La Basilicata nel Mondo (People from Basilicata in the World) was an illustrated monthly magazine produced by Giovanni Riviello in Naples, Italy. It was one of the mostly widely distributed Italian magazines abroad. It regularly featured natives from the southern Italian region of Basilicata (also known by its ancient name Lucania) who were excelling in America.
Lawyer Anthony Campagna
September 1926
Anthony Campagna is not a new name for the followers of our magazine.
We have already had the opportunity to deal with him, briefly hinting – to point to him as the typical example of the Lucanian builder of destiny – to his modest birth in Castelmezzano, to his troubled life as a student, as a revolutionary, until he graduated in law, at the first attempts in life, at his departure for America, at his fortunate debut in journalism and profession, everywhere waving the torch of idealism and poetry, until his entry into the colossal building sites of the Paterno brothers, his brothers-in-law, who decided on the future of the young professional, transforming him into nothing less than a builder. We also mentioned his early building successes.
But who could ever predict that the young idealist, so lord of the spirit as not to think for himself of other achievements than those that could have derived from his studies, would have, in a very short time, established himself as one of the most brilliant and bold New York builders; and that he would dot the misty sky of the colossal city with the tips of his numerous skyscrapers, launching it, with new daring techniques, higher and higher, towards infinity?
Here is what I found during my stay in New York, and that I want to be known by the people of Basilicata all over the world.
The great building success of the lawyer Anthony Campagna makes us think – only as far as it is surprising in the activity and infallibility of foresight, activity, audacity – of one of the most powerful creations of the genius of Emilio Zola: Rougon Saccard, the terrible builder of Luxurious Paris of the second Napoleonic Empire.
Thus, instead of savoring the triumph of the crowds applauding his value as an orator or artist and reaping handfuls of laurels in the field of his profession, Anthony Campagna tasted the much greater triumph, if even more bitterly achieved, of putting himself together with his brothers-in-law Paterno, at the head of the movement and the monstrous building development of New York, impressing, with a Titan effort, the signs of his personality, on the feverish, babelic, incessant expansion and transformation of the tentacle city, which grows in altitude up to on the edge of the fable, and agglomerates, one next to the other, dense like trees in the forests, colossal skyscrapers, each of which is a human beehive, and which astound the architectural taste of us Italians, accustomed to conceiving nothing higher , in terms of constructions, than the domes of our churches, the tips of our bell towers, the tops of the towers of our Middle Ages, heavy in history and fate.
It is the struggle of height, against space, imposed on man by the fever of modern life.
And Anthony Campagna found the field of his triumph in this fight. Stone and concrete are familiar to him: today they are his friends, just as his books were yesterday. And he conceives and implements the most daring building projects with the same serene ease, so that, in an hour of intellectual creation, he would have prepared, if he had been a lawyer, a defense or an accusation oration.
He seems born to build, to make, to give life, in any material and with any material. Either with the toga, or the blouse of the craftsman, with the code or with the cement, his nature, his spirit are of creator: and one or the other way would have led him equally to triumph, since he and of the race of rulers. All volunteers in an admirable bundle of energy, which is wonderfully balanced with an extraordinary capacity for action, and with an infallible intuition of company evaluation. His very lively eye possesses the virtue of penetrating everything, men and things, however deep and occult they may be. He sees everything, he reaches everywhere. and his audacity as a very modern builder collects rivulets of gold.
In New York, the houses he builds are renowned for elegance, for “comfort … And they are highly sought after. He hasn’t finished building yet, sometimes he has already just bought the area, he has just laid the foundations,” that he has already sold. And the pediments, the elevations of his skyscrapers, which overlook the most beautiful streets of the metropolis in the heart of New York – from the Municipal Park [Central Park] to Fifth Avenue, from the aristocratic district of the West Side to the fabulous Via del pleasure, Broadway, which, at night, resembles a colossal apocalyptic blade of light, twenty-two miles long. The elevations of the skyscrapers built by Anthony Campagna stop the attention of Europeans, because, in them, that grace of architectural harmony is revealed Latin, which softens the skeletal linear rigidity of the scheme of American houses and takes away from them that desolate uniformity of a gigantic cage, which makes one think of the confinement of all humanity.
