AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ITALIAN AMERICAN MUSEUM, NYC

WELCOME TO THE ITALIAN AMERICAN MUSEUM, LITTLE ITALY, NYC

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hello, this is Father Lewis Skurdy with Friends of the Word, and we are at the Italian Museum on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. My guest is Dr. Joseph Schelza.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Yes, thank you, Father. I appreciate you being here today, and thank you for all the things that you do.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

You're quite welcome, and it's it's a joy being here. Um, about two years ago, we were walking around Little Italy, and we came upon this building. It was closed. I said, we've got to come back here. It's an Italian museum. I never heard about it. Tell me what the history of the Italian Museum is.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Well, first of all, this is the place to be if it's an Italian museum in New York.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Good.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Because Mulberry Street was the, was and still is the Italian section in New York City where millions, thousands and thousands of Italians came through New York Harbor. Many of them settled right here in lower, lower, lower Manhattan and Little Italy. Of course, that was around the turn of the century between 1880 and 1920. But the way the museum got started was I was at one time I was dean of the John D. Calandro Italian American Institute at the City University of New York in 1998. And a friend of mine who was the uh distinguished professor of Italian American Studies who we had just hired, Philip Canastraro, had seen an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

And the museum and the museum at the Museum of the City of New York was on the Irish of New York. So he comes into my office and he says That was the exhibit or that was the whole museum? There's a whole exhibit on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

So he said to me, Joe, we got to do something for the Italians. We, you know, I'm a member of the, he's a member of the New York Historical Society. He said, you know, I'm gonna go there. I want to talk to them. So I says, go ahead, go talk to them. Maybe they'll do something. Sure enough, a week later he comes back to me and says, but they want to talk to you. I says, Really?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Now, at that point, what was your role?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I was I was the dean of the Klanderut Institute at City University, which I was very instrumental in starting also.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

And nothing to do with a museum.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Good.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

So we go to we go to the Historical Society, and that's a good point that you make. Go to the Historical Society, and Phil lays out this whole plan from you know from Columbus to today and everything that he wants to see in the exhibit. And I'm listening and I'm impressed. He goes on for about an hour. He's lecturing. He's lecturing for about an hour. So I've so I'm listening to him and I'm almost clapping at the end of it, but you know, I'm ready to get up and you know say, good, great, you know. But the president of the historical society at that time was Betsy Gottbaum.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Oh yeah. End of the name.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Victor Gottbaum's the former labor leader, you know, the wife of wife of him. And she turns to me, not to him. And I'm wondering why. She says to me, Yeah, but you got to give me a quarter of a million dollars to come in here and do it. I had never raised a quarter of a million dollars before in my life.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

But I'm from the Bronx, not from Manhattan. And Phil was from the Bronx also. So I I wasn't about to say to Betsy Gottbaum that I can't do it. So I says, no problem.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Sure, why not?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

So we walk outside after we finish, and Phil's going to me, Grow, Joe, that's great. You can do that. I says, I haven't got a blankety blank idea how I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

That's great. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

And uh, you know, you challenge me and I usually rise to the occasion. So there's been a number of other things in my life that I've done besides that, that that's been the case of. But don't need to go about that today.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

So any so anyway, I go about raising the money, and sure enough, I raise for an exhibit at the New York Historicus, which is the oldest museum in New York City. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

I mean, it was founded by Alexander Hamilton, so it's a big deal. Yeah, you know, so like we I'm already, and the exhibit's supposed to take place for October of 1999. In June of 1999, I'm $75,000 short. Not really, because the New York State Senate, who was giving me $75,000, had not passed their budget yet. So I knew they were gonna pass it during the summer, but Betsy comes to me and says, if you don't give me the money now, we're not gonna, we're not, Winnie Q can't do the exhibit. So sure enough, I reached out to a friend of ours, a member of the Pope family, Generosa. Generosa Pope. Yeah, yeah. Paul David Pope, the grandson. And he was the son of Gene Pope, the founder of the um National Inquiry. So Paul says to me, no problem. He writes a check for $75,000. And now Betsy Gottbound's got to do this exhibit, which she didn't think she could do. She was gonna keep the rest of the money, I believe, without without doing the exhibit. After the exhibit opened, she's claiming that she did everything, of course, which is nothing unusual. But you know what? Success has a thousand fathers and mothers. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. Australia has none. So exactly. So the exhibit opened on Columbus Day, 1999. Nobody expected to be as successful as it was. 40,000 people came to see it within two months.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Great, great advertisements. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

And I was so proud because we had the poster of the immigrants, which I have on the bookcase. Here's the book. I'll bring it over to you. This was the this was the book.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah. That was this poster was on Central Park West, right on the Historical Society. That's the Italians on Central Park West. How wonderful is that? So I I was I went I was thrilled, and you know, we went to the exhibit, and then of course we had to close it at the end of the at the end of the two months. But it was so successful, we we we wanted to talk, we went to the consulate to talk about it. And people people were trying telling us we want a permanent exhibit. They were thinking of a permanent exhibit. What's a permanent exhibit? Permanent exhibit is a museum. So with a little with a little prodding from my friend in New Orleans, Joe Joseph Naselli, who had started a museum down there, I started to explore how you go about becoming a museum in New York. I didn't want to just be a storefront. I didn't want to be I didn't want to be something that wasn't authentic, it wasn't permanent. So I really investigated it. And I found out I'm an educator through the New York State Education Department and a professor. I you you have to you have to file and you have to go through a series of steps in order to become a legitimate museum in New York. Well, I did that. So in 2001, on June 12, 2001, we become the first licensed Italian American museum in New York.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Recent.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

