An Italian-American Odyssey: The Paterno and Cappiello Families NYC Builders

Did you know that tracing your family roots can unlock a treasure trove of rich history? This episode takes you on a captivating journey through Italy and the United States, retracing the roots of the Paterno and Cappiello families. With the company of Carla Paternal Cappiello-Golden, we explore the significance of visiting ancestral villages, contrasting impressions of Naples and Bari, and the process of obtaining dual citizenship.

Carla and I share our personal experiences visiting the Italy, and our respective hometowns. We discuss the insights gained from these visits and the impact understanding our roots has on our sense of identity. We also delve into the fascinating story of the Paterno family's immigration to the United States, their success in the construction business, and the legacy they have left in Manhattan. 

Finally, we touch on the charm of Naples, the beauty of Bari, and the connection to our family history that these cities hold. Carla walks us through her personal journey towards dual citizenship, emphasizing the importance of preserving family stories for future generations. This episode is an entertaining blend of personal experiences, historical facts, and practical insights that will leave you yearning to explore your own family history.

http://paternoarchitecture.com/

https://www.nyadventureclub.com/event/the-paterno-castle-deep-dive-into-nycs-famed-gilded-age-mansion-webinar-registration-764625303867/

Farmers and Nobles
Read about my research story and how to begin your family research.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

This is Bob Sarrantino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy, and please subscribe to our channel and check us out on Facebook and our blog. We have great advertisers your Dolce Vita Italy, vuding and Abiettivo Casa, and my guest today is Carla Paternal Capiello-Golden. I put all the names in there, carla, thank you. So thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Thank you, I'm glad to be here with you, so I usually started talking about when and why and where you started family research. But I think with you, I think the best thing to do is we just missed each other by a couple of weeks in Bari.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Right, yes, which we loved. It was so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 1:04

I know we did too. The last two years we've been to a lot of places and we really like Bari a lot and we stayed in the old city. So once we were able to, after a couple of days, find our way home, it was much better Right.

Speaker 2: 1:19

Yes, it's a very confusing city and we were so surprised because we don't hear a lot of people talking about Bari and we just we really wanted just to see both sides of the country, both seas, both bodies of water, and Bari seemed like a great hub to stay and do some day trips from and really had not heard a whole lot of people talking about it, and so we were absolutely delighted about what we discovered in Bari just such a beautiful city.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Yeah, and you know, we felt the same way. Last year we went to we were in Naples and Calabria on that side, and we had planned to go to Bari, and then it would have been just a quick trip and it was getting expensive. So we said, well, hopefully we'll go back next year. But you know, I went because, like you, you know, my family is from Puglia and same thing. I figured it's a good place to do some day trips. So you know, we made a day trip to Torrito and then we also went to Matero, where we missed you there too.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Right, exactly, yes, well, and it's funny, you use all my names that's sort of my genealogy name, my social media name, so that when I contact people who I've never contacted before, they can tell pretty quickly why I'm contacting them In my real life. I just go by Carla Golden.

Speaker 1: 2:46

I figured.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Yeah, it's much shorter, much easier to spell, and but my father's family is Capiello, and that's the family from Puglia, and so it was Bickery that we were heading to on our way to Bari. So that's also another reason why we ended up in Bari, because we did stop in Bickery to see my father's family village, and then my paterno family is from Basilicata, and so we spent much more time in Catilmazzano, that family village, and it was so rewarding to have the opportunity to visit Southern Italy and to see both villages where both my mother and father's families are from.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Now, so you're from Bickery. Are you related to Eric or Rich?

Speaker 2: 3:41

Way back, way back, eric Luchera, who's been so helpful. In old family records we have, I think, some great grandparents, great-grandparenting in common. I don't remember the exact connection, but I know that it's there, yeah, and so I've had a lot of help with research on that side from Eric and others who've done extensive research on the families that came from Bickery, and what I learned is there's one Capiello left in Bickery, and apparently he's not very amenable to visitors, so we did not attempt to meet him, but I think he's the only one left, and so Capiello is really not a name that still exists there in that small village. It's all in, or at least what I know of, in the United States now.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Yeah, and that's pretty close. Great-grandparents, even great-great-grandparents, isn't that that far away. So, because I know how I felt when I got to the hometowns, how did you feel when you were there?

Speaker 2: 5:00

Well, it was very different, the experience in Bickery with my Capiello family, compared to Cazza Mazzano with my paterno family. Everybody in the family tree is important. Everybody is an individual with their own life story. Some have more documentation about their life and their work in the United States of America than others. Some family histories are better preserved and passed down through the ages, some not so well, so I don't know a whole lot about my Capiello family, just bits and pieces about my great-grandfather being a baker and the family being in the grocery business in Auburn, new York. So, going back to Bickery, I was just glad to put my feet on the same ground that they had walked at one point some of my ancestors, and it wasn't much more than that. We didn't spend a lot of time there. We also arrived during Raposo, which was not wise, but it was just the way our travel schedule was. We were driving ourselves and that's when we went from Naples to Bari with a stop in Bickery. It just ended up that way. So it wasn't probably the best time to visit. But I did speak with the cafe, the coffee bar barista, and I told him my great-grandfather's name and it just really meant nothing the Capiello name. There was no, nothing rang familiar. So I felt like, well, we stopped. We came. I'm fourth generation, my daughter's fifth generation. We came, we closed this circle and it's time to move on Now. Our experience in Councilmattano with our paterno family was completely different. Because there is so much documentation I have about my mother's family Because when they left Councilmattano and went to Manhattan they ended up becoming an apartment house building empire. They built 164 buildings in Manhattan, with 155 of those being apartment houses, of which only eight have been demolished. So there's still a visible presence of my family's legacy in Manhattan and people know about it. The people in Councilmattano are very proud of it. It benefited the village of Councilmattano because out of 10 siblings, one went back to Councilmattano and he ended up becoming Podesta of the village and as his siblings and the family were becoming more and more successful, the family in the United States would send money back to Councilmattano, and so Councilmattano got running water and plumbing and electricity and sewage and all those village utilities earlier than other villages because they were being funded by money from America and because the family connection. And so while there are not direct descendants of my family still living in Councilmattano, the name is still very alive in that village.