But in order for our readers to have an approximate arithmetic idea of the dizzying construction activity of Anthony Campagna, we set out below some data, as well as, briefly, I was able to collect them in a visit I made to his construction sites, where the fever of work always arouses the activity of the workers and managers. Among the latter, are the brothers of the lawyer Campagna, Michael and Armino, also, like their elder brother, builders, and, like him, certainly destined to reach the highest peaks of success.
Since the lawyer Campagna is giving all his fervor of intelligence and work to his own construction industry, it can be calculated that he has put up so many buildings per house that it represents the enormous value of about fifty million dollars.
We find it difficult to describe, in detail, what a construction site of the lawyer is. Anthony Campagna; because, this would require precise technical knowledge, and would require a minute description of details that escape my scarce competence on the subject. This, on the other hand, does not want to be, and is not, a technical article, although, if it had been, it would have been of great interest to the public, especially in Italy. I propose, instead, to give to the readers of the Magazine, together with some data, what have been my personal impressions on the prodigious and complex production of one of the most eminent of our fellow countrymen who are abroad, and that I will consider, always, to my great fortune, to have had, in the best years of Italian youth, my school friend, first in Potenza, then in Rome.
Leaving aside, therefore, any description – which can very well be replaced by the photographs we publish – I limit myself to a few hints on the most important constructions carried out by the lawyer. Anthony Campagna.
By 1922, he had just completed a grandiose building that commenced construction of an impressive skyscraper at 92 St. on Broadway’s fantastic thoroughfare [215 West 92nd Street].
This building, which consists of fifteen floors, one hundred and fifty apartments, two hundred and ten bathrooms, six hundred and fifteen rooms, was sold by him for two million and one hundred thousand dollars and three hundred thousand in annual income. The land tax, which is paid on top of it, is around the staggering sum, for a single building, of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
In this building, the lawyer Campagna, who, as we have said, is a very skilled and daring technician, happily experimented with a new construction system, through which, for the first time in New York – and this primacy also belongs to he – while he kept the statutory height of one hundred and fifty feet for the dwelling houses, and the attics at over nine feet, managed to make fifteen floors instead of the usual fourteen floors of all similar buildings.
The daring of his particular technique, which resulted in the benefit of the tenants: because the income from this additional plan, valued at around twenty-five thousand dollars, allowed the rent price to be significantly reduced in the other plans.
A memorable detail, this mammoth skyscraper, which imposes a meticulous precision of work, because all its apartments are of great luxury, was built in a negligible space of time, compared to the size of the work. Consider: on March 13, 1922 the foundations were laid, the palisades erected, the construction sites formed. On 1 October of the same year, not only was the building finished and finished, down to its most minute decorative details, both inside and out, but it was already inhabited by one hundred and forty-five families and ten new large shops had opened their ten new mouths of light on Broadway’s dazzling uninterrupted blaze.
Woods of workers, relentlessly alternating around the huge work, like the slaves of the Pharaohs around the Pyramids, had accomplished the prodigy. It is estimated that for the construction of such a colossus it took the employment of about two thousand workers per week, among those employed in the factories, in the material preparation workshops and in the construction sites.
Campagna is an unsurpassed master in the art of drawing up construction plans and choosing locations, not only, but also in the art of developing particular efficient and suitable plans for each individual location. These are advantages which, apart from the intrinsic goodness of the buildings, considerably raise their value and constitute the secret capital of its sensational building successes. This ability, known and recognized in the metropolis, and his talent of knowing how to apply a new and original plan for each new construction, have given him the most sought-after successes: dare in 1922, when he sells a building, of which he was just building the fourth floor; so in 1924, when the plan he proposed to develop aroused so much interest in the technical world that he had to sell the building for a million dollars, while not even the foundation ditches had been filled [320 West End Avenue]. And the buyers were so pleased with the construction that, as soon as the lawyer Campagna had subsequently developed the plan for a new building, grander and imposing than any other, which occupies an entire block between 89 and 90 St. in Riverside Drive [173-175 Riverside Drive], they wanted to immediately insure the purchase for the fantastic sum of four million dollars.
