It’s in July 1997 that the company Borden tries to save the historic Prince spaghetti factory based in Lowell, in Massachusetts.
Prince was an economic resource that provided jobs to many residents of the town, after moving its headquarters from Boston’s Little Italy – the North End – in 1939. The factory in Lowell occupied the terminal area of Prince Avenue and Prince Court. At the time, people identified the narrow ancient streets of the Italian neighborhood in Boston with the little boy Anthony used in the pasta advertising running home because “Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day.”
Employees and investors from Borden unsuccessfully tried to purchase the spaghetti manufacturing plant that in Lowell was the largest in the United States of America and consisted of six factories selling spaghetti in 38 American states. Lowell was the Spaghettiville of America.
The History of Pasta in Boston
The history of pasta is closely linked to the experiences of Italians at the end of the 20th century, when the North End of Boston inevitably became the Little Italy. Twenty-five years earlier this neighborhood was teeming with Irish people, followed by Jews, in particular families from Eastern Europe.
These two ethnic groups prospered to the point of settling in other, less congested urban areas. By 1930, over 44,000 Italians lived crowded in the North End to the extent that its density was considered higher than Calcutta! The Italian immigrants living in the neighborhood worked in the markets, bakeries, tailor shops, shoe stores, or were fishermen.
In 1912, three Sicilians joined forces to open a macaroni and spaghetti production business. Gaetano LaMarca was the administrator, Giuseppe Seminara was the salesman, and Michele Cantella the pasta maker. These entrepreneurs could not have imagined that the small company would become the largest pasta manufacturer in the United States. They named their company after the address where it was located, 92 Prince Street. The Prince pasta was so successful that in 1917 the owners built a seven-story building near Commercial Street in the North End of Boston, complete with a rail freight unloading dock at the back, delivering semolina flour directly to the factory.
Despite the Great Depression, Prince pasta had its boom, and within twenty years required more space. So it was moved to Lowell in 1939. The following year, another immigrant arrived from Sicily to Massachusetts with the intention of buying a pasta factory: 34-year-old Giuseppe Pellegrino was so impressed by the new Prince factory in Lowell, that he settled there, working as an assistant to the founders.
Within just one year, he made so much money that he could afford to buy the factory. Pellegrino had an extraordinary work ethic, with unlimited energy and a talent for advertising. He started with a promotional campaign. Since macaroni and spaghetti were considered ethnic food, he focused particularly on Italian newspapers.
The Pasta Prince Became a Brand
In Boston’s North End, Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day
At that time, spaghetti were seen as a dish for poor immigrants and working-class people with limited budgets. But in the early 1950s Pellegrino decided it was time to launch pasta to non-Italians and hired a Boston advertising agency to produce a radio commercial that would make Prince Pasta a household brand. Thus was born the slogan that caught on: “In the North End of Boston, Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day.” (in Boston’s North End, Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day).
In reality, in Italy, pasta was an almost everyday meal, but in America, Italian immigrant families cooked pasta only on Sundays and ate the leftovers the next day. The advertising creatives of the time believed that Catholic families ate fish on Fridays. That’s why they chose a random midweek day. But the advertisement was not aimed at the people of the North End, but rather at those Americans who didn’t eat much pasta and were encouraged to eat more.
In 1969 it was the turn of another successful advertisement. The twelve-year-old boy from Boston’s North End – Anthony Martignetti – was approached by a television crew while he was on the corner of his house. He agreed to be filmed running through the narrow streets and sidewalks of the North End to get home and join the table. When the advertisement was broadcast, the rhyme of “Anthony!” being called by his mother leaning out the window to come home for lunch immediately became part of New England’s popular culture. The TV commercial aired for 13 years starting in the fall of 1969. It was instrumental in putting Boston’s Italian Americans at the center of American life and this simple idea radically changed Americans’ perception of Italian food.
When the factory was moved to Lowell, the city sign proclaimed: “Welcome to Spaghettiville.” Many of the factory employees were immigrants from Portugal or Laos. Joseph Pellegrino Jr. was considered by many a good employer and a good citizen, the son of a Sicilian immigrant from Mistretta who arrived in America in 1905.
Former mayor Brenden Fleming compared him to Aaron Feuerstein, the owner of Malden Mills, who saved his workers from a devastating fire at his Lawrence factory. “If it had happened to Pellegrino, he would have done the same.” But despite good intentions, in 1987 Pellegrino sold his factory to the food industry giant Borden, Inc., and ten years later, the company, in serious trouble, announced its closure. More than 400 workers opposed the loss of their jobs and Lowell the loss of an institution on Moore Street.
Prince Spaghetti was a staple of New England and a true institution in Massachusetts, as well as an extremely valuable customer for many years of the Boston & Maine Railroad. Protests and petitions poured in asking Borden to put the factory up for sale rather than close it. A group of workers, former factory managers, and investors created a new company, Boston Macaroni and made an offer to buy the Lowell plant.
On July 11, 1997, however, the Prince Pasta Company ceased production. Five days later, a celebrating city learned that an acquisition deal for the plant had been reached by Boston Macaroni, also thanks to the intervention of Ted Kennedy. But the joy lasted very little: Borden refused the rights to use the name “Prince Pasta” and – moreover – Boston Macaroni found that the factory building required millions of dollars in repairs. In autumn the deal fell through. When Borden closed the plant, Senator Ted Kennedy said it was “a sad day in Spaghettiville.” A year later a yarn manufacturing company bought the plant, ironically fitting for a city like Lowell that played a fundamental role in the development of the textile industry in the United States.
In 2015 the building was again sold and purchased and converted into one of the most important data centers in all of New England: it became an Internet hub while in 1974, the old Prince building in Boston, built in 1917 in the North End, was converted into a residential condominium. In Lowell there is still an iron overpass on Gorham Street – Prince Spaghettiville Bridge – which carries the historic sign and next to it stands the historic diner Trolley Restaurant Pizzaria, a true landmark. Today Prince is a brand of New World Pasta, a company based in Pennsylvania that has production plants in St. Louis.
©by Thema Srl – Milan – www.Themasrl.it