Speaker 2: 8:50

So when we visited it was just an instant welcome. Everybody was excited that we were there. They were so thankful that we had taken the time and effort to come visit the village and to see it with our own eyes and be there with them. It wasn't some people say, oh, you're treated like a celebrity or they roll out the red carpet. That was not the feeling I had. It was so much warmer than that. It was just family opening their arms and welcoming us back, just welcoming the family line back into the village, and it just felt so familiar and so comfortable. And we were there. I think it was four days or four nights, and we were there for the annual festival, the traditional festival, which was two days.

Speaker 2: 9:54

And, like so many villages that have lost so many people leaving the small villages for the bigger cities and work, this village has turned to tourism and their innovative idea to attract people and attract money and attract work, to create jobs, was to create a zip line from their mountain peaks to the next village, over to their mountain peaks, so you can take one zip line over. So, no matter which village you're staying in, you can zip over to the other and then take a second zip line back and it is considered one of the highest and one of the longest and one of the fastest zip lines in the world, and so this was quite the experience, so that dominated one of our days there. Just taking all that in. It was such a thrill and it was such an innovative, clever, brilliant idea. The mayor there is absolutely wonderful and he's got a great team of very forward thinkers and I can just imagine being around the board table and somebody suggesting this idea of how to attract people and dollars into the village and they probably thought that person was nuts, but I think it's been around for 15 years. It has an excellent safety record and it has been wildly successful and people love it and all day long you hear people whoosing across the village and oh, oh me, oh Dio, oh me, oh Dio. So it has a very I'd say just an exciting energy that's always present there. It always feels like people I mean, italians are very prone to celebrating anyway, but it just sounds so festive all the time that people are having a good time there.

Speaker 2: 12:02

And then we did a lot of exploring of the cemetery to see some of the family members there. We met with the mayor and his team. They're actually creating a museum in honor of several of our family members, ancestors. Out of the 10 siblings my great grandfather and his nine siblings, 10 together three of them were actually born in Castle Mitzono and emigrated to Manhattan. Five of the siblings were actually born in Manhattan, or six of them were. So the village of Castle Mitzono is creating a museum to honor the three sons of Castle Mitzono who became wildly successful in Manhattan and to feature some of their buildings.

Speaker 2: 12:52

So I met with the mayor about the village project to create that museum and I think that it's going to be a nice addition to celebrate that Lucanian spirit, anybody who left that area and were successful in other parts of the world. They take full credit. It's because they have Lucanian blood and the Lucanian work ethic and it's all because they were born in that region or in the village of Castle Mitzono. So they take full credit for everything that was done in Manhattan, rightfully so. I think it's wonderful that people from such a small place could, at the turn of the century, travel around the world and acclimate and find tremendous success and a whole new life in a whole new world. It's an incredible story. I'm just really so proud of my ancestors.

Speaker 1: 14:15

Yeah, no, that's an unbelievable story. So when did they come and how did they get into that building business? I mean, I grew up in New York, so I know Manhattan well and where are the places located, and the fact that only eight have been destroyed is incredible.

