A community gathering at Umberto Balducci’s villa; Brenda Stankus’ grandfather, Angelo Lazzuri, is seated at the back table in a black vest and tie (Photo courtesy Rino Balducci)
Why is there a Christopher Columbus statue by Byrd Park?
Who crafted the elaborate plaster and stonework in Richmond’s early-20th-century theaters and public buildings?
The answers to those questions point to the early and long-lasting cultural influence of Italians.
When Thomas Jefferson sought to better cultivate grapes for winemaking, he imported Italians to assist in the undertaking. Through no fault of theirs, the grapes didn’t flourish, but, as researcher Brenda Giannotti Stankus writes, the Gianni family that settled in Albemarle County was fruitful and multiplied.
Prior to the Civil War, a contingent of Italians lived and worked in Richmond, and by 1870, their numbers grew enough to form the Italian Beneficial and Social Society. The greatest expansion of the city’s Italian population began in the 1890s and continued into the 1920s. They at first lived in Shockoe Bottom, often above their grocery stores or saloons, and in the now-vanished Navy Hill neighborhood north of the Richmond Coliseum. As often occurs today with immigrants, a group came, settled and invited family to join them.
“When they put the streetcar in that ran from Seventh and Broad streets across the ravine, the city expanded north,” explains Ray Gargiulo, who researched the topic with Stankus. “Many of the Italians went up to what’s now Highland Park.”
Gargiulo, a retired Richmond Public Schools principal and former Peace Corps volunteer, is a co-founder of the Great Aspirations Scholarship Program, or GRASP. He came to Richmond in 1970 to teach in the VCU School of Education. When he met Italians here, he’d ask, “When’d you come down?” meaning from New York or New Jersey. But the Italians he met had Southern accents and ate pecan pie, not cannoli, for dessert.
“I got kind of curious,” he says. “Why are these indigenous Italians here? And why did they all seem to live in Highland Park?”
New historical marker on the Carolina Avenue side of Pollock Park (Photo by Megan Irwin)
Conversations with community members, searches in the city directories and institutional archives conducted by Gargiulo and Stankus brought to light a mostly untold story that culminated in May with the dedication of an historical marker on the Carolina Avenue side of Pollock Park.
The cluster of Italian families in Highland Park wasn’t a random occurrence.
In 1906, Umberto Balducci arrived in Richmond and with $200 he opened a restaurant at Seventh and Broad streets that later grew to four. Unable at first to speak English, he put up pictures of the fare.
“It worked,” Stankus and Gargiulo wrote in a booklet produced in connection with the historical marker. “In typical Italian generosity, every Thursday, he held back nine veal Parmesan dinners — one of his wife’s most popular dishes, a true favorite made only once a week — because the local policemen loved it!” And they ate, free of charge.
Preparing food many Richmonders hadn’t ever seen, much less eaten, provided the immigrants with both a livelihood and an entrée to the city’s life. Balducci came from Italy’s Northern Tuscany region, and he assisted in bringing to Richmond some 100 families, many of them from Tuscan villages near his own. Balducci became the “coppo,” the paterfamilias of the Italian community.
“If there was trouble among the Italians in Highland Park,” Gargiulo says, “you didn’t call the police or authorities. You asked Balducci.”
The Italians, many of them Catholics and also newcomers, didn’t want to bring too much attention to themselves. After 1924, when U.S. immigration regulations restricted Italians to those with sponsorship, Balducci implemented a policy of fronting $200 that the newcomers eventually paid off. Many of the Highland Park Italians attended St. Elizabeth Catholic Church on Second Avenue.
Balducci prospered, and he and his wife, Vienna, raised 12 children. They built an Italian-style villa at 820 Young St. that became a gathering place.
“He used to make wine, and all of his Italian friends made wine,” recalls Rino Balducci, one of their five sons. “[There was] a friendly rivalry as to who made the best wine. Most of them said my father.” Rino, who became a builder and developer, provided the initial financial support to install the Highland Park sign.
Ferruccio Legnaioli working on the Christopher Columbus statue in his studio (Photo courtesy of Ann Legnaioli)
Another prominent local Italian, Florence-trained artist Ferruccio Legnaioli, came down to Richmond from New York in 1907 on the sponsorship of Richmond businessman Frank Ferrandini. Legnaioli established a plaster and design studio on Moore Street in Scott’s Addition. The Legnaioli Tile, Cement & Plaster Co. employed up to 35 Italian artisans; some came over to earn money to take home, others stayed.
Legnaioli and his workers installed the plaster décor at the Empire (now Virginia Repertory), National, Colonial and Byrd theaters, and the Mosque (now Altria Theater). He created the Shockoe Slip horse fountain, the First Virginia Regiment figure at Meadow Street and Park Avenue, and, in part to symbolize Italian pride, the Christopher Columbus statue that was dedicated on Dec. 9, 1927. The figure stands on a pedestal made by memorial stone carver Alfonso Grappone. The Sons of Italy wanted the statue on Monument Avenue, but public objections — because Columbus was both a foreigner and a Catholic — caused the Byrd Park compromise.
Legnaioli embellished banks, theaters, churches, office buildings and private homes. His creativity remains part of Richmond’s aesthetic appeal.
Stankus’ maternal grandfather, Angelo Lazzuri, heard about Richmond’s community of “Tuscanos.” During World War I, he walked more than 600 miles to Richmond from Chicago, working odd jobs to cover his expenses. He arrived in time to be detained at Fort Lee as an enemy alien. While there, he cut out a picture of himself and stuck it onto a photo of his wife and children to put them together. After the war, he became a citizen and brought his wife and children over from Italy to Highland Park.
“This historic marker is the first in Virginia to honor an ethnic group,” Stankus says. “It’s not a barrier we intended to break, and we wish it wasn’t; but we are proud of our people who became Americans.”
