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.

A Lucanian lord of the skyscraper, 1924 • Knight Giuseppe Paterno

When, for the 6th centennial of Dante Alighieri’s birth, the “Progress Italo-American” erected, with its own subscription and initiatives, the monument to the Poet, in New York, our provincial knight Giuseppe Paterno, with a generous gesture and patriotism, he wanted to build the entire base at his own expense.

This very Italian act of faith of the excellent man reminds us of the memory of his adventurous life, and the thousand and thousand adventures, through which, overcoming obstacles, which to others less strong than him would have seemed insurmountable, he builds, day by day, the his fortune, raising it stone by stone, block by block, as he does with his skyscrapers, and holding it up and enlivening it, in the ever-increasing height, with that indomitable spirit of his, who fears nothing and prides himself on nothing, that defeat prostrates and victory does not exalt.

Giuseppe Paterno was three years old when, from his native Castelmezzano, his father, who had been a builder of houses in America, with alternating fortune, at least in New York, where the boy, who grew up thoughtful and acute, adapted himself to to be a newsagent, screaming the headline of the mammoth American newspapers all day, for the endless views of the “City” bristling with tumult and skyscrapers, which take away the vision of the sky and suffocate, like a nightmare, the breath. The child, who, confusedly, in the depths of his child soul, must have had the foggy memory of another sky, under which he was born, and of the boundless Lucanian horizons, dazzled by the sun, run by the winds, conceived an unconscious and curious love, mixed with terror, for those houses with height, higher than our bell towers, which he always admired and observed, without knowing why, as if already a little prophetic demon bites his heart and brain, and, inside, whispered: “You will build skyscrapers, like those, taller than those.”

And he spent his days, like this, among the skyscrapers and the newspapers, in that typical astonishment, between apathetic and audacious, which must be felt by all those who, in the depths of their hearts, present good fortune and success.

As he used to do every night, one evening in the year 1889, in Park Row, the New York district of newsagents, the little Lucanian boy, not at all lost in the colossal city, sold the last copies of newspapers, which were left to him, and he waited for his father, busy in the construction of a new building in the district, to leave the building site, to return home together.

While waiting he carefully observed the buildings, measured their dizzying height with joyful eyes, and caressed within himself, God knows what chimeras and childhood dreams.

In this observation, his father surprised him, to whom the boy suddenly asked. “But why do they build these tall houses?”

The father, gradually, I explain to him, (with the special kindness of all the fathers of Basilicata, who, not having, in the vast majority, conspicuous inheritances to leave to the lilies, take care to train them and prepare them for the trials of life, with advice and example), how the very high price of areas of construction land had suggested to builders the idea of heaping stories upon stories, to spend less and earn more.

The tender father also explained to him how, in that cosmopolitan affair, no effort and no audacity of human ingenuity was impossible and that the industry of those men had to accustom him even to the miracle.

A world so different from ours!

The precocious child understood. So his father went on to explain to him how the skyscrapers, which had turned out to be excellent hiding places for offices, were not very practical as family homes, perhaps also because, at that time, they were not yet too numerous even in the capital of North America and had not yet become vulgarized to the point of enticing, not even American citizens, to live on a tenth or twentieth floor.

But the child with a quick intuition, who suffered, like a hereditary disease, the disease of stone, understood that the skyscraper would, by inescapable necessity, be the home of the future, in New York, where life was congested and it constantly agglomerated, hour by hour, due to the perennial influx of always and always, new migratory currents, from all parts of the world.

Shortly after, little Giuseppe Paterno gave up his nomadic job as a newsagent and moved on to serve in a dentist’s office. But, in reality, he did nothing but follow his father to the construction site and dream, in those painful daydreams, which leave emptiness in his hands and in his heart, of having become …. builder of skyscrapers.

His whole fervent brain as an imaginative young Lucanian was now possessed by the persecution of skyscrapers. And perhaps he already sees himself between heaven and earth, on dizzying heights, catching stars … of gold.

It was at the shipyard that he met a wealthy builder who gave him a “job” for himself and for his father. The work was hard, but Giuseppe wanted to start; and so he began to realize his dream as a builder.

His fixed idea, his hidden design was always to use the skyscraper no longer only as an office site, but as a home. The father, converted to the idea of his son, when he was about to leave him, to go back, sick, in Italy, to his native town of Castelmezzano, said to him: “My son, you are right. We are at the point that skyscrapers for housing have to be built. . The houses are no longer enough and the city is already so huge “.

Confirmed by his paternal consent, without wasting time, the ardent Lucanian introduces himself to an arch-millionaire builder and proposes to him to raise a twenty-story building.

The millionaire widens his eyes in his face. Then, with an ironic air, he says to him: “I understand: you are a dreamer. This building would serve you to make you dance inside your dreams. What crazy do you want to go and live on a twentieth floor?”

The Lucanian holds firm, like a rock of his land. But he cleverly persists, until he obtains the funds for the construction of a six-story building.

