The Banca Italia Bldg -- No. 28 Mulberry Street

photo by Alice Lum

Antonio Cuneo came to New York City from Soglio, Liguria in northwestern Italy in 1855.  The 20-year old was, according to The Sun years later, “absolutely penniless.”  With startling business acumen, he grew his grocery shop on Baxter Street into the basis of a fortune.  Little by little he poured his profits into cheap real estate, mostly in the Mulberry Bend neighborhood.  Once a respectable, middle class area, by the end of the Civil War it was rife with disease, crime and squalor.

Jacob Riis documented the squalor of Mulberry Bend.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWM51SE&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915&PN=1

Mulberry Bend is considered by many urban historians to be America’s first slum.  And Antonio Cuneo was one of the country’s first slumlords.  While he gained prominence as “The Banana King” by controlling nearly all the importation of bananas into the United States, his tenement houses were among the worst in the city.  In April 1885 he found himself in Police Court for not providing fire escapes on his buildings.  Ordered to pay a $250 fine for each violation or go to prison for six months, he paid the fines.  The tenants continued to live without fire escapes.

The intense lobbying of reformer Jacob Riis eventually prompted the city to take action regarding Mulberry Bend.  The city purchased 130 structures, ranging from dilapidated shacks to tenement houses, and began demolition for a park.  For his six tenement buildings on the park site, Cuneo received over $200,000—around $5.25 million today.  The wealthy grocer/real estate man had already added “banker” to his resume with his Banca Italia.  He would use some of these proceeds to erect a new bank building.

Realizing that the poor immigrant residents of the neighborhood mistrusted banks, few of which spoke their language, he had established the Italian language bank in his building at No. 28 Mulberry.  As plans went forward for Mulberry Bend Park, Cuneo sought to improve that property which was directly across from the park site.  On September 11, 1886 the New-York Tribuneremarked “In the last year that part of Mulberry-st. bounded by Worth and Bayard sts. has undergone a wonderful change.  Several new and improved tenement buildings have been erected.  A. Cuneo of the Banca Italia, is to erect a large bank building at Park and Mulberry sts.”

The building, completed in 1888, was indeed large--five stories tall and wrapping the corner to encompass No. 101 Park Street--but was more tenement building than bank.  Generally Italian Renaissance in style, the brick façade was decorated with terra cotta panels and capped with a pressed metal cornice. 

A clam seller peddles his wares from a push cart.  Across Mulberry Street the Cuneo building has not received its elaborate doorway yet.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

Cuneo’s Banca Italia took up the first floor while upstairs, accessed at No. 101 Park Street (later renamed Mosco Street), were apartments.  The shrewd businessman must have sensed that the park and other improvements would upgrade the seedy neighborhood; for the apartments in his new building were adequate enough that he and his wife moved into No. 101 Park Street.

photo by Alice Lum

Owning a bank and an apartment house did not mean that Antonio Cuneo reformed.  In June 1892 he provided bail for his brother, Nicolo, who was arrested on Pier 3 while supervising the unloading of bananas.  A customs officer charged him with making “a false statement under oath as to the actual value of twenty-two cases of dried mushrooms,” said The New York Timeson June 22.

Two years later the newspaper took Cuneo to task for his continued slum lord practices.  “One of the worst tenements, if not the very worst, in the city is Banker A Cuneo’s Calabrian hovel in ‘the Bend’ at 65 Mulberry Street.  Cuneo, who has a pretentious financial establishment at 28 Mulberry Street, bought the place as a speculation ten years ago.”  The tenement consisted of a front and rear building and the newspaper was scathing in its description.

“The ground floor of the front house is occupied as a stale beer dive, which, it is said, is open every day in the week.  The yard is partly earth and broken stones.  No description of this and the lower halls of the two houses would be equal to their revolting character.”

It was about this time that Cuneo, for some reason, added an impressive doorway to his Banca Italia.  With doorways on both Park Street and Mulberry, it was like a temple entrance.  The heavily carved stone entrance, capped with dramatic arched pediments and an superb eagle poised to take flight, announced to the Italian immigrant neighborhood that this was a solid financial institution.

photo by Alice Lum

Around 1895 the man whom The Sun called “one of the best-known Italian merchants and bankers in the city,” started drinking.  A reporter from that newspaper spoke to Cuneo’s wife in June 1896.  “All his life, she said, he had been a sober, steady businessman until about a year ago, when he began drinking.  She couldn’t explain his taking to liquor, she said, as his business was exceedingly prosperous and he had absolutely nothing to worry him.”