Speaker 2: 14:32

Yeah, well, there are these pre-war apartment buildings that people love, with all the deep window sills and the little white tiles in the bathroom and the chrome fix you know, it's just what people love and the high ceilings and the tall windows. Well, it's an interesting story because it was a very accidental situation. No one planned for this, no one set out to leave Southern Italy and to create a new building business in America. It was in the 1880s my great-great-grandfather, Giovanni Paterno. He was a builder in Basilicata and I think he did some work in Naples in the region, and he was building a new house for the family and apparently there was some kind of arch or dome in the ceiling and there were a lot of supports holding up the structure and the plaster and everything till everything set, and the story goes that when the supports were removed, it collapsed, and so it was a huge embarrassment. It put a tremendous dent in his reputation as a builder and it was financially devastating to have a project fail like that, and so a lot.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Sometimes when you read about the family, it's explained that the earthquake, that an earthquake damaged the building and so he was in ruins after the earthquake. But the more research I did. I was like I think that's a cover-up, because I couldn't find an earthquake at that time and I could not find evidence of any other building being destroyed. I can't imagine an earthquake disruining one building. So I think that was a cover story to maybe protect some ego, but anyway. So he was just desperate to rebuild his reputation and to rebuild his finances, and at that time, when Southern Italy was so poor, there were just better opportunities in the new world. So he came by himself and he lived in Manhattan as a laborer for five years and then, once he paid off his debts and reestablished his reputation or established it in a new place and he started working up the ladder and making more money. Then he called for his family to join him, and so it was his wife, Carolina and their four oldest children, one of which was my great-grandfather and I think that he was six years old, six or seven. And so mama and the four children came over, joined him and they lived on Mott Street on the Lower East Side and father Giovanni was just working on other people's projects. And then he met an Irish man, I believe at Mass, and they went in on their first solo projects together, and so Giovanni built some five-story apartment houses on the Upper West Side and then, after Giovanni built, I believe, four, his son, Joseph my great-grandfather's younger brother, Joseph was working with father Giovanni in the building yards. My great-grandfather did very well in school and so he was labeled the smart one and encouraged to pursue more education. So he actually was in the first graduating class of Cornell's New Medical College and so he was trained as a doctor and he was doing his residency at the Old Bellevue Hospital.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Joseph and Giovanni were in the building yards and father Giovanni started complaining of losing his strength and losing his stamina. He was not feeling well and the American doctors said his health was declining rapidly. It was not good and of course he was not gonna trust the American doctors. So he wanted to go back to Italy to be seen by Italian doctors and to be treated there, and if he were going to die, he wanted to die in Italy. So the only photograph that we have of father Giovanni, my great-great-grandfather, is his passport picture, and he sat for that passport picture as an ailing man who wanted to get back to Italy. And he said goodbye to his wife and said goodbye to his children who his 10th child had just been born and his oldest son, Savario, took him back to Catzol Mitzano well, to Naples to see doctors and to Catzol Mitzano, and Giovanni ended up dying in 1899 with two unfinished buildings back in Manhattan. So his son, Joseph, who had been working with him, who was 18 years old, said, oh my gosh, I have to figure out how to finish these two buildings by myself, because all the family savings are invested and it just has to be finished and then we can walk away and do whatever. And so he recruited my great-grandfather from Bellevue Hospital and said you've just got to come help me figure out how to finish these two buildings and then you can go back to your medical pursuits. And so they completed the two buildings and sold them, and partial payment was an empty lot next door. So they said, okay, just one more, we'll build just one more. And so they built it and they sold it and they made a fair amount of money for it. So they said, okay, just one more building, we'll do one more. And they went a little higher, a little fancier, and I think that when they made like a $40,000 profit and my very smart great-grandfather said, how many patients would I have to see a year to yield this kind of profit, and so he never practiced medicine. He never went back to medicine and so they formed the Praterno Brothers Construction Company and all the brothers were involved.

Speaker 2: 21:34

There were five boys, five girls in the family and all the five brothers-in-law were involved in the family business. So there were 10 men. They were all in Manhattan except for the one, Severio, who went back to Castle Mitzono and became the Podesta. But he was involved in the family business because he ended up being kind of an employment depot for Southern Italians who wanted to get to America for work. And Severio had married a British woman. He was kind of the wild child of the family.

Speaker 2: 22:09

When they first got to Manhattan he was also working in the building yards with their father and he said this is not for me. So he left and went to Philadelphia and ended up joining a traveling circus. So he went all around America, all around the world, ended up in Britain where he fell in love with a woman he later married and brought her to Castle Mitzono when he went back. So he's in tiny little Southern Italian Castle Mitzono with his British wife and laborers are coming to him and say help us get to America, and so wife Minnie is teaching them English, but she's British, so they're Italians who are speaking proper British English with an Italian accent as they prepare to journey across the Atlantic to get to Manhattan. But they said okay, these are your travel documents, this is what you need, this is where you go. When you get there, these are your papers, and just say paterno, All you need to know is paterno, You're going to work for paterno.

Speaker 2: 23:17

So they just had a steady stream of laborers from Southern Italy and this was long before the labor laws in 40 hour work weeks.

Speaker 2: 23:32

So they were big crews who were working about 60 hours a week minimum and they would erect an apartment house on average about one a year. And there were multiple projects going on at the same time and different brothers would pair up for different projects. So there was always something under construction, but it would take about a year to build each one, and it's just once you get up to 15 stories. It's just incredible that these structures could be erected in less than a year's time and they're still standing. So it's a testimony to the building quality, the timeless aesthetics and the great building reputation that they had. So it's you know, it was truly an accidental enterprise that they fell into this. The father obviously was a builder, so there was a good chance that, you know, maybe a couple of the children would go into building with him. But I don't think anybody ever envisioned the whole family being involved in this building empire that they ended up creating.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Yeah, I mean, that's an incredible story. So now did they build all of them in Manhattan?

Speaker 2: 24:54

They build primarily on the Upper West Side and on the Upper East Side.

Speaker 1: 24:58

You know they're always so like around what streets?

Speaker 2: 25:01

Well, let's see. They started on 106th Street, west 112th.

Speaker 1: 25:08

You know all around that area 105th, 103rd, 104th, and the reason I ask is because my wife, she lived up there, she lived in, in fact, her brother still lives there. I think 102nd, 104th on the.

Speaker 2: 25:28

West Side.

Speaker 1: 25:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. You know, in one of those five-story brownstone type places.

