If we do not act now, the following shall be our epitaph:
“and it came to pass that, for those who followed us, it was as if we never were.”
-Martin Scorcese
The Taylor Street Archives is our opportunity to:
- Preserve, for posterity, the names and memories of those emigrants (along with their offspring) who found their way, from their Italian origins, to the legendary Taylor Street’s “Little Italy.” The Archives will be our footprint; it can never be erased.
- Ensure that our place in the history of Taylor Street’s Little Italy, the social laboratory of the Jane Addams’ Hull House, is neither usurped nor redefined by others. We are the history of Taylor Street’s Little Italy.
Your family will be one of many branches on the giant Family Tree displayed on the Taylor Street Archives website.
Family History:
You are also encouraged to submit the history of your family’s pilgrimage to Taylor Street, the port-of-call of Chicago’s Italian Americans’ beginning with their debarkation from the shores of Southern Italy. You may, if you choose, also submit stories about your family’s Taylor Street experience.
Pictures:
A group picture(s) of your family is highly recommended to be displayed on your branch of the Taylor Street Archives Family Tree. Individual pictures are welcomed as well.
Special stories and essays:
If you or any member of your family would like to submit a special story about Taylor Street (see index of stories already submitted and posted for the general reader) feel free to contact Vince Romano for assistance.
Use the search bar to the left to search the site.
All inquires and correspondence for Taylor Street Archives, please click here.
Wonderful site !
So pleased to have found this site. Both sides of my family lived in the neighborhood. D’Auria-Gannuscio and the Tufano families. I reasonably sure we are related to the Tufano Vernon Park family but no quite sure how. I remember go to Theresa Tufano and her husband Joe DiBouno home. Theresa gave me a piece of bread dunked in the gravy and Joe gave me $5.00. Hey, I was a little kid. Nice people even without food and money. My father Lou or Luchi as he was called. I know he told me he used to play cards in their back room. I spoke with Joey DiBouno about a family connection and he told me he wasn’t into doing the work but his wife, Tracy and his daughter were. That was all I got out of him. I don’t know if his great or grandparents are my grandfather Tony’s brothers or his uncles. My mother’s side lived on Polk St. in the 1940′s. My parents lived all over the Taylor St. neighborhood.