Newark's Little Italy: The Vanished First Ward uses vintage photographs, interviews, and archival material to tell the story of a remarkable American neighborhood, Newark's old First Ward. Once the heart of the nation's fifth largest Italian community, the First Ward was a quintessential ethnic enclave of the kind that enlivened America's cities early in the century.

In its heyday, everyone, from movie stars to Thomas Edison to Joe DiMaggio, came to visit, dine at the restaurants, or attend the colorful religious festivals.

Michael Immerso traces the history of the First Ward from the arrival of the first Italians in the 1870s until 1953, when the neighborhood was uprooted to make way for urban renewal. Richly illustrated with photographs culled from the albums and trunks of former First Ward families, the book documents the growth of the district from a small immigrant quarter to a thriving Italian-American neighborhood during the first half of this century.

It balances nostalgia with the gritty reality that conveys the texture of life in the First Ward as it was experienced by those who lived there. In the forty years since the neighborhood vanished, it has achieved almost mythic stature among Italian Americans with roots in the old First Ward now dispersed across the United States. Yet every October, descendants still return in droves for the Festival of St. Gerard.

The photographs gathered in this book will become part of a larger permanent collection at the Newark Public Library. Many of them were on display at the library in the fall of 1996, in a major exhibition that drew thousands of visitors. This book is a copublication with the Newark Public Library.