Italian American Museum

Small space and cluttered. The artifacts should be spaced out and with more clear descriptions.

I am an Italian American whose Italian grandparents came from Italy and lived on Mulberry Street. I feel I grew up on Mulberry Street because I spent so many Sundays visiting Nana and Pop pop.
I felt especially proud to see an Italian American Museum open up right in the old neighborhood. However, since the news of the Museum trying to evict an 85 year old woman I feel disgusted!
To whom it may concern at the Italian American Museum;
Leave her be. She is 85 years young. Let her spend the rest of her days in the home she has known all these years. When the day comes, as it does for us all, you can take the apartment back and charge whatever you want for it, but for now have a heart. Maybe you’ll be able to repair the damage you have caused to the museum if you simply let her stay. If you don’t then shame on you.
UPDATE: August 22, 2015. I went into this so-​called museum this afternoon and sadly found out that the Italian American Museum actually did evict the 85 year old woman who lived upstairs for 53 years. I turned around and walked out. I will never step foot into this place again. I found it interesting that the red headed/​ginger kid at the entrance looked anything but Italian. This place is a hoax and should be left to go out of business as soon as possible. I can’t wait.

You are supposed to protect Italian Americans who are now a minority in Little Italy. In the past you expressed your concern about people losing their homes in Little Italy, and then what do you do? You let an 85 year-​old ITALIAN AMERICAN woman homeless in the streets. SHAME ON YOU!!!

I would like to give zero stars or even go into the negatives if possible… PLAIN AND SIMPLE… the founder of this museum who is an Italian American man is evicting an 85 year old Italian American woman who has lived in the building since 1962. The number of units in the building does not qualify for any rent stabilization or protection. The landlord wants to sell the building and so needs to make the apartments in the building look desirable to the prospective buyers… guess what they want the developers to give the museum… FREE RENT!!! This is beyond my comprehension but is the sad truth here… can you imagine the hypocrisy so blatant… vicious developers are no shock in NYC these days… but this goes beyond anything we’ve seen… Just know what kind of business you are supporting by going to this place… you want to support Italian Americans in NYC? Help keep Adele Sarno in her apartment… that’s supporting the beautiful heritage and pride of our people… this museum has no concept of what it portrays itself to be… ITALIAN AMERICAN LYING MUSEUM PLEASE FIND YOUR COMPASSION AND LEAVE MRS. ADELE SARNO ALONE! «DESGRACIAD!!!»

The recent news concerning the museum’s pending eviction of a little old lady seems particularly heartless, and has inspired me to put the following petition on
:

It’s supposed to be a nonprofit that honors Italian Americans in the neighborhood, but it does by evicting a 85 year old woman who lives there so she can go move to Wisconsin. What the heck. Not worth my money or time.

This museum is evicting an 85-​year-​old Italian woman who has lived in one of the buildings it now owns since the 1960s because she can’t afford the over-​quadruple rent increase the museum is demanding. The museum’s only defense is that they aren’t in the business of charity cases. How about some human decency and commitment to their supposed cause of celebrating and preserving Italian-​American heritage? This woman has lived in that neighborhood her entire life, and if the eviction succeeds, she will be forced to move to Wisonsin in her daughter’s house for her final years, away from everything and everyone she has known and wants to stay with. Don’t support an institution that treats people so terribly.

They’re trying to evict an 85 year old Italian lady tenant who has been living there since 1962. Think this museum that’s only open 2 days a week and paying only a bit over $ 5,300 a year in property taxes in MANHATTAN is a museum just to get out of paying full taxes which should be over $ 200,000 a year? See their tax bill for yourselves at NYC DOF Property taxes. Pop in block 236 lot 20. This is pure greed.

I have never been here but I never will. They are trying to evict and 85 year old woman who lives in the building.
There are plenty of other museums and tours in the down town area. I suggest you find one that isn’t trying to kick out an 85 year old woman.

After reading that the museum is trying to evict an 85 year old Italian American tenant of the building so that they can sell the building to a developer, which will further erode the remaining Italian American culture of the neighborhood, I can’t support the museum. Greed rules the day!