His heavy drinking taxed his health and in April 1896 he traveled to San Francisco to visit Andro de Martini, Mrs. Cuneo’s brother.  It was hoped the trip to the West would improve his health.  Instead, Cuneo went on a binge.  On June 23 a San Francisco newspaper reported “A. Cuneo, a New York banker who is reported to be worth between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000, was sent to the Receiving Hospital last evening to await and examination by the Commissioners of Insanity.”

Six weeks earlier de Martini had committed Cuneo to the Home for the Care of Inebriates.  But the banker escaped.  “Two nights ago Cuneo left the place, and has since been wandering about the city in a demented condition,” said the newspaper.  “Last night he was taken to the hospital by a friend, who says that to-day de Martini will charge Cuneo with being insane.”

The Sun reported on the case, saying that Cuneo’s legal advisor “said yesterday that Cuneo had shown symptoms of incipient paresis, and had gone away on the advice of his physician.”

Antonio Cuneo was brought back to New York and within months he was dead.  His sometimes shady operations and slumlord status did not tarnish his standing within the Italian community.  On reporting on his funeral on September 6, 1896 the New-York Tribune noted “The funeral was attended by one of the largest congregations ever seen in the parish.  Many people were unable to obtain admission to the church, and it was necessary to have a special detail of policemen to preserve order in the street.”

A handsome park and a bank were not enough, of course, to totally turn the neighborhood around.  Among the residents of No. 28 Mulberry Street in 1903 was Antonio Santini.  Chief Agent Flynn of the United States Secret Service and his assistants had been closely watching Santini for some time and finally on July 17, 1903 they arrested him along with other members of his counterfeiting ring.

In the raid Santini tried to hide evidence, but The Sun reported “Policeman Dean of the Fulton street station arrived soon afterward and handed over the roll of bills that Santini had thrown away.  It contained ten five-dollar counterfeits.”  Chief Agent Flynn was unimpressed with Santini’s art.

“He said the bills are only fair specimens of the counterfeiter’s art,” reported The Sun on June 18, 1903.  “The engraving is good and the quality of the paper fair, but the printing is blurred.”

Although the apartments at No. Mulberry Street appear to have been better than most in the neighborhood; conditions for the immigrant families at the turn of the century were still harsh.  In the days before air conditioning or electric fans tenement dwellers suffered in the intense head of city summers.  The same year that Santini was arrested the Apantoni family lived here.  The summer of 1903 saw a brutal heat wave.  It was such that little 4-year old Giecoma Apantoni was overcome with the heat in the apartment and later died in St. Vincent’s Hospital.

In the meantime, Angelo Cuneo had taken over the operation of Banca Italia.  The first decade of the 20^th century was marked by anarchists groups who terrorized businessmen and politicians with bombings of businesses and threats against the capitalists' lives.  One of the most infamous was the Italian-based Black Hand.  In 1905 they turned their attentions to Angelo Cuneo.

On December 4 the banker received an extortion letter which read in part “The Society of the Black Hand has formed a drawing of several business men, where you have been picked out to pay over a penalty of $250…If you hold your life dear and you want to be safe in your interests, you should do nothing else but take the money and put it into the envelope…By doing so you will never be molested by any other person, and you will always be respected and protected without your knowing it.  But if you fail to do so it will be the worse for you.”

Angelo Cuneo had no intentions of being bullied by terrorists and turned the letter over to police.  A sting operation ensued in which a single dollar bill was put in an envelope and delivered to the letter box as ordered.  Soon one of the extortionists took the bait.  When he opened the envelope and found the dollar bill, he threw it to the floor in disgust.  Detectives followed him as he rushed off to meet his accomplice and their arrests followed.

It appears that by 1914 Angelo Cuneo had anglicized his name to Andrew.  In February that year he went to New Orleans on business and in his absence panic set in among his Italian depositors.  Rumors spread through the neighborhood that he had left for Europe, abandoning the bank.  A run on the bank ensued.

“From Saturday until yesterday depositors had taken out approximately $200,000,” reported The Sun on February 20, 1914.  Cuneo rushed back to New York and the newspaper said his return “brought to an end a small run on the institution which has been disturbing the Italian section of the lower East Side for five days.”

The depositors apparently had good reason to be nervous, however.  Before the end of the year Cuneo would declare bankruptcy, owing his depositors $200,000.

Andrew Cuneo’s wife, Joan Newton Cuneo, was no stay-at-home housewife.  While Cuneo had been squelching the run on his bank, she was in Europe “for a rest and to look over some new automobile models,” according to The Sun.

