Hamill on Little Italy

It's not every day that you meet one of those legendary New York writers. Lucky for me, one of the city's true veteran newspaperman, Pete Hamill, came to my journalism class to discuss "Downtown," his beautiful non-fiction retelling of Lower Manhattan's history.

As he got to chat about the city's various neighborhoods, I finally (albeit nervously) got to ask him his thoughts on the great exodus of Italians out of Little Italy.

There is a very good reason why Little Italy isn't what it used to be and that's upward mobility, Hamill said. Although the Italians and Irish dominated the city landscape at the turn of the 20th century, subsequent generations became better educated and started to move out of the city for life in the suburbs.

Now, other immigrant groups will fill the void in the city until they experience their own upward mobility. Hamill also said he saw no end in sight for sprawling Chinatown to slow down.