Mission Statement

If we do not act now to record and preserve our history, it will be as if we never were.

1.  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”.

2.  To capture, through stories and pictures, how it was, for those emigrants and their offspring, growing up through a time and in a place unmatched by any other.  

3.  To capture, through stories and pictures, how those Taylor Street children, nurtured through the Great Depression and the Great War (and other not so visible obstacles of similar magnitude) by their immigrant parents, reshaped and redefined the subculture that had been imposed upon them by the greater society.

4.  To ensure that our place in the history of Taylor Street’s Little Italy, the social laboratory of the Jane Addam’s Hull House, is neither usurped nor redefined by those who were not part of the Taylor Street experience. 

Our history should include the stories of those who lived it.  The Taylor Street Archives affords us the opportunity to preserve our history in the words of those who lived it.