Speaker 2: 25:35

Yeah, so that's, you know. The brownstones, the townhouses were not really their genre, it was more the apartment houses the apartments and so you know bigger structures. But right there in that same area, you know, we have Morniante Side Drive, cathedral Parkway, and then, once their reputation really was solidified, they bumped over to the Upper West Side in the 20s and built some more luxurious, higher end apartments. You know a lot on Fifth Avenue, park Avenue, so you know they- so what years were they active?

Speaker 1: 26:19

I mean that's, I never heard this story. In fact, I have to tell my friend, frank DiPiero, who does this Italian-American moment. I have to put you in touch with him, okay, Because he does like a quick thing about it. You know great Italian-Americans and this is right up his alley.

Speaker 2: 26:36

Well, it's been a mystery to me why this story has been lost to time. Yeah, yeah, I never heard. But also the stranger thing is it was lost to the family we didn't know.

Speaker 1: 26:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:53

And so there are two ways. There's several ways to look at it. Number one the family didn't know. And I think with 10 siblings who lived very close together. You know, when I read your Thanksgiving email it reminded me. You know exactly of the family structure. You know very close, lived in proximity to one another, worked together. It wasn't a patriarchal family. After Father Giovanni died it was matriarchal. Mama Carolina kept her children very close and it was only after she died that they started spreading apart.

Speaker 2: 27:30

And then, I think, the next generation. They didn't know each other as cousins because they had already started to separate and then it just got further and further apart. But also they didn't have. Only one of the 10 siblings had a big family. The rest had one, two, three or none, and so they had pretty small families and then they just scattered and I think this history just fell through the cracks. And also the 10 siblings who built all these buildings I don't think they were keeping tabs, I don't think they had a running list of. It was just work, it's just what they did to make a living. They weren't preserving this for posterity, they weren't passing on this information. There are no records, there is just nothing that-.

Speaker 1: 28:20

Now, that would be paternal on every building, right, right, right.

Speaker 2: 28:24

Well, they did monogram a lot of their buildings, which is interesting. But for a long time those letters on the buildings have been a bit of a enigma because the obvious ones a P for paterno, obviously, jp for Joseph Paterno. But the brothers-in-law, anthony Campania, was a very successful builder in his own right. He was a second cousin of the paternos. He was born in Castle Mitzano, so their, his grandmother and mama Carolina, they were sisters and so he's a second cousin. But he also married Marie Paterno. So he was related to the family biologically and also through marriage, but also through business. But a lot of architectural historians know Anthony Campania but think he was a competitor to the paterno family. But he was part of the paterno family, as were the other brothers-in-law of Chalutzi, faya and some of the other Campania brothers. So once you understand the family tree and you see all of them together and you know the names, then it all start. All those letters on the buildings start making sense. So the another reason why I think a lot of this history has been lost is because a lot of times these buildings or most of the time buildings are known by their architect, not by their builder. And so a Rosario Candela building. People know Rosario Candela or Gaitana Yellow buildings. They were Sicilian architects who created beautiful apartment houses and but somebody you know, a developer, a builder, had to hire that architect. You know, rosario Candela is a celebrated, famous architect in Manhattan and it was the paterno family who first hired him. So his first projects were with the paterno family and he designed about 40 buildings for the paterno family. So he worked right alongside the paternos for much of his career.

Speaker 2: 30:40

And so when I started looking at the family tree during COVID, during the shutdown, I had a lot of time on my hands and I said, oh, finally I have time and reason and excuse to just indulge myself finally in this ancestrycom business, you know Cause I had poked around and I was like I just, you know, it takes like an hour just to even warm up before you actually, you know, accomplish anything. It is just so time intensive. And so I just gave myself fully into the family tree and was just gobbling up everything I could find and some prior research before the internet. A woman who married into the paterno family, she did a lot of research and she had put together a book, and so that's what I started with and I just started plugging all that into ancestrycom and in that book, about two thirds of the way in, she happened to mention that it was estimated the paterno family built approximately 100 buildings in Manhattan and I thought, huh, well, that needs to be verified. Clearly, somebody needs to figure out if that is true or not.

Speaker 2: 32:02

And so from South Carolina, where I live, I was able to figure out how to research historical buildings in Manhattan and access City of New York archives and databases and indexes and things. There's so much information online. It's absolutely wonderful, and newspaperscom and newspapers archive every sort of historical information I could find. I was just pulling it all together and trying to make sense of the story and getting all the dates of the people and the relationships of the people and then interspersing the dates of the buildings and figuring out who was on the building permits, who was working together on each of these projects and how old they were at the time and what was going on in their lives at the time. And so I just started being able to spin all this information or weave it all together. And then I started reaching out to descendants of other siblings and distant cousins that I have never contacted or communicated with before in my life and I would share with them what I was learning, and they were absolutely fascinated. And then they would be able to add some pieces about their ancestor, because we all kind of knew a little bit about our silo.

Speaker 2: 33:23

Of the 10 siblings, no one had done much horizontal work and so I felt that's what I needed to do was to go wide and bring everybody together into this family fabric and this family story and give it back to everybody. Nobody knew. Everybody had maybe 20% knowledge of the big story and once I was able to put it all together and share it, it has just been so exciting for all of us. We're fourth and fifth generation and it's discovering this story that's amazing. And then it's like, oh my gosh, these are our people, we're related to these people and now it's our responsibility to steward this story and to not let it be lost to history again and for our descendants to be very aware of where we came from and what our ancestors accomplished and what kind of lives they lived in Manhattan at the turn of the century. And so the dates father Giovanni he built his first solo project in 1896. And then the last building the family built was in 1964.

