| Chapter 3: | Stores, Houses |
and the other window grandma and I used to see what we could from the fourth floor of our building. I saw skyscrapers at a distance. That window gave us a clear view of the Witch’s “house” across the street. My grandparents had the small bedroom facing the street. That room had a bed, a chest of drawers, and a big safe. We were fortunate to have heat and hot water. Some of the “houses” were cold-water flats. My friend Louie Jap and his family had to share a communal toilet and bathtub with others living on their floor. Sometimes Louie went to the bathhouse on One Hundred and Tenth Street to take his bath.
My brother Alfred enjoyed going to the city-owned bathhouse, too. It had showers as well as large tubs. Hot water was plentiful and towels were luxurious. Bathers walked on tiled floors. “It was a paradise for us kids,” Alfred remarked to me in a recent interview. I never went to the bathhouse. My baths were taken in grandma’s kitchen.
In the peak years of the Italian migration to the tenements of East Harlem, apartments sometimes became “boarding houses” where four-room flats were living quarters for many individuals. Before I was born my grandfather’s relatives stayed in his small apartment. During hot Summer nights many Italians slept on fire escapes or stayed out late talking with neighbors on tenement stoops.
One and two-family houses were restricted to a few locations in East Harlem. Most were on One Hundred and Sixteenth Street. Middle class Italian Americans occupied these comfortable dwellings. Most were doctors and lawyers. There were public housing projects in East Harlem but for some reason residents of