Joan Cuneo was not looking for touring cars or coupes.  She was a race car driver, earning her a reputation as well-known as her husband’s.  In 1911 she had won the Long Island automobile races.  But Joan’s occupation and resultant absences may caused her husband’s eye to wander.

In the summer of 1915 Andrew Cuneo was sued for $50,000 in a breach of promise suit.  Actress and artists’ model Yvette de Von swore in affidavits that he promised to marry her and she had no idea he was already married.  Cuneo responded by suing her for perjury.

“This is a base attempt to rob this orphan of her day in court,” complained her lawyer.  The Times, on August 21, said “Miss de Von, when her lawyer made this remark, raised a dainty white silk handkerchief to her eyes.”

Cuneo did not attempt to deny the affair which had gone on for at least four years.  But his witnesses explained to the judge that it was impossible that she was unaware of Joan Newton Cuneo.

Later that year, two days before Christmas, the banking space was opened temporarily.  The New York Times reported that “Through the generosity of its readers, the Journale [sic] Italiano yesterday distributed 3,000 parcels of Christmas cheer to poor Italian women.  The distribution took place from 28 Mulberry Street, and the line of women stretched to Mott Street.”

In 1923 a new bank would open here.  In 1914 Guiseppe Termini established himself as a “private banker.”  Now, having changed his name to Joseph, he organized the Old Colony State Bank.  Termini’s bank would not last long here, however; and by 1929 it was a branch of the Bank of America.  That year 24-year old teller William L. Reda thought no one would notice if he pocketed depositors’ cash.  The missing $21,000 was noticed and Reda went to jail.

The days of banking at No. 28 Mulberry were coming to an end.  By the time of the Great Depression the neighborhood was as much Chinese as Italian.  In 1934 the ground floor space was converted to the Kimlau Mortuary, operated by Benjamin Kimlau.

The Kimlau family lived upstairs.  When World War II erupted an estimated 4,000 Chinese-American men from the New York area went off to fight in the war.  Among them was 26-year old Benjamin Ralph Kimlau.  A member of the Army Air Forces, he became the first Chinese pilot of a heavy bomber. 

During his 46^th bombing mission from a New Guinea base, his B24 was hit by heaving gunfire.  Both Kimlau and his co-pilot were wounded.  He managed to bring the plane back to base where he crash-landed.  The hero pilot died three hours later.

Back home, part of Chatham Square would be named in his honor as was the first Chinese American Legion Post.

photo by Alice Lum

Today Antonio Cuneo’s former banking floor is still occupied by a Chinese funeral home.  Other than replacement windows and the closing up of the ground floor openings, little has changed to the building that marked a remarkable change in Mulberry Bend—including Cuneo’s remarkable and dramatic corner entrance.

Calvert Vaux's Last Work--The Columbus Park Pavilion

Jacob Riis proudly documented the park he had so long lobbied for.  Calvert Vaux's Pavilion anchors one end of the park.  The no-walking-on-the-grass rule was firmly in place.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWUVK0U&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

Armed with a camera, social reformer Jacob Riis set out to change the condition of New York’s poorest citizens.  An area of his greatest focus was the notorious Mulberry Bend—a neighborhood so filthy and ridden with disease and crime that it shocked even Charles Dickens.

In 1842 Dickens wrote in his American Notes for General Circulation, “This is the place; these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth.  Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruit as elsewhere.  The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and all the world over.”

Riis photographed the wretched living conditions of the immigrants and nearly single handedly pressed the city to improve their plights.  One of his ambitions was the demolition of the ramshackle wooden “rookeries” along the bend in Mulberry Street and erecting a park where children could breathe fresh air and play.

Riis photographed this down-and-out man on Mulberry Street around 1890 -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWUX51W&SMLS=1&RW=1366&RH=631

In 1893 the city agreed to look into the project.  The Board of Street Opening and Improvement agreed that the city would pay 70 percent of the cost, passing the remainder to the property holders.  Understandably, the owners of worthless slum property had no intention of paying for a park.  And so on May 19, 1893 the Legislature begrudgingly agreed that the city would shoulder the entire cost.  City officials protested to the Governor, no doubt influenced by the amount of funds that would be spent for a park in the city’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhood.

Worse, the politics of the Mulberry Bend Park project became tarnished when graft was uncovered.  On July 17, 1894 the New-York Tribune complained “The whole history of this Mulberry Bend Park has been full of Tammany scandals…In many ways Mulberry Bend Park has been made to yield handsome revenues for Tammany pets.”  And yet, so far, nothing more than talk had been done to start the project.