This museum is trying to evict an 85 year old woman who lives in the building.
SHAME ON THEM!
I am an Italian American and this is not my heritage! It is not how we show respect for our elderly.
BOYCOTT THIS GREEDY INSTITUTION!

A good museum of Italian American history and the local area. Original building where the bank was with the original vault and teller desks. They will be expanding so there will be more to come.

nice hole in the wall type place to see little Italy’s history. does need to be improved and needs more space. I would go back.

It’s a nice idea, but I think the museum needs help. It needs plaques to explain what different artifacts are, and to translate old Italian documents into English. Also, I think this tiny, one-​room museum should have fewer items out on display, so that people can know where to focus their attention and so that the experience can feel more manageable.
The beautiful woman who works there, though, was very nice and knowledgeable.

I’ve passed by this museum several times. It looks to be pretty small, about one room. There is an exhibit sign in the window which refers to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.
I haven’t been inside since the museum has been closed the times I went past.
I think I spotted an old sewing machine on display.

Look beyond the Jersey Shore horizon and check out the situation in Little Italy at the Italian American Museum. You’ll experience Italian hospitality and be welcomed inside like a member of the family by a warm and knowledgeable museum staff.

Make this a stop if you are in Little Italy. The staff here is very informative and we talked for a good 30 minutes about the History of Little Italy and Italian History in general. The Museum is small but jam packed with illustrations, artifacts, Pictures, paintings, etc.. .. very informative and the folks who work here really want to inform the public on the impact Italian Americans made not only on New York City but America. Admission was $ 5 and they have books and DVD’s you can purchase — makes for a good side trip while you are in Little Italy.

Dang Carmela, I wanted to be the first to review!
I’m gonna have to agree with her overall review. My friend and I came here after we filled up at Nyonya, this random Malaysian place in the heart of Little Italy. He’s not very much into museums — i.e. he hates them — so I basically paid the recommended $ 5 admission for me (and $ 0 for him lol) to enter the museum.
I was pleasantly surprised. If you’re into learning about history or culture at a pretty simple, scratch-​the-​surface level, this place is for you.
I’m not gonna lie, I don’t have a lot of experience with Italians. All I know comes from eating pasta at the only restaurant my dad wasn’t too cheap to take us to as a kid, and from the directions on the sheet music after I took ten years of piano lessons. But you don’t hear many good things about them. The mafia, the Jersey shore, a certain adult relative of mine constantly saying that pasta sauce makes women unpleasantly plump in old age … the stereotypes are out there.
This place tacitly avoids talking about them — indeed, it kind of pushes it below the surface — and focuses on the role that Italians played in New York. It’s not really an Italian American museum, it’s an Italian New York museum. After going here, I feel like I learned a lot and want to learn more!
The reading material is kind of boring, but their exhibits are pretty neat! They have a knife-​grinder, which some immigrants pedalled around cities like a modern-​day ice cream man — but instead of little kids bringing out quarters, housewives would bring out knives to be sharpened on a grinding stone. Hope those women weren’t angry.
There’s also an old-​school typewriter, a monkey organ I think it’s called, and a bunch of Italian festival ‘armours.’ A lot of things you can’t touch, but seriously, what were you expecting? They’re over 100 years old! They’ll play the monkey organ for you though =]
The staff are also really great. They didn’t complain when we paid $ 5 for the two of us, and they gave us really individualized attention in the museum. I think it’s run on a volunteer basis, and even though they seem to be under severe financial pressure, they never even pressured us to the (kinda pathetic, not gonna lie) gift shop. It’s more like a gift table. The doctor who started the entire museum was also there when we visited — I guess it’s a labour of love for him, which makes the place even more endearing.
Finally, calling the place small is an understatement. It’s like the size of a living room, except thinner and longer. They say they’re trying to expand, but that it’s been 2 years and they haven’t made much progress on that front =/​Hopefully once they get more space (upstairs, I think?), they’ll be a greater variety of hands-​on exhibits instead of immigration documents written in Italian. But until then, this place is still an interesting gem in a neighbourhood filled with way too many cheap Italian places.
*By the way, Carmela, it’s Stabile, not Stable. Yo was there a Carmela on the Sopranos?