Founded in 1998 in Stone Park, Illinois, Casa Italia aims to be the home for all Italian-American organizations in the Chicago area. Through cultural enrichment activities, presentations, and exhibitions, the organization pursues a mission of preserving the past, celebrating Italian heritage, and ensuring the passage of values to future generations.
The 501(c)3 nonprofit has embarked on a new chapter as it undergoes facility renovations. Once the upgrades are complete, its Italian Cultural Center will fully reopen to showcase museums and exhibits, including the Sicilian Heritage Museum, Italian-American Veterans Museum, and an impressive 1:100 scale hand-carved model of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Meanwhile, the community is invited to attend author events and film screenings, make Carnevale masks, dig into genealogy, play in the bocce league, and dance at Ballo Sotto le Stelle. The organization also offers language classes for adults and children. Casa Italia's Kids Camp, also known as La lingua e cultura d'Italia, is a two-week Italian culture and language immersion program where youth can engage in games, songs, sports, skits, cooking, and formal and informal language lessons.
I spoke with Casa Italia Chairman Peter Volpe about the organization. Peter grew up on the northwest side of Chicago with family from Sicily and Bari. His Sicilian family hails from Porticello, which happens to be where my family and Gaetano and Concetta of The Last Letter from Sicily are from.
Peter shared more about Casa Italia's cultural center, the organization's offerings, and what he hopes to give back to the community.
How and why was Casa Italia founded?
Twenty-five years ago, the Scalabrini Order was going to abandon the property. A small group of Italian business people, headed by the Turano family, said, "Don't let that happen. There's just too much history here. Rent it to us. We'll take care of the property. We're going to perpetuate our culture. We're going to bring museums, and we are going to be the home for all Italian American organizations."
That's how it all started. The Turanos, Gambinos, Stramaglias, Brunos, and others got involved in bringing Casa Italia together.
If you look at the Chicago environment for Italian Americans, we have a million organizations, but we don't work as a single power. And that's our vision: We're trying to get everybody together so we can have a unified voice and represent our community with the true power that we possess. The Italian American population is one of the largest in Chicago as far as immigration goes, and we are just too independent of each other. All our organizations have different purposes; if we just keep inside our lanes and follow our direction on what we want to accomplish, we could do so many good things together.
Casa Italia has hosted art shows in its gallery.
Where do things stand with your facility upgrades?
We had 19 acres of land and six big buildings that needed renovation. But our grounds are phenomenal, and we can hold festivals and host events.
The problem is that the buildings became so deteriorated that they were no longer up to code. We didn't have the resources to fix them. So, the village of Stone Park ended up purchasing the property, and now they're our new landlord.
While we no longer control the 19 acres, we have our two most important buildings. One is our cultural center, which houses all our museums, our library, and a nice meeting room. The other is our community center, which has a banquet hall, a kitchen, several offices on the second floor, and a gymnasium.
We got both of those properties from the village under a long-term lease, and they will do the exterior renovations of the cultural center. There will be a new roof, windows, fire escapes, and brickwork. We are charged with bringing the interior and exterior of the other property, the community center, up to code.
We are in the middle of a fundraiser, for which we've raised over $600,000 already. They've taken the sledgehammers and air hammers and are going to work on it.
There's an incredible amount of work that's going to be done. In how we envision that property, we hope to bring the gym floor up to the main floor level. If we can accomplish this we're going to expand our banquet facilities to hold 400 people. We'll have a full-sized kitchen. And on the second floor, there will be a conference room and storage space for our clubs where they have mini offices.
We're attacking one building at a time. The community center is our focus right now because it brings in the revenue we need to sustain ourselves. We expect that to be done in late summer of this year. Once we can get that done and raise additional capital, we will switch our efforts to the cultural center.
We're looking for donors; they don't have to just be from the Chicagoland area. We invite anybody who wants to see our culture continue and propagate to look us up.
Casa Italia Kids Camp provides language and culture immersion.
Tell us about your language offerings.
We're offering language classes at five different sites all over the city area to make it convenient. The classes range from conversational Italian (if you're going to travel) to beginner level and up. We have some great instructors who are professors of the Italian language.
With COVID, we expanded that a little bit and did a lot virtually, and that stayed with us. We're still doing both in-person and virtual.
Our summer Kids Camp is coming up. It's two weeks before the 4th of July, and it's a 10-day immersion for the children to learn everything from language to traditions to cooking to gardening and everything about who we are as Italian Americans.
Enjoy a game with Casa Italia's bocce league.
What do you hope to share with members of your community?
We want to support individual clubs and organizations by being their home. We don't charge a membership fee. Just come and be part of Casa Italia and host your meetings and events with us. We welcome you and want you there. We are not there to compete with you; we're here to work with you.
As far as the neighbors and the people in the area are concerned, "Hey, get to know us." Our facility is off the beaten path. It's not on the main street. It's in a neighborhood. It's one square block—that's how huge it is. Come on in and see it.
Everybody who comes can't believe what we have there. The richness of our library, the artifacts in all our museums, the information we share, the events we do… it blows their minds when they see what's going on, and they never knew it was there.
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