The growth of Denver’s Italian colony kept pace with the surging numbers of Italian immigrants settling in the United States after 1880. Arriving with few resources, many of these newcomers settled among other poor people in the “Bottoms” of the South Platte River valley, while others found homes throughout the city.
Later, Italians moved out of the Bottoms area and resettled across the river in north Denver. The area became known as “Little Italy,” though non-Italians lived there too. Residents disagreed about the colony’s exact boundaries, but there was consensus that it lay between Broadway and Zuni, from east to west, and between Fourty-sixth and Thirty-second Avenues, from north to south. In 1894, the community financed and built Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Navajo Street—its domes became Little Italy’s defining landmark. Schools, grocery stores, taverns, community bread ovens, and gardens also distinguished the neighborhood and made it a haven for Italian Americans.
Denver’s non-Italians felt ambivalent about the immigrant population. A 1901 Rocky Mountain Newsarticle commented that the Italians worked hard, were patriotic, and were an asset to the city. The paper boasted that Denver’s colony was second only to San Francisco’s Italians in terms of “intelligence, conduct, and morality.” But its description of the average Italian man as “simple, industrious, affectionate…with a quick temper” shows that stereotypes were alive and well. By: Alisa DiGiacomo
