| Chapter 1: | Italian Americana 1920s–1930s |
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There were also a few extant dumbwaiters. Flats contained neither bath and shower facilities nor separate bathrooms. The lucky ones were those able to bathe in the kitchen laundry tub when the apartment was otherwise empty or to visit community bathing houses several streets away once a week; these constituted the only sanative options. Two families on each floor shared a hall bathroom, which naturally meant a degree of intimacy that demanded extraordinary patience, decorum, and forbearance as neighboring families extended themselves to maintain sanitary conditions. Remarkably, neighbors usually accepted their mutual responsibility amicably and conscientiously. In the mid-1930s, under city mandate, each apartment was to have its own bathroom and either shower stall or bathtub.
A Transplanted Village
In an extraordinary example of Old World ancestral transplantation that was frequently replicated in Little Italies, whole families, immediate and sometimes extended, from small towns in Italy, clustered in particular buildings or streets. A veteran reporter alluded to the tenacity of Old World culture that was clearly illustrated by Calabrians and Sicilians in Brooklyn.