Quick, picture America’s first Italians.
Does a New York street scene — brownstones, hawkers, kids in newsboy caps playing stick ball — come to mind?
It’s a common misconception, even among those of Italian heritage. But it was California that was home to the nation’s first large wave of Italian immigrants, who came here seeking their fortune in 1849. The Gold Rush, not the Big Apple, was the attraction.
“We got a 20- to 30-year head start on New York and the East Coast,” said Little Italy San Jose president Joshua DeVincenzi Melander, who has researched and curated a museum for that district.
To wit, San Francisco holds claim to the oldest Italian heritage parade in the nation. First held in 1868, that celebration predates New York City’s inaugural parade by decades.
These newcomers’ contributions to California “can’t be overestimated,” according to an immigration history from the Museo Italo Americano in San Francisco.
“Italian immigrants arrived early to the Golden State and established wineries, farms, canneries, fishing enterprises, factories and banks,” then-board president Mark D. Schiavenza wrote in the report.
Today, you can trace much of that legacy in places such as San Francisco’s North Beach, the East Bay’s Italian-American social clubs, Monterey’s fisheries, the Sierra’s former mining towns and San Jose’s historic revival district of Little Italy, where eateries and a new museum/cultural center await.
Here are five stories about the impact of those early ltalian-Californians:
DID YOU KNOW? A man who made his money in the San Jose produce industry became ‘America’s banker’
Among the trailblazers was one of the nation’s biggest names in banking, A.P. Giannini. He was born in 1870 in San Jose in his family’s Swiss Italian Hotel, a boardinghouse located near what is now San Pedro Square — and not far from a surviving boardinghouse that is now Henry’s Hi Life restaurant.
He worked as a teen and young adult in his stepfather’s produce business before embarking on a banking career.
In 1904, he founded the Bank of Italy, pioneering the extension of credit to working-class immigrants, a concept unheard of in those days. In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fires, he famously raced to the bank to rescue gold, coins and securities and take them to his San Mateo County home for safekeeping.
When he died in 1949, the financial institution that had become the Bank of America was the nation’s No. 1 in assets.
At the Little Italy Museum, a bust of Giannini anchors a corner along with vintage photos of downtown San Jose’s Bank of Italy, a landmark skyscraper from 1926 that’s being transformed into housing and retail.
DID YOU KNOW? San Francisco’s ‘Ghirardelli’ sign should be in Stockton
Domenico Ghirardelli, who was born into a family of gourmet food importers, sailed to the United States in 1849 — reportedly headed to the Mother Lode.
However, like Levi Strauss, he became a supplier to the miners instead.
Already a trained chocolatier, Ghirardelli in 1849 established a store in Stockton, where he made confections and sold them and other goods to miners, according to the company history. He then expanded the business to San Francisco, opening a second shop that year. A few years later, S.F. became home base.
Ghirardelli died in 1894 on a visit to Italy, but his sons had taken over the company by then. The factory made it through the 1906 earthquake unscathed, resuming operations within 10 days.
The Ghirardelli name has been emblazoned on the San Francisco waterfront since 1923 (minus four months for upgrades).
DID YOU KNOW? The Italian Swiss Colony had marketing geniuses
In 1881, entrepreneurial immigrant Andrea Sbarboro — who had been in the States since the 1850s — founded the Italian Swiss Colony on vineyard and winery acreage in Asti in Sonoma County. By the early 1900s, the winery, known for its Tipo table wines, became California’s leading wine producer.
Sbarboro and partner Pietro Rossi even marketed their winery during those years by mailing out calendars showing Italian tavern scenes — “long before graphic designers were chosen to create wine labels or marketing campaigns,” according to the Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County. Each label also depicted a straw-covered bottle of wine.
In the 1960s, the winery itself became a draw, thanks to the TV commercials with “the little old winemaker … me!” jingle. Visitors could find Italian villas, a Roman statue of Bacchus, flower gardens and a picnic area — and an underground, circa 1897 vat built to hold half a million gallons of wine.
In its heyday, the Italian Swiss Colony was Sonoma County’s largest tourist attraction, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported, with up to 300,000 visitors annually.
DID YOU KNOW? The Valley of Heart’s Delight predated Silicon Valley
Agriculture, not silicon, first put Santa Clara Valley on the map. The global map.
The Mediterranean climate was ideal for fruit cultivation, giving rise to the “Valley of Heart’s Delight” name and postcards picturing blossom-filled fields. For decades in the 20th century, this was the largest fruit-producing and packing region in the world, with 39 canneries.
A 1919 article in the San Jose Evening News by Edith Daley told the story of one major orchard and cannery operation, Bisceglia Bros., whose operation was fueled by an immigrant workforce.
“Early in the spring, before the blossoms lost their petals,” she wrote, “the Bisceglia Bros. sent out a circular letter calling attention to their cottages and ‘free rent.’ As soon as the cherries began to redden, the help commenced to arrive. By twos and sevens and tens, they are still coming!”
A company secretary tells the reporter that “workers like the cherry pack because the cherries are clean and pretty to handle, but there is more money to be made in apricots and peaches. The women are averaging about $25 per week.”
That year, more than half of the cannery output would be shipped overseas to England, France and Belgium.
“If it were not for these Italians and others who answer the yearly call of the fruit, one wonders just where our boasted industry would be,” Daley wrote.
DID YOU KNOW? The Jacuzzi was invented in Berkeley, not Italy
The children of 1907 immigrants Giovanni and Teresa Jacuzzi made a name for themselves in the aviation industry. According to East Bay Times archives and the Museo Italo Americano, the story started with son Rachele, who — with just a third-grade education — developed a propeller so innovative that it merits a display in the Smithsonian.
The Jacuzzi Brothers opened a factory on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley to manufacture propellers, and they set about inventing a monoplane. However, when a tragic flight accident took the life of one of the Jacuzzis, family members turned their attention away from aviation and toward more grounded ventures. They achieved great commercial success building water pumps.
Their signature invention came about in the 1940s, when they were asked to develop a home whirlpool bath for a relative with rheumatoid arthritis. Worldwide sales and acclaim followed.
Despite many competitors in the decades since, “It is the Jacuzzi name that has come to signify a magically luxurious, California-like lifestyle,” proclaimed a 1985 Orlando Sentinel article.