This Riverside Drive building has about a thousand rooms, four hundred bathrooms, and is unanimously recognized as one of the most beautiful, artistic and elegant to date in the great neighborhood of the West Side, inhabited by the finest and most elected aristocracy of New York, the which he very much researches the houses built by Anthony Campagna, whom he considers as the true lord of good taste and building elegance, artist and master of the most exquisite architectural forms.
On Fifth Avenue, two years ago, he built a house so sumptuous and artistically beautiful, that the best of New York society competed to secure an apartment. And Campagna sells them all, and there were forty, at a price from seventy thousand to a hundred thousand dollars, even before he had had time to finish the factory. [1120 Fifth Avenue]
Currently, the lawyer Anthony Campagna is waiting for the construction of his building masterpiece. The plan, recently played and perfected, is technically flawless and artistically wonderful. The creator has taken and perfects it every day, pouring all his expert knowledge of art and all the infinite resources of his talent and his classic and, at the same time, innovative spirit into it.
The biggest American newspapers have already covered it on the front pages, extensively, extolling this building as the most sumptuous and luxurious in New York, and the news has also had repercussions in the European and Italian press.
The eyes of the world are turned to the Basilicatese builder Anthony Campagna, but he aims only at the consent of the Fatherland.
The grand building arise at Fifth Avenue. Here, near the Municipal Park [Central Park] and the famous Library donated to New York City by a great king of American industry, Mr. Frick. The lawyer Campagna bought the area – which will result from the demolition of a building that currently exists – at the highest price ever paid in New York, at the rate of $180 per square foot. To others, who hadn’t had his eagle-eye, this excessive price might have seemed inconvenient. But Anthony Campagna never fails. And success is already beginning to smile brightly at him again this time: he has not yet begun the work, and the fame of the building and the builder has already attracted two buyers of apartments, one for one hundred and thirty thousand, the other for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars over the mortgage of one hundred thousand and one hundred twenty thousand dollars respectively for each, which is equivalent to bringing the total price, respectively, to two hundred and thirty thousand dollars and three hundred thousand dollars. [2 East 70th Street]
But more than all this building renewal of immense New York, to which Anthony Campagna competes with such power of originality and with such ingenious daring, his name will remain linked to the Italic temple, which he and his brothers-in-law Paterno wanted to rise in the new world, as a testimony of the glories of the millenary lineage and in the light of the new peoples.
We allude to the “House of Italian Culture.” We will deal with this extraordinary event on purpose, which truly marks a milestone in the history of Italian-American relations and which finds at the forefront – initiators and creators – people of Basilicata: The Paterno brothers and the lawyer Anthony Campagna. But to testify of the soul and purity of intentions with which Anthony Campagna set out on this work of patriotism and faith, we report from now on a thought that he requested, said about the future and the mission of “House of Italian Culture” in New York. This is how he expressed himself.
“The mowing power of an ideal, the devotion of fervent and sincere men, the clear vision of an eminent educator, gave a dream the breath of life; and in the Olympic domain of the University of Columbia, a majestic temple, a reverent tribute of masters of America to the Architecture of Italy – the House of Italian Culture – will soon arise in its sublime proportions.
“In that temple, the Italic genius, a continuous and omnipotent genius through the centuries, will carry out his gentle influences, inspiring the new generations, guiding and enlightening the ardent seekers of truth. He will reveal to them vast realms of thought, immortal and spiritual creations. It will give a new flame to their imagination, it will touch their meaning with every vibration of the spirit. And a new friendship will assert itself between the two great nations, an intimate spirit of benevolence and cooperation, while the divine, eternal idea of progress and brotherhood move peoples towards ever higher spheres.
“Offered to America as a pledge of love, may the Italian House fulfill its noble mission.”
It is a magnificent act of faith, a poet’s song, expressed with noble firmness of form and beautiful clarification of sentiment. And the whole man is fully revealed in his passion for his homeland and in his admirable effort to adapt, as far as possible, the importance and grandeur of the “House of Italian Culture” to the beauty and grandeur of the homeland.
