When the city of Hartford demolished a 12-acre Front Street neighborhood in the late 1950s to pave the way for urban renewal and the building of Constitution Plaza, it tore the heart out of the Italian community that had lived and worked and worshiped there. Italians had been immigrating to Hartford, a booming economic center, since the mid-19th century, and Front Street was a densely populated, vibrant and vigorous neighborhood.

When their homes and businesses were razed for redevelopment, the community moved its wounded heart a few dozen blocks to the south and continued to build the city from there — laying bricks and marble, sidewalks, streets, bridges and railroads. They had built a community by the river for themselves, and now they would build it again.