The Italian food trade on Arthur Avenue is still open for business, with an enclosed retail market in the middle of the strip.
What Belmont looks like
has sold groceries on Arthur Avenue since 1915, and has served Neapolitan food at 2342 since 1919. Biancardi's butcher shop is a few doors up, next to Madonia Brothers Bakery. The Arthur Avenue Retail Market opened in 1940 at 2344 Arthur Avenue and still operates as an enclosed market, with the Bronx Beer Hall now trading inside it. Albanian, Puerto Rican and Mexican owned businesses share the same blocks with the Italian shops.
Arthur Avenue runs under brick apartment houses with fire escapes, red, blue and yellow awnings covering the sidewalks in front of the shops below. Storefront signs mix English lettering with painted Italian names.
More of the shops are on East 187th Street, past . opened there in November 1935 and makes its ravioli and egg noodles on the premises today. The storefront sign was recreated for the set of the Broadway musical A Bronx Tale.
The American Planning Association named Arthur Avenue one of America's Great Streets in 2016. Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church hosts the Feast of the Giglio each summer, which closes the streets around it.
Shot in Belmont
Arthur Avenue has been playing itself since the 1955 film Marty. In 2002 a scene from the HBO series The Sopranos was shot inside Mario's at 2342 Arthur Avenue, whose owner had refused The Godfather a mob hit scene decades earlier. The 2019 film Bottom of the 9th shot at Catania's Pizzeria and inside the Retail Market. Its writer Robert Bruzio grew up on Arthur Avenue. Chazz Palminteri grew up in Belmont and A Bronx Tale takes place in the neighborhood, but the 1993 film was largely shot in Astoria, Queens.
Marty, 1955
The butcher shop
Played Marty's meat market, 1955
Marty Piletti's job at the meat market was shot inside a real butcher shop at 2374 Arthur Avenue, which was Oteri's then. The family talked the production into renaming the screenplay's shop owner Mr. Oteri. The opening shot of the film looks along the avenue with the Retail Market in frame. The shop at 2374 changed hands around 1980 and trades as Vincent's Meat Market now.
The Seven-Ups, 1973
Played Buddy's old neighborhood, 1973
Roy Scheider's detective walks his old neighborhood on Arthur Avenue. A shopkeeper at 2306 waves to him. He ends up across the street from a barber shop at 603 East 186th Street. The funeral the squad stakes out was staged at a funeral home at 569 East 184th Street, with the detectives posted at 2324 Hoffman Street across the road.
What Belmont can double for
Mulberry Street in Manhattan, New York
Mulberry Street runs the same red awnings and Italian restaurant storefronts under five and six story brick tenements, the closest match to Arthur Avenue's own shopfronts and fire escapes. Both streets are still called the real Little Italy by their own neighborhoods. Mulberry Street's tenements run narrower and taller than Arthur Avenue's, and Chinatown now presses in from both sides, so a tight frame on the storefronts holds the match better than a wide one. Try searching red awnings and brick tenements now.
The 9th Street Italian Market in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The 9th Street Italian Market runs awning covered sidewalks past rowhouses turned into grocery shops and cafes, the same working arrangement as Arthur Avenue's own storefronts. Vendors still work the curb the way they do outside Teitel Brothers and Biancardi's. Philadelphia's rowhouse fronts mix brick and stucco, more varied than Arthur Avenue's plain brick. A shopfront level frame matches better than a full block. Try searching awning covered market storefronts now.
Federal Hill is another Italian American restaurant district built around Atwells Avenue, with signs for the same kind of family run trattorias and pizzerias found on Arthur Avenue. Its center is DePasquale Square, a paved piazza with a fountain and outdoor seating that Arthur Avenue does not have. The piazza gives Federal Hill a staged, Mediterranean look that Arthur Avenue's plain sidewalk never has, so ordinary blocks of Atwells Avenue away from the square match better than the square itself. Try searching family run Italian restaurants now.
