron of Sicily. At this time Sicilian celebration and tradition hugged.

Despite the existence of the American-Italian Renaissance Museum housed in a building at the edge of the piazza, blight was able to sneak in. Without the funding for maintenance, elements of the piazza began to crumble. Piazza proponents planned for the hotel occupant of the Lykes-building conversion to help maintain the square and to provide street life. With the right planning, the piazza can bubble with activity, not only because of the new hotel next door but because of the W Hotel and Harrah’s casino across the street.

There are precedents for local monuments being rediscovered. For years, the fountain at Spanish Plaza stood derelict and in disrepair until the 1984 World’s Fair and later the Riverwalk brought life to the area. The magnificent statue of Bienville that once stood ignored in front of the train station now has a place of prominence near the river’s edge in the French Quarter.There is glory in renaissances. Too bad we have to endure dark ages to get to them.

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