Speaker 2: 34:49

So that's a long time, so good spans, but most of them were in the early part of the 20th century and the most were in the 20s. The 20s truly roared for the paternal family. That was the building peak, for sure. And then, of course, the Great Depression just put a big halt on most everything, and so there were just a handful after that. But one of the most well-known buildings of the paternal family is the house that my great grandfather built for himself, which was a castle. So it was just this incredible but ostentatious piece of architecture that stood on the banks of the Hudson River, just north of where the George Washington Bridge is now, and it stood there for 31 years. It's where my grandfather grew up, it was his childhood home, and so a lot of people know about the mythology of the castle. It's very intriguing that somebody built an actual castle, had the nerve to build an actual castle.

Speaker 1: 36:04

But back then there was nothing there.

Speaker 2: 36:06

No, there was not anything there. And there was another castle not far away, libby Castle. So I think that was a lot of the inspiration for Dr Paterno's castle. But what's amazing to me is he built that. He started building that in 1907. His father died in 1899. So in just eight years he had made enough money in the building arts as a trained doctor to afford to build a castle and his final estate was about seven acres. I mean, yeah, I think about seven acres.

Speaker 1: 36:45

But he started with just one little plot and had the castle and slowly built that's seven acres in Manhattan. I know.

Speaker 2: 36:53

I know, I know.

Speaker 1: 36:55

Well, I can't even think about how much that will be worth today.

Speaker 2: 36:58

Oh, exactly, and a big chunk of it was from the Gordon Bennett estate when it was sold in Washington Heights, so he scooped up a lot of that and so when he tore down his own castle, so a lot of people when I get into discussion with them online and they get very sentimental about these old, you know gilded age mansions that come down I understand it's incredible architecture. There are some very unfortunate demolitions of things that you know maybe should have been preserved and held on to. But at the same time, you know, in this case Dr Paterno built it, dr Paterno tore it down. I would maybe feel differently if somebody else tore it down.

Speaker 1: 37:49

They see the why he tore it down.

Speaker 2: 37:52

And I think that this is very important for people to know, because it's probably the reason why a lot of gilded age mansions were torn down they are expensive to maintain by one family and as the tax laws changed and taxes, you know, we're just skyrocketing Dr Paterno decided that he did not want to saddle his one and only child, his son, with inheriting that burden, because it he had a staff of 30 people who lived on site to maintain the property and to maintain the house and he also had 17 greenhouses and a swimming pool. I mean, it was incredible, but it took a lot of people to maintain it and he didn't want his son to inherit it and he wanted his son to inherit an asset, not a burden. So Dr Paterno tore down the castle and on that same land he built castle village apartments, which are five 13 story apartment houses just north of George Washington Bridge.

Speaker 1: 39:03

I'm sure I I had to have seen them, sure, going over the bridge, exactly.

Speaker 2: 39:08

It's. It's incredible. You know I've done a lot of research on the castle. I actually have a webinar coming up the day after Christmas showcasing the castle, and the hardest part for me about the castle is I have not been able to find any blueprints, and there are no photos of the interior of the castle, and so it's just been a huge curiosity for me to figure out how the inside was laid out. But I have a lot of eyewitness accounts of people who wrote down what they saw, so I've been able to take, you know, four different sources of eyewitness accounts and make a pretty good guess of how the interior was laid out, and so I share that in my presentation.

Speaker 2: 40:03

But the glass house extension that had all the greenhouses in the swimming pool, that was added on 20 years after the castle was built, and I did find blueprints for that. So I have the actual layout of that area. So you know that's a very well known paterno building for people in Manhattan and people who were, you know, history buffs. But you know, for the most part, their whole accomplishment of building these apartment houses, like I said, has just been forgotten, and I don't understand why, and I'm making it my mission to revitalize, repackage, you know, just reinvigorate the excitement about. You know, definitely the paterno family is one of the amongst the prominent building families in the 20th century in Manhattan.

Speaker 1: 41:01

And yeah, I mean anything, anything I could do. I mean certainly put it on the on the Facebook, you know, group or anything I could do to help promote the webinar. And you know, maybe we have to do something just focused on that one day. But you know, I kind of know what you mean.

Speaker 1: 41:18

I have a picture, I have a painting of it right over my head here and a little picture over there, my, when we were in Calabria at my third great grandparents home actually it may have been this on my grand uncle who built it, I'm not still not sure about that, but there's a plot. So in Calabria and in Faisato, and it's still there, but totally run down inside, and we were there for I don't know six hours outside and they rented the whole town, was entertaining us and everything. And at one point I said, I said doesn't the owner care that we're like in on his land in front of the plot? So, and they were like, yeah, you know, you know Italian, we don't care. But they said, well, he may come out. And towards the end of the day he came out and they said he wants to know if he would like to go inside.

