East Cambridge Clings To Old World Values

This is the first in a periodic series of articles on Cambridge's neighborhoods.

Jimmy Romano has lived at 29 Gore St. for 32 of his 65 years. Born only five houses away from that address, his wife has never moved from the street. Their only daughter, Lucille, bought a house five blocks away and lives there with her husband and sons.

Jimmy Romano's world is with ten minutes of the doorstep of his two-story house. Until his recent retirement, he worked at the Middlesex County Courthouse a few blocks away on Thorndike St. To buy groceries, to get a haircut, to pray at his parish church, to socialize evenings, all Jimmy Romano does is take a short stroll to Cambridge St.

His lifestyle is typical for residents of East Cambridge, the neighborhood where European immigrants have settled since the nineteenth century. And it is this Old World way of life, of ethnic values and strong family ties that "Easties" are fighting to preserve from threatening contemporary changes.

From the congestion of the Square, the 69 Lechmere bus rolls east on Cambridge St. As the bus passes Inman Square, the scenery begins to change. The four and five-family dwellings and office fronts that characterize the tenant-dominated mid-Cambridge district disappear. In their place are small shops lining both sides of the street. Store fronts carry names like Ciampa, Santoro or Lupardo. A turn to the right or left on an intersecting road leads to blocks of single-family homes, many with extra space for a relative's family on the second floor. This is East Cambridge.

More than one hundred years ago, the Yankee women of Boston, concerned by overcrowding in the Italian and Irish ghettos, proposed a housing development for East Cambridge. Since then, the neighborhood has been a haven for immigrants. And this ethnic heritage, this link across the Atlantic residents say, is what makes East Cambridge different from any other section of the city.

The neighborhood has little of the transience found in sections of Cambridge dominated by apartment dwellers and students. Many residents, like Romano have lived in the same house or

on the same street for most of their lives "Some people have been living here 40 or 50 years," says another Gore St resident, "and some families have been here since the parents came across [from Europe]"

Because of the stability in the neighborhood population, most residents use words like "friendly" and "close-knit" to describe East Cambridge. "For years, everybody around here knows everybody," says 25-year-old Anthony DeSilva, an auto mechanic who has lived in the area all his life. Steve Christo, who graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin last month, agrees "What I like about the neighborhood is that everybody knows each other. I don't worry about being robbed or anything."

Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci, a life long resident of East Cambridge, attributes the open, personal nature of the neighborhood to "the European culture instilled in the children generation after generation," a large part of which he says is religion Sal DiDomenico, an East Cambridge florist, adds that "99.0 percent [of the residents] go to church all the time."

The friendliness and unity of the area came out last week when Clara Vecchiarella closed Gus's Meat Market after 70 years in business. Residents and merchants gathered at her shop, bringing food, music and gifts. The event's highlight came when Vellucci delivered a nostalgic oration, reminiscing about how he bought food at the shop when he was a young boy.

Vellucci's appearance at the party typifies the personalized brand of politics the neighborhood breeds. As the most vocal member of the Cambridge City Council, he has represented East Cambridge for more than three decades, repeatedly saying that the people's welfare concerns him more than general issues. He brags that the neighborhood is the only section of the city with a swimming pool, a skating rink and three playgrounds.

The state representative from East Cambridge is Michael J. Lombardi, an 18-year incumbent currently involved in a heated re-election campaign against Peter J. Vellucci, the mayor's son Lobardi's opponents point out that he has never chaired a major committee and charge that he never sponsored a major piece of legislation. But Al LaRosa, the representative's aide, says that "he's not a legislative legislator. Mike's concern has been the individual rather than the philosophical aspects of society."

One result of these strong bonds is that the city wide housing shortage seems more acute in East Cambridge Young adults, torn between the desire to start a home of their own and to continue to live in the neighborhood, usually remain in the family lodging until a vacancy develops. "people aren't moving unless it's a necessity," says the Gore St resident, "and you can count [the number of vacant houses] on your hand."

Despite the apparent stability outside forces have been at work for the last 30 years eating away at the neighborhood's foundations. Other say that some of the tradition is now only a memory and that the future may be even bleaker.

The large manufacturing plants and meatpacking houses that dominated the East Cambridge economy 50 years ago are gone. "It used to be that the whistle would blow at noon and everybody on the block would go home to lunch and the whistle blow at one and everybody would come back [to work]" says DiDomenico American Rubber. I ever Brothers and Squire Meatpacking no longer employ thousands of Easties. The result is that more of the residents work outside the area.

But changes in the concentration of employment have not meant changes in income. "The median income is lower than other parts of the city with the exception of Cambridgeport," says LaRosa adding that a lot of people are in the unskilled labor force.

The consequence of these economic changes some charge is a weakening of family ties and a loss of revenue for neighborhood business, with no counter balancing increases in incomes. "This was a good shopping area 25 years ago," says a 35 year residents adding now many of the shops have closed up."

Although East Cambridge remains strongly ethnic, the composition of the population has shifted sharply in the last thirty years. In the 1950s, Italians, Irish and Polish residents who could afford new homes moved to other parts of the city. The housing stock in the neighborhood began to deteriorate rapidly.

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy 40 opened the area to victims of an earthquake in the Azore Islands beginning a large scale migration of Portuguese citizens to Cambridge.

Vellucci says that "an act of God" [the earthquake] saved East Cambridge, "because the Portuguese have performed "a renaissance" of the neighborhood by revitalizing the housing stock. Many residents agree.

But others say that the Portuguese and other new immigrants, including Black Hattians and Hispanics have destroyed the friendly atmosphere of the neighborhood. "How could I be familiar with my neighborhood when there is no such thing as a stable neighborhood," a 70 year old shopkeeper says adding, "We've got a type of people here who are total strangers."

In March tension between old and new immigrants surfaced when a building on Otis St was firebombed leaving eight Black families homeless. Residents however, agree that the incident was the act of a few and not evidence of general racism. It's the case of a very small group who make the whole neighborhood look like a racist community," says Marty Sack, director of the East End community center. "We don't want to sweep it under the carpet," says Frank Budryk, a member of the East Cambridge Planning Team "we want to confront it."

As a result of the bombing, the East Cambridge Unity Committee will sponsor a workshop on racism later this month. But Ann Hill, a committee member who moved to the neighborhood from Arlington three years ago, says she has found the community too "apathetic" to discuss problems.

"They are very content to stay in their own house," she explains, adding that the neighborhood's reputation for friendliness is an "ethnic closeness" that is much greater within a particular ethnic group.

Another resulted economic and changes can be seen in the neighborhood's teenagers, many of whom have no desire to remain in East Cambridge. "There's nothing to do around here," claims an 18 year old bakery worker, adding, "It's dead."

Most residents dismiss the desire to leave as youthful wanderlust. " Everybody wants to leave but nobody does," says DiDomenico LaRosa agencies". There are a lot of people trying to buy back into East Cambridge, but they cannot because the houses do not exist.

Many who leave the neighborhood eventually want to return, says Tom "Duke" Fusco. After all he explains, "it's got its problems, but it's better than most neighborhoods around."Crimson William F. HemmondSAL DiDOMENICO and family in front of his flower shop on Cambridge St.