Residents were skeptical that they would get a park at all.  On September 29, 1895 The Sun wrote “’It looks as if the park will never be completed,’ said one of the old-time residents yesterday. ‘It is as it was months ago.  I expected to see it by this time laid out with fine walks and green lawns, but the only thing green about it to-day is one poor lone tree, that grew there when the Reform baby was in its cradle.’”

The newspaper described the site.  “The property acquired for the proposed park extends from Park to Bayard streets, and from Baxter to Mulberry streets, and takes in about three square blocks.  Words can scarcely describe its present condition.

“Shortly after the city took title the authorities found they had 130 buildings on their hands.  The buildings were of all shapes and conditions.  There were six-story double-deckers of brick and one-story frame shanties.  There were dwelling houses, dance halls, and horse sheds.”

Finally the buildings were demolished.  The residents—men, women, and children alike—turned out with anything they could find to dig in the dirt, becoming “brick miners.”  Throughout the three-block site the financially-desperate neighbors scraped and dug, finding loose bricks which they cleaned and sold for extra money.

After years of planning, Mulberry Bend Park was finally opened on June 15, 1897.  It had been designed by New York’s preeminent park architect—Calvert Vaux.  He laid out wide, sinuous paths that encompassed swards of green sod—something none of the immigrant children had seen before.  The intersections of the paths created broad areas where children could play away from the dangers of the streets.  (These sections were necessary since the grass was strictly off limits.) 

Vaux created a focal point in the Pavilion, an airy stucco-covered multi-use structure that smacked of the Italians' homeland.  Newspapers would also refer to the building as the band-stand, the shelter house, and the summer-house.  It was the last structure Calvert Vaux would design.  He died on November 19, 1895 before Mulberry Bend Park was completed.

Reportedly, Jacob Riis waited for an invitation to the opening of the park he had so long lobbied for.  It never came.  He did, however, attend as a spectator and received a whack across the back from a policeman’s billy club for walking on the new sod.

The Sun published a sketch of the Pavilion in its June 16, 1897 report of the park's opening (copyright expired)

The New York Times reported on the fanfare of the park’s opening, including F. W. Bent’s brass band.  “This band soon began a series of polyglot tunes, which were appropriate to the babel of tongues and races in the park below.”  Mayor William Lafayette Strong, Park Commission President Samuel McMillan and other officials presided from the Pavilion.

The newspaper commented on the neighborhood residents.  “It was as motley an assemblage as could be got together in any place in the world.  Costumes have almost disappeared, but there were still to be seen, the robes of China, the loose blouselike shirts of Italy and Sicily, and the gaudy colors of the women of the South of Europe; and everywhere, at every pause in the music could be heard a medley of tongues that ran the lingual gamut from English to Yiddish.”

The Sun spoke of the many children in the crowd.  “From the crowded tenements about what used to be Mulberry Bend there trooped last night children by scores, and by hundreds, and by thousands to attend the opening exercises of Mulberry Bend Park.  So many of them were there that little room was left for their elders; but this was as it should be, for the park was made for the children.”

The bend of Mulberry Street is evident in this photo, with the Pavilion prominent in the background.  To the right, one of the last of the old Mulberry Bend buildings still stands -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Times reminded readers of what had been here.  “It formed a striking antithesis to the picture of the old Mulberry Bend, reeking in filth, where men too often met for dark deeds instead of mirth.  The wide space and the grass and the open air had banished crime, and let in sunlight and open, cheerful life.”

Although Jacob Riis was not invited to speak, Commissioner Waring called for three cheers for the reformer “to whom, he declared, the chief credit for getting the park was due,” reported The Sun.  The newspaper estimated that 5,000 persons were present for the ceremonies.

The new park had cost the city about $1.5 million—nearly $41 million today.  The New-York Tribunepraised the project.  “With the sunlight shining brightly upon its sweep of green, its well-washed asphalt, and its glistening white pavilion, Mulberry Bend Park, a breathing place these days for thousands of Italians, is a remarkable change from the old ‘Bend’ that was the abode of vileness.  Not an iota of picturesqueness has been sacrificed, for the scene now reminds one irresistibly of a bit of an Italian city.”

Two immigrant women tend for a child in a rather romanticized Victorian depiction.  The Pavilion can be seen in the background -- Harper's Weekly July 1897 (copyright expired)

Calvert Vaux’s Pavilion would serve as a neighborhood gathering place.  Once a week, on Tuesday evenings at 8:00, free band concerts were held.  The overworked women brought their children and enjoyed a rare respite in the park.  “Before 9 o’clock all the walks were crowded with tired mothers and babies, who were willing to stand in order to hear the band play,” described The New York Times on July 7, 1897  “The park policemen and officers from the Elizabeth Street Station specially detailed had no trouble in keeping order, as the crowd seemed too tired to be demonstrative even when the band played popular airs.”