Speaker 1: 42:12

And I said, of course, yes, and it was bittersweet because you got to see what it once was. But it wasn't that anymore. But you could see how the ceilings were painted and the walls painted with, you know, frescoes and all that kind of stuff. So so I know what you mean. You know I never thought about. I wonder if in this place they actually have architectural drawings. We're going to have to ask them to have drawings of this place, because that would be, that would be great to see. And again, coming from New York, an Italian America from New York and not knowing this about the paternal, it blows me away. So, yeah, we need to get people interested in that. I mean, I must have passed all of these buildings, all these.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Oh, I'm sure you would recognize a good number, I'm sure.

Speaker 1: 43:00

I'm sure I would. So I have to ask you to go back to the trip again. What did you think of Naples and Matera? To definitely to completely different places, right.

Speaker 2: 43:13

OK, well, I traveled with my husband, our adult daughter and her boyfriend so they're in their 20s, so it was the four of us and we had never been to Italy together. I had been to Northern Italy, I've never been to Southern Italy. So this was our trip for the first time to Southern Italy and I plan the entire trip based on recommendations and things that I read and where we wanted to go. And so we flew into Naples Everything's great. We got our car, rented the car and my daughter's boyfriend offered to drive first, and we drove out of the parking deck and we were stunned. We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into.

Speaker 2: 44:01

It made driving in Manhattan seem mild and orderly. I mean Naples was out of control. I mean there are no road rules. Green means go, yellow means go, red means go Stop. Signs are stoptional. I mean it's just every person for themselves, but they're excellent at it. We saw one minor accident in two weeks. I mean they are. It is mind-boggling to drive there and to try to navigate through the streets, but everybody does it so well and most of the cars are little. We had an American sized car so we were big on the road and the mopeds just have their own road rules. Cars are just obstacles to avoid. It doesn't matter where the lines on the road are or what the lights or the signs are saying. It's just it's a free for all.

Speaker 1: 45:11

Well, we learned. We learned especially in, in, you know, the, the historic center there, and some of those really narrow alleyways, for lack of a better word. Right, don't try and dodge the mopeds, they'll work their way around you. Oh yeah, Don't try to get out of the way, you'll get run over.

Speaker 2: 45:28

Exactly, and if you try to get out of somebody's way, you're getting in someone else's way, so you just you stay the course and everybody just gets where they're going. It was just. It was equally mortifying and impressive. And I was just shocked that we got through it unscathed. And our we had a Jeep Compass and you called them alleyways because in America anything that size is an alley, but those old roads our car barely fit. We were worried about our side mirrors and yet still the mopeds would pass us.

Speaker 2: 46:07

They would thread that needle and get past us. And you know we'd have to do three point turns to take a left off of one road and go down the next because it was just too tight of a turn to get it. I mean, we thought we were driving. You know that we were going to get stuck and have to back out somehow, but these were thoroughfares, these were roads meant to drive all the way down. It was incredible. So that was a culture shock.

Speaker 1: 46:35

So where did you? Where did you stay? How many days were you there? Where did you stay?

Speaker 2: 46:38

We stayed there, I think, four days and, forgive me, I never mastered the name of the road that we stayed on, but it's, you know, the tourist street with all the shops and all the restaurants. It very long street. I never mastered the name of that street because I think I heard it referred to by several different names, but we just stayed in the thick of that. So we were able to get a parking garage for the car, and so, you know, one thing I would had read a lot about is cars getting stolen, and I thought, well, you know it's, it's a rental car, not that worried about it, but I just don't want to go through the hassle, so I'm just going to make sure that we, you know, are not parking on the streets or whatever.

Speaker 2: 47:26

Looking back, I think we would have been fine, but you know you read these things about a place before you go and you know you just try to take the precautions you think you need to make. So we were able to get a parking garage, and then we just walked to our accommodations, which were just so absolutely beautiful. It wasn't through Airbnb, but it was like an Airbnb, and so it was, you know, a private apartment up on the fourth floor. You know where the rock steps, you know on the way up there are just huge Like I've I've not climbed.

Speaker 2: 48:07

I've never climbed more rock in my life and so beautiful accommodations. What we loved about Naples you know I had read that it was you know it has a history of not being safe. It has a history of being dirty, and so I knew about the trash and the graffiti. I had no idea how much we would love Naples. We absolutely loved Naples. I mean we loved everything, all for different reasons, but we love the vibe of Naples. Naples is just such a happy place. It's just popping all the time and with all the flags for the soccer, football teams, the Naples football team championship, I mean you know shrines to the football players just everywhere and all the flags and the shirts and just the pride and the spirit. And we loved just walking around that area. We took some day trips. We went to Herculaneum, we went to Virgil's Tomb. Herculaneum and Virgil's Tomb are two historic sites that my ancestor, anthony Campania, helped fund the restoration of. So we definitely wanted to see those spots. We were so impressed with Herculaneum.

Speaker 1: 49:32

Yeah, we went there. It was closed, so we wound up in Pompeii. So we wound up in Pompeii instead.

Speaker 2: 49:38

Yeah, another day we visited Pompeii, which was incredible, but it was so overwhelming to us, you know, that's a kind of place that you need to visit several times.

Speaker 1: 49:48

We were there the first time 25 years ago, okay, and so it wasn't nearly as big as it was now and nobody was there. Really, this time it was.