This first one was quickly followed by others at eight, ten, twelve floors. His first stop on his dream was a fifteen-story skyscraper.

Soon, Giuseppe Paterno turned out to be a brilliant, shrewd industrialist, with a broad and long vision. He set up jungles of construction sites, straightened construction armor throughout New York, recruited entire legions of workers and phalanxes of engineers, always giving a nice and affectionate preference to the Italian and Basilicata element.

With the clear perception of the absolute need to rapidly and numberlessly multiply the houses of the colossal North American metropolis, he gave himself to the whole man, with formidable confidence, to purchase low-rise houses in the heart of New York, to demolish them and raise them, on the same ground, its immense skyscrapers, monstrous clusters of superimposed human nests, of fifteen, twenty, twenty-two floors.

Having his technicians carry out the necessary studies, he launched into the enterprise with the enthusiasm, at the same time calm and impetuous, thoughtful and unreasonable, which is a fundamental characteristic of our Lucanian breed.

Around him, there were the fearful relatives, the worried friends. The skeptics shook their heads, the sarcastic sneered: who gave advice for restraint, who spoke of imaginary possible catastrophes. Giuseppe Paterno did not listen to anyone, he did not see anyone. He pulled forward on his way, without ever turning, neither straight nor left, never hesitating, never stopping before reaching the goal.

He was so strong and so sure of himself that the idea of a possible catastrophe did not disturb him. Those who are used to the vertigo of heights are not afraid even of the vertigo of the abyss. His star was with him.

And, once again, triumph. In a short time, his shipyards built palaces worth a total of one hundred and seven million dollars, in the Columbia University area. So, when in the years 1907-1908 the building crisis broke out in New York, he was able to face it, not suspending, but only reasonably decreasing, the construction activity of his sites, thus alleviating the unease of unemployment of construction workers, especially Italians. and Lucanians. In this respect, his patriotism is never imposed on him of any kind: he accepts Irish, Canadian, and even black workers of all nations, only when the Italian workforce was lacking.

Thus he demonstrated his fervent Italian spirit and his frank and affectionate solidarity for his Italian and Lucanian working brothers.

From a newspaper seller, through the brief interlude of a dentist’s boy, to a seller of skyscrapers, his fate so eloquently changed, but the sincere, simple, generous heart, the heart of a worker, who knows, has always remained unchanged, because Giuseppe Paterno lived it, how hard the struggle for existence is. The treatment, which is given to the workers of his yards, demonstrates this in the most admirable way. The minimum daily wage is seven dollars (one hundred and fifty-five Italian lire). Although life in New York costs four times more than in any Italian city, yet all our workers thus have a possible margin of economies.

A worker himself, he leaves no means unturned for the organization and development of our workers abroad, lavishes money and advice for their civil and moral assistance, for their clubs, their patriotic and economic leagues, their homes. recreation and shelter, their hospitals.

It is the unbreakable solidarity of brotherhood and common origin.

He has never forgotten his Basilicata, his native town of Castelmzzano, towards which he has always done and continually does his duty as a mindful and beneficent son. Every appeal of the Earth of him receives a generous response from him, and we must here point out how he, together with his brother-in-law Attorney Antonio Campagna, is about to give rise to a grandiose school building in Castelmezzano, and like him he declared that he wanted to widely contribute to the expense to equip his Commune with electric lighting. And we do not deliberately mention private charity, subsidies for pious works, all that other good that Giuseppe Paterno bestows, in silence, to the humble of his land.

And yesterday the munificent donation of five thousand lire that he made to the orphanage of Potenza.

At the height of his fortune, he has always remained a tireless and modest worker.

He enjoys his wealth not for himself, but for his family, which he adores.

“I was lucky – he says – I don’t deny. But the first few years were very tough. What fights! What tormenting anxieties! I have tried many trades. I worked as a convict, often for twenty-four hours a day. A few hours, of course. And I work without interruption, because I would not know how to live in idleness, far from my construction sites, from my workers, from my engineers”.

To this magnificent champion of the Lucanian breed, a typical example of Italian intelligence, will, wisdom and pride, our Government has conferred – an honor that is indeed not adequate to the very Italian merits of Giuseppe Paterno – the Knight’s Cross.

But his greatest reward is certainly the awareness he has of having honored the name of his country in the world.

We do not want to close these notes, without revealing some sympathetic traits of Giuseppe Paterno’s social character.

He is completely Americanized, while keeping intact his Italian spirit and his Lucanian background. He passes, with exceptional ease, from the workman’s blouse to the walking suit, from this to the tailcoat, from the construction site to the theater, from a ballroom to a luxury “restaurant”. He drives his car beautifully. And aboard his car, impassive, he, in his leisure hours, often loves to go around from one end of New York to the other, for the joy of seeing, one after the other, all the skyscrapers, which his industrious intelligence has raised, here and there, in the immense cosmopolis.