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Winepress in the Basement

• by Laura, May 30, 2008

Lina knew I’d love this one.  She’s my friend who is a real estate agent here in town and she’d just got a new listing for a house—all renovated and done-up with granite countertops, happy colors, shiny floors and new siding—in short, all history covered over so that it was hard to even guess when the house was built.  But wait, deep in the dark basement—a big old secret remained.  It was too huge to erase.  A clue to the house.  Was it?  Could it be? 

Yes, a gigantic wine press cemented into the basement wall.  With the owners’ blessing, Lina brought me in to peek.  It was an enormous thing—used now as a storage shelf.  We had fun taking down boxes of outgrown toys so we could photograph it--imagining sweaty scenes of bare feet stomping grapes and immigrant families laboring down here decades ago—the smell of ferment in the air along with the trills of some dialect we could never understand.

But when did this all happen?  And whose winepress had it been? And—perhaps the most interesting question--why was it located in a predominantly African American neighborhood? 

A little research and I became sure that the winepress belonged to an Italian family.  Not too surprising.

Italian laborers immigrated to this town more than a hundred years ago, hired to dig the original water and sewer lines and lay railroad track.  They were housed in tents and barracks in open lots, and some local church documents describe them making huge bonfires at night and singing in their camps.  Most wanted to make money and go back home to Italy.  But eventually many stayed and saved enough money to buy houses.  The winepress probably comes from the time period--somewhere between 1900 and World War II.  But of course, winemaking itself goes back in the Mediterranean to the dawn of recorded history there.

And so that winepress got me to thinking about migrations—perhaps the most fascinating aspect of all human history for me.  What we take with us and what we leave behind.  And how the migrations never end.

Four million Italians came to American between 1880 and 1920.  (The entire population of Italy was only around 15 million).  Then seven million African Americans came up from the American South to the North, as part of the Great Migration—between 1910 to 1970.  And before this, the huge forced migration from Africa that began in the early 1600s.

Many Italians fled their neighborhoods when African Americans moved in.  They did so out of racism and out of fear.  The irony is, however, that once Italians left their immigrant neighborhoods and moved to the suburbs, they dispersed into the vast American culture and usually began to lose their ethnic identity, having children who would not grow up in the neighborhood enclaves hearing dialect, listening to the old people tell stories, and making wine in the basement.

And now the African American neighborhoods too are changing--becoming less connected--as children grow and move away and newcomers move in. Lina tells me it is mostly young professionals now interested in this house, which is located close to the train to New York.

Do I sound nostalgic?  Not really.  Life constantly moves forward.  But that winepress got to me—a big immovable hunk of concrete shaped into the very foundation of a home.
Too big to move.  It had to be left behind. 

Oh yes.  One last thing.  Those looking for a house in Montclair with a quick commute and wine-making facilities in the basement should contact Lina Panza.

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