Speaker 2: 49:58

I don't believe how many people were there it was packed, and so I'm glad that we went to Pompeii because it's so famous. But Herculaneum, to me, is the real gem because it's digestible. You can wrap your head around it in one visit, even though I think only like 20% of it is unearthed what you can see. You can actually walk around the whole thing in one visit. You can get the whole idea. You don't reach that level of overload like you do at Pompeii. Like at Pompeii it's like I cannot see one more house with a hole in the roof in the middle.

Speaker 2: 50:37

I just you know it means nothing at this point. So we really loved Herculaneum.

Speaker 1: 50:45

My favorite place in Naples and Pompeii this time around was finally making it to the cafe, because it was so hot that we had no work.

Speaker 2: 50:55

Right, and it was very. You probably stood in a long line.

Speaker 1: 51:00

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 51:02

Pompeii was very crowded, but so worth it to visit. I mean, it's an incredible incredible place.

Speaker 1: 51:07

It's an amazing place.

Speaker 2: 51:08

And then another day we went to Pastum I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but the Greek ruins. So we went there, so we took a day trip every day, wherever we were for the most part, and so we were there like four days and then we drove to Bicca and Bari and then from Bari we visited Albaro Bello, the Tule houses. We did have a rest day, so one day we just enjoyed Bari and wandering.

Speaker 1: 51:41

So where did you stay in Bari?

Speaker 2: 51:45

Oh.

Speaker 1: 51:46

Was it in the old city or the?

Speaker 2: 51:47

new, the old city and some little labyrinth. You know, alleyway courtyard thing that without GPS we would have never found.

Speaker 1: 51:59

We were getting lost with GPS.

Speaker 2: 52:00

Yes, it is such a wonderful.

Speaker 1: 52:03

Oh, it's stunning.

Speaker 2: 52:06

And so, you know, looking at Naples and looking at Bari, comparing the two, naples, you know, has that very dark rock from the volcano, the dark ash, the volcano, and then Bari is a very light city, it has the lighter rock, the limestone, you know.

Speaker 2: 52:25

So it's, they're both beautiful in their own way. I mean, I love graffiti, I love the colors and the artistry of graffiti, so all that enables with the dark rock and, you know, it just feels like a party. And then Bari is very clean, very light, you have the beautiful ocean walkway and it feels maybe more feminine, more French or European, or, you know, it's got a lighter, a more scrollier, you know, a feeling to me, and it's just, it was more elegant, I'd say, than Naples, though you know I never want to describe Naples in any way that is denigrating, because I think Naples has just such good vibe and Naples everything is so inexpensive. I mean, that was just delightful, you know. All the food and the accommodations and everything we wanted to do was so incredibly affordable. Things definitely got more expensive in Bari, you know, and rightfully so. And so you know, it was neat to have that contrast on both coasts. You know, they they're very enjoyable for different reasons.

Speaker 1: 53:49

Yeah, and I, you know, I come from both places. So you know, for me, you know, the difference is really something because my father's family they lived in Naples.

Speaker 2: 54:02

You, know, in the city.

Speaker 1: 54:05

So and they lived. My great grandmother was born on Via Carbonara and the I don't know the Hotel Caracelo was her family's palace going back to 1600s.

Speaker 2: 54:20

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1: 54:21

So you know, going in there was like really special. But to your point about how safe it was now, they were fine with us going there, but just not to I mean walking really close. You know, five minutes away where my father's family lived, the Sorrentino family lived. They didn't want to take us there. They said we don't even in the daytime they didn't want to take us there.

Speaker 1: 54:49

Well, I had set it up with a tour person. Okay, you know, it was like just a tour for us. You know, my family and um, they said it's just, we don't want to go there.

Speaker 2: 55:03

Really Interesting.

Speaker 1: 55:05

And it was like a five minute walk, so you know it's like any other city. You know, if you have to know where you're going and when you're going and then that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 55:14

You know we walked quite a bit. I don't know really the you know size of area that we covered walking, but there was never a single time Anywhere. We were in Naples, bari, in you know Catt's on its own. It was tiny but we never felt any sense of danger or threat or no, we didn't either, you know we had heard about people pickpocketing or what I mean.

Speaker 2: 55:45

No, no one even got close to us. I mean, even though you know it's a busy place, it's crowded, no one was getting you know uncomfortably close to us or looking at us strange or following. I mean there was just absolutely nothing. I mean you know we were just being smart travelers and just being aware of our surroundings, like we would when we go to Atlanta or Manhattan, you know, anywhere we would go.

Speaker 1: 56:13

And I found Naples more than Bari. You kind of just blend in.

Speaker 2: 56:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 56:19

You know, you just, you just, I don't know any other way to describe it. You know, Well, I think it's just Other than you blend in.

Speaker 2: 56:25

It's just such a busy, like I said, pop and place, nobody really stands out because there's just so much going on there's so much color and so much energy and there's just, you know it's hard for anybody to really stand out.

Speaker 2: 56:39

It's noisy and there's so much to see and I just you can't help but blend in because you're just part of, you know the energy and the life happening there. Bari is a little bit more subdued, so if you're, if you're lost, people know that you're lost. You know you stand out. You know there's a lot of people looking at their phone, turning in circles, trying to figure out where they're going. It's a little more obvious that you're visiting and that you don't know where you are. I think for us, naples was a little easier to navigate on foot.

