The two Italian Mishawakas: DeAmicis and DiLoreto

SOUTH SIDE AND NORTH SIDE · 1900 TO THE PRESENT

The Italian community grew from eight people in 1900 to 993 by 1930, about half foreign-born and half the American-born children of Italian parents, and it built not one Mishawaka but two. The south-side community settled between the railroad tracks, Thirteenth, Spring and Union Streets; the north-side community east of Main Street and north of Mishawaka Avenue; and each, in the commissioned history's account, was furnished with Italian-owned businesses "like the Flemish-Americans had in Belgiantown" — the ethnic enclave was this city's standard instrument of settlement, and the Italians built theirs in duplicate. Each community also built its own social roof. The south side's center was the DeAmicis Mutual Aid Society, founded in 1917, which built its social hall at the northwest corner of Spring and Eleventh Streets in 1928 — a building, the commissioned history records in the present tense, "the club continues to use today." The north side's heart was the DiLoreto Society on Division Street, of which the same history says, a century on, that "it, too, is alive and well."

The community's public monument was its church, and the church belongs to the religion record — St. Monica's third building, dedicated in 1927 in Italian Romanesque with a 103-foot tower, is cross-referenced here at pointer size as the moment the north-side community wrote itself into the skyline in the architecture of home. What culture owns is the societies' course and the community's place in the city's common calendar: the Italian folk dancing and music on the centennial's Friday program in 1932, performed beside the Belgians' as one of the city's constituent cultures; and the fact, stated by the city's own historian in the present tense twice in a single passage, that both mutual-aid halls still stand in use a hundred years after their founding. Mutual aid was the serious business underneath the festivity — societies of this kind insured their members against sickness, burial costs and the accidents of factory life in the decades before such protection came from employers or the state — and the form the record documents in Mishawaka is two halls, two neighborhoods, one community, still meeting.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the counts (eight in 1900; 993 by 1930, half foreign-born), the two enclaves and their bounds, the DeAmicis founding of 1917 and hall of 1928 in present use, the DiLoreto Society "alive and well a century later," the 1932 Friday program, and St. Monica's 1927 building, quoted and cross-referenced.
2. The religion record of this history — St. Monica's parish course, carried whole there.