Reformers and politicians alike closely watched the experiment of Mulberry Bend Park.  Five years later, on September 11, 1903, The Evening World felt that the results were in.  “Since the day Mulberry Bend Park was opened the death rate in that section has gone down steadily.  The people no longer live on the fire-escapes in summer.  There is a bit of green in front of the doors of the tenements, and a place for the children to romp and play without fear of the heavy trucks.”

As it did at the turn of the century, the Pavilion serves the neighborhood -- photo by Alice Lum

The mere presence of a handsome park in the midst of the slum did not eradicate poverty and crime, of course.  During the severe winter of 1903 residents sought out the warmth of the park’s Pavilion.  “Men and boys sun themselves all morning against the wall of the shelter pavilion in Mulberry Bend Park, and have to be driven from the heated basement of the pavilion,” said The Sun on December 20.

The homeless used the Pavilion as shelter.  Later, in 1913, The Missionary Review related the story of a reformed alcoholic who said in part “But there came a time when I flung the whole thing up.  Hope died right out in my life and I loafed about the city, and slept in the Mulberry Bend Park pavilion—down on the stone floor.  I was beaten at last.”

In 1914 the New-York Tribune wrote a human interest story about a neighborhood character named Giuseppe.  “In the meantime he lived on bread and onions begged from the kitchen doors of the tiny restaurants and slept beneath the bandstand in Mulberry Bend Park.”

The Pavilion narrowly missed being renovated as a school building annex in 1904.  Although Public School 23, which stood across from the park, held 1,800 pupils, it was overcrowded.  On March 12 that year The New York Times reported “The large Summer house in Mulberry Bend Park may soon be converted into a temporary school structure.”  But many of the Board of Education commissioners were opposed to Mayor McClellan’s plan, telling reporters “the preservation of this park was particularly desired because of the squalid conditions of the surrounding buildings.”

For the impoverished residents of Mulberry Bend it took little to bring a glimmer of joy.  This was illustrated on May 25, 1907 when the Moderation Society distributed flowers from the Pavilion.  A sign was posted earlier announcing that the flowers would be given out at 2:00.

“Long before that time a line of pretty young Italian girls and noisy boys had formed,” said The Times the following day.  “A howl from several hundred throats announced the approach of the truck of flowers.  One crate, two barrels, and three boxes, filled with flowers, were quickly emptied of their contents [by the Society workers].”

The girls took home dogwoods and violets and other flowers—simple niceties that were so rare in their tenement homes.  The Times headline read “Mulberry Bend Made Happy.”

photo by Alice Lum

In 1911 Mulberry Bend Park was renamed.  Once again Jacob Riis was snubbed.  Instead of naming the park in his honor; commissioners dubbed it Columbus Park in deference to the Italian community which by now made up the majority of the residents.

Nine years later the neighborhood was still predominately Italian; although nearby Chinatown was growing steadily closer.  On September 13, 1920 a group of Mulberry Bend boys went on a mischievous escapade to snatch and stomp the highly-popular boaters men were wearing.

The straw boater on the man at lower left would be fair game on Sept 13, 1920  photo by Louis H. Deyer from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWWUVK0U&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

The Evening World reported the following day “A gang of boys from ten to twenty years old went from the Mulberry Bend Park Italian section through Chinatown last night to put all the straw hats they encountered out of business.  Chinese, lobbygows and loafers disappeared after the first onslaught had left many straw wrecks on the streets and sidewalks.”

When a sightseeing bus deposited its passengers the boys descended.   “The minute they piled into the streets of Chinatown the horde was upon them.  They didn’t know whether it was murder or mere robbery, but the men fought valiantly and the women used their umbrellas to good purpose.”

By the second half of the 20^th century Chinatown had engulfed the Mulberry Bend section.  In 2006 Calvert Vaux’s expanses of grass and his serpentine pathway were paved over.  A $900,000 playing field for both basketball and volleyball was installed which incorporated synthetic turf with asphalt.  Happily the Pavilion not only survived, but was given a restoration as part of the $3.5 million park renovation.

photo by Alice Lum

The last public work of Calvert Vaux—best known for designing Central Park with Frederick Olmsted—survives charmingly intact in a much changed Mulberry Bend neighborhood.