Neighbourliness in concrete: modern construction, ethnic labour and the architectures of New York Italians

Abstract

‘Neighbourliness in concrete’ assesses the intertwined histories of modern construction and Italian migration in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Through the analysis of architecture, construction, and union journals of the period along with the voices of social reformers, ministers, and other intellectuals, the article contends that the adoption of concrete construction did not follow an uncontested technical revolution, as it is often discussed, but was critically mediated by labour debates, social clashes, and ethnic conflicts decisively involving Italian migrant workers, who constituted a majority amongst concrete labourers at the time in New York City. The article situates these debates in relation to the definition of these migrants as ‘neighbours’ — linking negotiations amongst trades and ethnicities in the construction site to contemporaneous discussions on collective housing models in the American metropolis. It explores how new forms of ‘neighbourliness’ defined in these two sites were simultaneously framed by industrialisation, capitalism, nationalism, and migration throughout this formative period for both the Italian and American republics. Coming fundamentally from the south of their country, Italian migrant workers struggled to identify (and be recognised) as both members of the new Italian nation and as American citizens and, rather than easily fitting in any of the ‘imagined communities’ defined for the two republics, they constituted themselves as a material one. Modern architecture, the article concludes, was both dependent on and the catalyst for negotiations of neighbourliness in concrete.