A dream, which has been given the powerful breath of life. But the Pygmalions of the prodigy were they, Joseph and Michael Paterno, and it was he, Anthony Campagna, without whom the beautiful project of the Italian House would perhaps never have been realized; and, even if it had, it would have been nothing but a mutilated, truncated, makeshift realization, which would not have corresponded in any way to the aims it proposed, would not have satisfied the pride of the Italians and would not have dignified the Italian homeland and his immortal genius.
Great lord of the soul and intellect, remained an idealist and poet also in contact with the hardness of stone and businessmen, patriot, philanthropist and humanist, Anthony Campagna will enjoy this work of his, which gives him the spiritual security of having honored, in the best possible way, his great Italian homeland and his poor Lucanian land, as he has never enjoyed, he could enjoy all those colossal works, which have given him streams and rivulets of gold.
And as long as Dante’s spirit floats immortal and spreads over the world, a beacon of peoples of every lineage, from the top of the hill of the University of Columbia; and the House of Italian Culture will radiate on the American continent the inexhaustible wonders of Italian thought, the name of the Paterno brothers and of the lawyer Anthony Campagna will be well recommended to immortality.
And it will be said of them, in the most distant time, that they built destiny for their whole life, to which we still wish triumphs and happiness, in the name of Italy and of our Basilicata.
Singular and fascinating contrast with the multifaceted, incessant and highly intelligent activity of the lawyer Anthony Campagna, with all his life as a businessman, struggling with the relentless vortex of New York, and its audacious and impassive triumph his intimate, domestic life.
On the threshold of his house, it would seem that he changes his soul. In the temple of his family tranquility, in the closed garden of his joys as a son, a husband, a father, he rediscovers his simple Lucanian soul, which has remained faithful to the traditions and worship of the family, just as they are sacred in his Land of origin, and from them he draws the deepest and truest joys of his spirit. And this is one of the most characteristic sides of his personality. His mother, his wife, his children form the shrine of his heart. And who, like me, has had the good fortune to admire his standard of living in the sweet and patriarchal intimacy of his solitary and suggestive home in New York, or of his artistic villa, near Stamford, Connecticut, that the ocean fills with his voice and his acrid salty freshness, he could not fail to rethink with emotion the sweet and pure integration of family life, as it has been taking place in our Lucanian homes for centuries. The mother, the old mother adored and the tutelary deity of the house, the living example and the virtue to imitate. She has followed all the ascension of her child. Her pomp, her enormous wealth have not changed her. Just as they have not changed him, her son, whose innate refinement and perfect, aristocratic sense of art, which are on his personal prerogatives, have always kept away from excessive displays and ostentation of luxury and splendor.
Faithful to all the highest ideals of life, of Anthony Campagna it can be said that every day he knows how to conquer for himself, for his family, for his homeland, a new title of nobility and honor. And I consider myself proud to recall the people of Basilicata to the admiration of this son of ours, who keeps so much devotion for his native land and who honored and honors it so much with his great work as an enlightened and honest industrialist, with his spirit of human charity and patriotic fervor, and with his example of a noble and generous citizen.
Together with his very high wife, the good lady Marie – who is truly a great lady, for elegance of manner, for refinement of sentiment and taste, for generosity of spirit – Anthony Campagna finds time, despite the immensity of his work, to personally supervise the education of children, who are rigorously raised in the cult of the purest family and patriotic virtues. He wants his children to learn about the language and glories of his homeland, Italy, and be proud to have Italian blood in their veins, to belong in inspiration to the people who have written the greatest history, that the world knows. , and has imprinted the whole universe with the power of his thought and the wonders of his art.
Anthony Campagna, resident in New York, meritorious founder and promoter, together with his relatives, Official Knight Joseph and Michael Paterno, of the House of Italian Culture in New York, for which it is expected an expenditure of about 300,000 dollars, has sent to the Minister of P.I. Hon Fedele, in grateful memory of the teaching he received in the Royal High School of Potenza, the sum of 10,000 dollars. Minister Fedele has decided to allocate it to the Institute Italian historian, establishing a foundation “Campagna … intended to particularly promote studies on the history of Southern Italy.”
Any comment is useless and would diminish the magnificence of Anthony Campagna’s gesture.
