Photography courtesy of Arcadia Publishing
The DeLuca family
Rio Vitale’s grandparents came to the U.S. from Sicily. His parents lived in downtown’s Little Italy, and he was baptized on The Hill in 1958 by Monsignor Salvatore Polizzi, his cousin and a local icon. Vitale hopes that his new book for Arcadia Publishing, St. Louis’s The Hill, will contribute to “the preservation of the neighborhood and its heritage.” Scores of black-and-white photographs show the pillars of life there through the years: hard labor in clay mines, close-knit families, sundry social clubs, and of course, St. Ambrose Church. Pasta, however, is shockingly absent. The final photo shows a mural at an emigration museum in Italy that features the Gateway Arch. Vitale visited the site and came back with “a very moving story of the people who left their home and came to The Hill.”