In New York and in the United States of America.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Really? The first.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

We didn't have a home.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

I was gonna say, what was the location?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

We didn't the home was the Klander Institute at the time, which was part of Queen's College, but we had an offices, we had offices on 43rd Street.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

On the 17th floor. So I I actually had I created a room, small, it wasn't a huge room, you know, but it created a room that we would start to do exhibits. And we did a lot of exhibits there. But I knew that we needed a permanent space. Right. And to me, the only permanent space meant that you had to go back to where the roots came from. And if it's not in Italy, it's Mulberry Street.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

It's Mulberry Street, yeah. It's Mulberry Street. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

So I was looking for a place until finally we got a phone call telling us that Jerome Stabole III, who owned this property on the corner of Grand and Mulberry Street, was looking to sell it. Now, he wasn't gonna sell it cheap, even though it was a museum, but he was willing to sell it. So we put an option on it. Uh he wanted nine nine and a half million dollars for it. And that's what we ended up paying. Um, it took me two years to raise the down payment. And between myself and three other gentlemen, we put up the down payment.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yeah, from our own personal resources. So we put up quite a risk. Uh you know what? And what I learned a long time ago, if you want to do something, you have to put your own skin in the game.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Good.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

And then you get other people to follow up.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Good, good. It's credible then.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

It's that's right. Because you know you're putting your own resources at risk. Right, right, right. You know, and but I really believed on this project. And sure enough, we were able to purchase the property, had a lot of problems with the buildings, they were decrepit, you know, they were you know, they had water problems, we had electrical problems. I mean, this the original building was was gas. You know, we had a gas lamp, not even not even electricity. So everything was jerry-rigged.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Was this that location?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

This is the location. So it was jerry-rigged. So we knew that we really couldn't maintain that building. And to re-guit it would cost more than to rebuild it. So, and also we still had a big mortgage, you know, so and we wanted to arrest that mortgage. So we found a partner who was willing to take the con build the space above us and build condominiums. We give them the condominiums, and he builds out the space back for us, and it's ours without any mortgage.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

So we were able to do that in 2018.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

But you were busy doing that. I mean, you that that's you say it like it's simple. You have to do a lot of background work to get that conversation going.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I had to find a lot of followers, people who believed in believed in trusting you. I have a great board. Great board, a group, a group of gentlemen and ladies that really, really, really are dedicated to making this happen and continue to do so. So that when it because museums, you know, they're not for profits, they never have a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's like the church. We're always able to always asking for money because because you can't do it without my friend, like I said, Joe Masselli in New Orleans used to say to me, You can't get funny, Joe, without money. So you have to have the money in order to be able to do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

So you always have to raise it. Fortunately, um my son was the architect of the interior and the exterior of the building.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

God bless you. That's fantastic. Where did he study?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Harvard.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Harvard. And then he went, then he's now a professor at Pratt.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Okay. Oh, good.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Full professor at Pratt of Architecture. And his wife is a landscape architect. So he designed the whole project and oversaw the building, building that I'm Jonathan. Same as my last name is mine, Shelsa. So and he did a wonderful job. Every people have come here, as a matter of fact, without being too gratuitous, the uh the the director of the museum in na in in Genoa came and he said to me, This is like a baby Guggenheim.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Because of the structure itself, how beautiful it looks like.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah, the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

It's very different. It's very beautiful. People, it's not we ex we we show the history, but we show it in a modern museum way. Because I didn't want us to just be wanted us to be have a foot in the past, but also be in the present. And to show people that, you know, we're this is where we're not just the old school people, we know what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yes, yes, yes. That's important.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

We put it we put it together. And we've mounted some great exhibits since we started. I mean, we had some at the uh before, but you know, since we've opened the museum, which is just about two years now, um, we had we had we've had exhibits here. We had exhibit on Giuseppe De Verazzano for the 500th anniversary. Sure, sure. You know, which was which was which was great. You know, we also have on exp on, and I'll show them to you later, the Menteo puppets, which were made here on Mulberry Street. When I did the exhibit at the New York Historical Society, I met Mike Menteo, who was the grandson of Agrippino Menteo. Agrippino had a workshop on one on a.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

And that's such a Sicilian name, Agrippino.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Had a workshop on Mulberry Street, and he was an electrician by day, and by night he was a puppeteer. And he made all these puppets himself. We have 34 of them on display.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Good. When we see that later, I want you to explain the history of puppeteers to our guests from Sicily.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

And I just came back from Sicily. I was in Saracruza where I met some of the puppeteers there as well, which was which was great. And we intend to have a relationship with them, good, good, good as we go f as we go forward to bring more and more of that culture back. Because I want I don't want our culture to be depressed or put or put aside.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Or lost, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, as as we go forward. And it's not just Leonardo, which will do exhibits on that too, of course, but like it's not it's not just the greats. Right. It's the social culture, the people's culture that really matters.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

And that's what we're gonna pick up on at our next interview. Thank you very much. This has been wonderful. You got a little taste of this building and the history of it from Dr. Skilser. And we're going to be back and we're going to see various aspects of this museum and shows that we've had here. This has been Father Lewis Skurdy at Friends of the Word. We ask you to contact us and what is your um email us?

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Email www.italian American Museum.org or info at Italian American Museum.org. That'll get right to us. And we're located at 151 Mulberry Street in the heart of Little Italy.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Take an Uber because you can't park it. God bless you, and tune in for our next chapter of the Italian Museum, Mulberry Street, Mai C. God bless you.