Feast of St. Anthony of Padua, 1924, as the procession moves westward on East 106th Street, from First to Second Avenue. The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua was a major street festival for the once thriving Italian community of Harlem. Tracing its origins to the town of Brusciano, outside Napoli, the Feast and parade were held on Labor Day Weekend, beginning in 1918. This area was the first neighborhood known as "Little Italy."

My Archive Summer 2019 “My great grandmother Adele Felitti (third adult from the left) and family in front of her father Dr. Pasquale Felitti's Italian "Farmacia Del Vesuvio" in East Harlem, 1916 (personal family photo). A neighborhood physician and much-revered friend to the community, Dr. Felitti succumbed to pneumonia on Christmas day 1915 not long before this photo was taken. Dr. Felitti saved the life of a newborn baby just days before his death, which was said to have hastened his decline. His grieving daughter Adele in part dealt with this by attending Columbia school of pharmacy, graduating in 1918 and becoming the pharmacist for the family business. She died when I was about 14 years old." —Conor Welch

My Archive Spring 2019 "The photo of the house is No. 405 East 114th Street in East Harlem, near the corner of East 114th and 1st Avenue. It was taken about 1906-1907. Dr. Pasquale Felitti and family, my great-great-grandfather, a neighborhood physician. He died tragically on Christmas Day 1915 of pneumonia. About a week earlier he braved snowy cold weather to save a mother in labor in the tenement next door and paid with his life. He saved the baby and mother. He left his wife and seven children, but all persisted and lived incredible lives." —Conor Welch

Public School 172 on East 108th Street, 1920. Originally built as P.S. 172 in 1889, the building became condos in 1987.

The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1928.

The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1931.

Men carry the "giglio" tower across First Avenue on 106th Street during the Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1927. Beginning in the late 19th century, Italians, particularly from Southern Italy and Sicily, began to settle in East Harlem. By the 1930 census, 81% of the neighborhood claimed first or second-generation Italian heritage. In 2000, after a 29-year break, the "dance of the giglio" returned to East Harlem, where it continues to happen on the second Sunday of August each year.

By Susan Smith-Peter Using crutches because of an early bout with meningitis, Percy Loomis Sperr managed to photograph nearly all of New York City from the 1920s to the 1940s. Sperr sought to document and preserve the city as fully as possible. He was interested in telling the story of New York through the lives and environments of everyday people. This work brought him into contact with important photographers such as Berenice Abbott and, to a lesser extent, Walker Evans. And his work has deeply shaped our vision of this New York City during the Jazz Age and Depression-era. Among other things, it helped set design for such movies as The Godfather and The Great Gatsby (1974) and serves as the foundation for such popular apps as OldNYC and Urban Archive. Yet the artist himself remains little known. This blog sets out to establish the basic facts of his life, and suggests lines of possible research, using his previously unanalyzed writings and undigitized albums as well as his better-known works. Born on December 27, 1899, Sperr attended Oberlin College, where he served as the associate editor of the Annual and the managing editor of the Review. In 1916, a list of graduates places him in Columbus, Ohio, care of the Stoneman Press. As he told the Newark Sunday News in 1963, the year before his death, “the first of my sins was to teach in a small private school in California. I taught the ABCs, trigonometry and everything in between. The school closed while I was on vacation, so I wandered around in printing, freelance writing and photography.” His draft card for World War One shows that he was already living in New York in 1917, at 2887 Bailey Avenue in the Bronx. It also noted that his right leg was permanently paralyzed and that he was a printer at the Lumitone Art Company. His World War Two draft card was even blunter, simply stating, “lame.” He moved to Staten Island in 1924, during which time he was “principally a freelance writer, doing articles largely for the Sunday magazine sections of newspapers. Many of these articles concern\[ed] aspects of the New York Public Library.”

My Archive Spring 2019 "Dr. Pasquale Felitti was my great-great-grandfather, a neighborhood physician. His pharmacy was at 2222 First Avenue. This photo was 1916 in front of the pharmacy, the building still stands today but is in rough shape. I wrote a nearly 1000 page book about this family, and there exists no other book like it on any Italian family from East Harlem. I'm very proud of the book, and even more proud to claim a family heritage connection to them." — Conor Welch

Three penitent women march barefoot, opposite 2131 First Avenue, as part of the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parade, July 1927.

My Archive Summer 2019 “This is my great-great-grandfather Pasquale Felitti's Italian Farmacia del Vesuvio at the corner of East 114th Street and 1st Avenue in East Harlem. Across the street is Jefferson Park, ca. 1910. I had the photo restored and color tinted, which adds vibrancy and energy to this once-thriving Italian community.” —Conor Welch

Frame houses on the south side of East 109th Street, east of Second Avenue, 1934. The sign visible on the top floor reads "School of Music."

At left is the northwest corner of First Avenue and 108th Street, with storage tanks of the Consolidated Gas Co. visible between 110th and 111th Streets, in the background. Photographer P.L. Sperr notes "wine equipment" on the sidewalk in front of what was then 2060 First Avenue, in the foreground. Today, Public School 146 and post-war housing developments occupy the east side of First Avenue.

East Harlem, the neighborhood covering a broad swath of Upper Manhattan north of 96th Street and East of Fifth Avenue, has historically been known for its prominent populations: in the early 20th century, Italian Harlem; the Latino community of Spanish Harlem in later years. These photo's from the New York Public Library's Milstein Division provide a snapshot of daily life uptown, from street scenes to Feast Day parades.

The sidewalk on the west side of First Avenue, below 108th Street, outside the Pizzeria Sorrentina Spaghetti House, 1934. Photographer P.L. Sperr notes that the building across 108th Street is "fairly new, since 1925." By 1934, the Italian population of East Harlem exceeded 100,000. In the background, Consolidated Gas Co. storage tanks between 110th and 11th Streets.

The Feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1929.

St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church on East 110th Street, 1930. Designed and built by Nicholas Serracino in 1911, in the year 1913 more than 1000 babies were baptized in this church.

Former Benjamin Franklin School 280 Pleasant Avenue Designed by Eric Kebbon 1940 This stately building was originally constructed by the NYC Board of Education after designs by Eric Kebbon, architect and superintendent of school buildings from 1938-51. The school was founded by educational theorist Leonard Covello, the nation’s first Italian-American high school principal, who believed in a community-centered approach to learning and the importance of integration and bilingual education. Covello devoted his career to improving the lives of immigrant children, and the school, which hosted a large number of Italian immigrants and subsequently Puerto Ricans, became an important touchstone for his theories. In 1945, Frank Sinatra famously visited the school after a race-related incident broke out between groups of African American and Italian-American students. To ease tensions, Sinatra, one of the country’s most famous Italian-Americans, performed the reconciliatory song Aren’t You Glad You’re You? The school closed in 1982 due to poor performance, and was transformed into the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, which offers a rigorous curriculum and high graduation rate.