Speaker 1: 57:19

I agree. I agree, yeah, because when you got into the new part of Bari it was fine, you know, because it was a grid. So, yeah, that was easy. Sure, but the old city, yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:31

That would make you crazy. Good luck, good luck.

Speaker 1: 57:35

We based everything on. We just walked to the Seawalk because, we were only like two minutes from there, you know to our place. So once we figured that out, based on that, the Cathedral right, so we were this far from the world over here. And then the restaurant with that street, with all the restaurants.

Speaker 2: 57:58

Right that street and fantastic restaurants. Oh, for sure, I mean the food. The whole trip was incredible. You know not a bit of disappointing food.

Speaker 1: 58:10

My wife made the mistake of asking for cheese on a fruta de mare so.

Speaker 2: 58:15

Uh oh.

Speaker 1: 58:18

That didn't go over too well. No, no.

Speaker 2: 58:21

Yeah, oh, that's funny. That's funny. Yeah, it was just. It was an absolutely perfect trip for us. We flew Delta, we had great flights, everything was on time. All of our accommodations I had used, I think, the place in Naples I booked directly, but everything else I used bookingcom.

Speaker 1: 58:42

Yeah, I did too.

Speaker 2: 58:43

And so the places we stayed in Bari and Catelmizano, and also our rental car, was through bookingcom and that worked out great. We had incredible weather, Everybody was so friendly and welcoming, the food was delicious, the sights we saw were we're seeing. We drove the Amalfi Coast, so we went to Amalfi and Apositano. I mean that road, I did it 25 years ago.

Speaker 1: 59:11

Oh my gosh, I had no desire to ever do it again.

Speaker 2: 59:14

Oh my gosh, it was. I mean, if anybody is car sick, just don't do it. We were trying to decide if the road to Hanna on Maui or the Amalfi Coast was worse.

Speaker 1: 59:27

I mean, they were both just so windy and I'm going to go with Amalfi being worse because there's trucks and yes, people on scooters and all kinds of things. And a big cliff and all of that stuff.

Speaker 2: 59:42

And we saw two trucks coming from or two buses coming from opposite directions and they had to pull their mirrors in to get past one another. And we were just like, oh my gosh, what are they doing? Are they going to make it? And then we realized they do this every day. They do it every day, several times a day. This is no big deal. And still a little moped would scoop by the buses. I mean, those mopeds do not stop for anything, it's so impressive. So, like I said, it's just mortifying.

Speaker 1: 1:00:17

We were 25 years ago. We were in Sarento. We spent a weekend in Sarento. My son was a baby and we couldn't get across the street. Yeah, the mopeds, the mopeds, the cars. And finally I saw a car with like four nuns in a car and I said to my wife, I said, well, maybe the nuns will stop. No, the nuns won't stop.

Speaker 2: 1:00:35

Yeah, it's not no one stops for pedestrians at the crosswalks. Yeah, it's a little hairy if you need to cross the street, but you know, just follow a local step in their steps.

Speaker 1: 1:00:52

Well, this has been so much fun. I mean I could go. I could go for another five hours here, Sure, Sure Well you know it's wonderful.

Speaker 2: 1:00:59

It's wonderful to share with a new audience Stories about my family, Just what I've discovered. I mean, this is all recent, since, you know, 2020 for me, so this is really, you know, just the beginning of my journey of pulling this information together and sharing it. And, you know, hopefully I'll have decades ahead of me to keep pursuing the details of the story and refining it and sharing it with you know, broader audiences. You know I do have a website where I share my research, so anybody who's interested. The easiest way to get there is just paternoarchitecturecom, but it has all my genealogy for all my family lines, but also a lot about the architecture, and I have just started the process of going for my dual citizenship. So you know I'm going to be going through that process. Have you done that?

Speaker 1: 1:01:58

Are you eligible? I'm in the middle. Yeah, I'm eligible. So I mean, I have all the paperwork, I'm actually. I interviewed a few lawyers and I picked one who's going to. I'm going to do it through Tirito because they said it's going to be easier than doing Naples, and I just, you know, I don't have the time to wait for the appointment at the council.

Speaker 2: 1:02:22

Okay, yeah, I just got my. I just got my consulate appointment, I think two days ago and it's for November 2026.

Speaker 1: 1:02:31

Yeah, I can't wait.

Speaker 2: 1:02:33

I'm not in a hurry, I don't know, I don't have a really strong reason for getting it other than I can and that my husband and I were so enchanted with the coastlines of Italy that you know we hope to maybe one day sail around the coasts of Italy and sail around the Mediterranean, and I think it would be, you know, just a benefit to have.

Speaker 1: 1:03:03

I mean, I'm doing it mostly for the kids you know, I mean you know I'm 70 and they were in their 20s. So you know, I figure, and if you do it through the court we could do it all together in one session and all of that. So and I'm hoping now, because we know the mayor and Tirito, that you know maybe they could once we get all everything done, because you have to go through the court and then you still have to go to the commune that they have to bless it, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:03:32

So it's a two-step process when you do it that way. So.

Speaker 1: 1:03:36

I'm hoping that works out.

Speaker 2: 1:03:38

Yeah, I hope so too. Oh, that's exciting.