Pictures of Providence’s Italian quarter in the 1910s-30s are rather scarce, at least online. There is one above, and below I show three more from prior to 1921. These are badly scanner-moired, but are here newly-exposed to search-engines.

This district of Providence was also known locally as ‘Little Italy’, ‘the Italian Quarter’, and the Federal Hill district. It was settled by a large wave of Italian immigrants after 1890. Italian shops, Italian cafes, Italian banks, and other facilities were quickly established there, and the Italians gradually displaced an existing Irish population which was moving on and up in the world.

Lovecraft could see this district from his windows, in his later years…

The [new] study also has 2 west windows, at one of which I am now sitting, gazing across the roofs of the ancient hill to a strip of far horizon & a distant steeple on Federal Hill 2 miles away.

“Federal Hill (the Italian quarter) as seen 2 miles away from my window is really quite a mysterious & picturesque sight — with the dark bulk & spire of St. John’s rising against the remote horizon…”

Lovecraft set his substantial late story “The Haunter of the Dark” (1935) on Federal Hill…

From his few local acquaintances he learned that the far-off slope was a vast Italian quarter […] he came finally upon the ascending avenue of century-worn steps, sagging Doric porches, and blear-paned cupolas which he felt must lead up to the long-known, unreachable world beyond the mists. There were dingy blue-and-white street signs which meant nothing to him, and presently he noted the strange, dark faces of the drifting crowds, and the foreign signs over curious shops in brown, decade-weathered buildings. Nowhere could he find any of the objects he had seen from afar; so that once more he half fancied that the Federal Hill of that distant view was a dream-world never to be trod by living human feet. Now and then a battered church facade or crumbling spire came in sight, but never the blackened pile that he sought. When he asked a shopkeeper about a great stone church the man smiled and shook his head, though he spoke English freely. As Blake climbed higher, the region seemed stranger and stranger, with bewildering mazes of brooding brown alleys leading eternally off to the south. He crossed two or three broad avenues, and once thought he glimpsed a familiar tower. Again he asked a merchant about the massive church of stone, and this time he could have sworn that the plea of ignorance was feigned. The dark man’s face had a look of fear which he tried to hide, and Blake saw him make a curious sign with his right hand.

The pictures are of obvious relevance to the setting of “The Haunter of the Dark”, but look also at that weirdly thin house. Is there a possible inspiration for “Erich Zann”, in this home-made structure? Probably not, as “Zann” was written 1921, at which time Lovecraft may not have yet had his first boots-on-the-ground encounter with the district.

He toured the place in the expert company of his local friend Eddy, as Selected Letters Vol. 1 has…

I decided to have Eddy guide me thro’ the vast and celebrated Italian quarter — Federal Hill — which I had heard him so often describe and as quainter even than the Boston Italian quarter …

Sadly I can’t get more than this snippet from this now very expensive book, and thus can’t determine the date for this letter. But Selected Letters Vol. 1 goes up to 1924. [Update: yes, he got to know Eddy after the writing of “Zann”]

At dusk on a day in April 1926, at the end of one of his rambling exploratory walks in the city…

[the walk] introduced me to a tangle of horrible and infinitely alluring alleys of blackness in the Federal Hill Italian quarter

This must indicates just his discovery of the tangle of alleys, rather than the entire district, since he had already seen it with Eddy a few years earlier. Presumably he thus realised that he had not seen everything there in his tour with Eddy. He returned there in June 1926, and made an initial full exploratory walk of Federal Hill, during which he appears to have encountered the large churches for the first time…

Last Saturday “did” Mount Pleasant, Davis Park, and Federal Hill — and was astonished by the great Italian Churches.

But the remarkable thin house (seen above) was featured in the local press circa 1919. So he might have encountered pictures of it, prior to writing “Zann”…

The houses were tall, peaked-roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, and sidewise. […] at last I came upon that tottering house in the Rue d’Auseil, kept by the paralytic Blandot. It was the third house from the top of the street, and by far the tallest of them all. (“Erich Zann”)

That said, he could have been equally inspired by any number of prints (Samuel Prout and his ilk) and postcards of ancient streets in old European cities, or descriptions thereof in literature.

While he may have encountered some of the Hill’s residents on his walks, he had also known them elsewhere. For instance a member of the Providence Amateur Press Club, a group of aspiring young writers who Lovecraft had attempted to tutor and encourage, had lived on Federal Hill. The lad in question seems to have been a holdover of its former Irish population, who would by then have been well into the process of moving on and up as they assimilated into American life. (There was also a fruit pedlar who used to come to Lovecraft’s house on Angell St., Manuel Arruda, but the name suggests he was Spanish or Portuguese rather than Italian).

During the U.S. prohibition of alcohol, Lovecraft indulged in a bit of whimsy about the district in one letter. He joked with a friend that he might acquire there a local case of bootleg whisky, not for himself but to ship to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright (to help steady his physical jitters induced by Parkinson’s disease)…

I feel tempted to unearth a local bootlegger [and] Providence’s Italian quarter is a miniature Chicago of hootch, gang wars, and rackets!

This was indeed the state of affairs there under the Morelli mafia gang, which had been allowed to become established from 1917. But apparently today Federal Hill, Providence, is said to have some of the most “funky” hipster-ish sort of places in the city, and yet to have also successfully retained an Italian character. That may be a bit of quiet online booster-ism, but I haven’t encountered anything to contradict such statements.

Lovecraft’s taste-buds may also may have led him to patronise the cheaper end of the Italian restaurant trade in Providence. He wrote…

[I] Like Italian cooking very much — especially spaghetti with meat and tomato sauce, utterly engulfed in a snowbank of grated Parmesan cheese.

Living in the notorious Red Hook in New York City in the mid 1920s, and forced by poverty to rub shoulders with jail-hardened gangsters and petty hoodlums in the cafes there, he often took his meals at…

John’s — the Italian joint around the corner in Willoughby St.

The above show two views of the same Jay and Willoughby interaction on Willoughby St., Red Hook, with one and possibly two corner cafes visible. The dates of the pictures are 1927 and 1928, and while the cafe(s) may not actually be John’s, the environment seen is closely indicative. Note that the theatre offers a “Burlesk” (burlesque) girlie show.

Once returned to his beloved Providence, we might assume that Lovecraft was even more open to trying out any new “Italian joint” “feed station” that looked suitable and cheap and yet able to attain a ‘New York quality’.