I have been frantically racing against time for the last 6 years. After the neighborhood in which I live in Brooklyn started seeing a major uptick in the pace of shifting demographics, I set out to determine if a similar dissipation was happening to Italian neighborhoods in other parts of the United States. After traveling across the continent, it became scarily apparent that every Italian neighborhood was undergoing significant change.

The pile of names of Italian businesses that were closing started to quickly mount. I tried to visit as many of them as I could before their closing. In almost every place that I visited there was at least one business that was recently closed. Many of the businesses and churches that I have documented which were opened at the time of my visits over the last six years have closed or been demolished since I was there. The rate at which this is happening is alarming.

The necessity to maintain these businesses and institutions is critical. I have henceforth created a movement that I pray gains momentum which is underpinned by the following hashtag to bring attention to the importance of supporting Italian owned businesses: #SupportItalianAmericanBusinesses.

The following photos are just some of the many that I have accumulated that evidence a massive shift whereby Italian America is losing its identifiable boundaries. I hope you enjoy….

San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood has its fair share of businesses transitioning to oblivion

Federal Hill, Rhode Island. An old Italian restaurant just can’t survive

An old-school go-to stop in Wilmington, Delaware

A vacancy in Federal Hill by an Italian American realtor. This was once the heart of Federal Hill’s Little Italy

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Little Italy also seeing shuttered establishments

Marone’s Bakery in East Harlem.

Old signange haunting this street corner in Canarsie, Brooklyn

The Saint Francis of Padua school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn stands eerily vacant.

The now abandoned Saint Anthony social club on Villa Avenue in the Bronx

Federal Hill in Rhode Island being haunted by storefronts like this

A repurposed Bakery sign from an Italian bakery in the heart of Little Italy in Wilmington, Delaware

Off Taylor Street, in Chicago’s Little Italy, this old-fashioned restaurant is no longer serving patrons.

Another example of signage being maintained as a new business sprouts in Hoboken, New Jersey

A sign of the times in Manhattan’s last Little Italy neighborhood on Mulberry Street

A former neighborhood fixture on Villa Avenue in the Bronx. The sign still remains.

Little Italy in the Bronx, New York. Notice the name beautifully set in stained glass over the doorway.