Author: Carla

The January 1926 issue of Building Investment and Maintenance did an interview with Dr. Charles V. Paterno on page 31 of Volume 1, Number 5.

FAITH IN NEW YORK PROPERTY
The Fifth Article of a Series Setting Forth the Policies and Ideas of Leading Investors
An Interview with Dr. Charles V. Paterno

Few men identified with building construction in New York City have contributed more to the up-building of residential communities than Dr. Chas. V. Paterno, whose history provides one of the most interesting among the group of daring enterprisers who have contributed to the phenomenal growth of New York City in the last quarter of a century. To those who have wondered why he has always been called Dr. Paterno, it is perhaps timely to note that he is a full-fledged M.D., despite the fact that he won his laurels in a field far removed from the curing of people’s physical ailments. He has crowded many stirring events in a career that has gone through periods of great panic and great prosperity, with equal fortitude; yet if he did nothing else but create the magnificent Hudson View Gardens development, he would belong in the real estate Hall of Fame.

Chas. V. Paterno was graduated from the Cornell School of Medicine in 1899. His father, John Paterno the builder, was then engaged in the erection of an apartment house on West 112th street and his death transferred the responsibility for the completion of the job to the shoulders of the youthful doctor and his brother Joseph. The completed structure was sold, and the Paterno boys took in part payment besides cash, another apartment house site. Chas. V. still had hopes of engaging in the practice of medicine, but he resolved to go ahead with one more building. This turned out to be more successful than the first, and the lure of these profits spurred on the Paterno brothers to further undertakings.

The panic of 1907 found them strong enough to successfully tide over these troubled times, until finally in 1909 Chas. V. decided to go back to the medical profession. He and his brother divided their assets, and went their separate ways. But fate had decreed that Chas. V. Paterno’s destiny lay in the building business. No sooner had he resolved to abandon it than he was offered an exceptional site comprising the entire block front on West 83rd street, between Broadway and West End avenue [possibly the Alameda]. He could not resist the temptation to capitalize this opportunity, and a $2,500,00, twelve-story structure was the result. His next venture was the splendid structure at the southeast corner of Seventh avenue and Fifty-eighth street, which he sold to Benjamin N. Duke.

This was followed by the big building at West End avenue and Eighty-eighth street and a number of smaller projects on the West Side. In 1914 he conceived the idea for the great $10,000,000 apartment house on New York Central Railroad land, bounded by Madison and Park avenues, 47th and 48th streets. The outbreak of the War found him committed to the project, which entailed the solution of so many wartimes construction problems that it was not finished until 1918. Dr. Paterno’s survival through these trying times has been considered one of the most amazing in New York City building annals. He was compelled to travel all over the United States for building material. He encountered on every side labor troubles, embargoes and governmental restrictions. His building material was protected by armed guards.

But, by way of tragic irony, when the War finally ended, and the building was ready for occupancy, he could not find any tenants, and he was compelled to carry the building for another year in the face of circumstances which might well have discouraged ninety-nine men out of one hundred. But the change occurred in the fall of 1919, when the first effects of the cessation of apartment house construction during the previous years became noticeable. Rents began to rise and there were not enough apartments to go around. The Paterno achievement at 270 Park avenue, which in 1919 was returning a gross rental of $900,000, was showing in 1922 an aggregate annual rental of $1,250,000.

Not content with this extraordinary attainment, the Doctor embarked on his master work several years ago, when he transformed in eighteen months a great rocky waste on Washington Heights into one of the greatest cooperative apartment ventures on Manhattan Island. Homes have been provided for 354 families on a tract of seven acres opposite his famous castle, and adjacent to the site of historic old fort Washington, the highest elevation in Manhattan. Fourteen separate buildings comprise the colony which, by virtue of their architectural treatment and service features, constitute a striking achievement.

He is now building a huge apartment house covering the entire Riverside drive block front from 100th to 101st streets [280 Riverside Drive & 285 Riverside Drive]. Dr. Paterno’s apartment activities exemplify his confidence in New York real estate. He expounded this faith to our representative the other day:

“In New York City, as elsewhere, the home is a human necessity, just as essential as food, and this metropolis presents exceptional opportunities for capitalizing this necessity. New York City, by reason of its geographical position, its cultural, social, financial and business supremacy, has become the mecca of people of wealth from all parts of the United States. That is why we find a steady and uninterrupted demand for the best types of residential space that money and initiative can produce.

“I have the utmost faith in the future of New York real estate. I believe that we are making such strides that our present gigantic undertakings will be considered puny in the next quarter of a century. The opportunities here are limitless, they are bounded only by the extent of a man’s inspiration and his desire to work.

“Conditions in some territories may fluctuate for the time being, and the peak in the supply of properties of certain types may be reached, but these occurrences, as in the past, will only be temporary, and we will find as the years go on ever increasing values for real estate.”

At noon on Wednesday, August 4th of 2021, fans and aficionados of The Paterno Trivium gathered on what would have been Dr. Charles V. Paterno’s 143rd birthday to celebrate 20 years since the installation and inauguration of what has come to represent an embodiment of the joy and importance of shared space.

A trivium is an intersection of roads, this one specifically the convergence of Pinehurst Avenue (on which Hudson View Gardens is situated), Cabrini Boulevard (on which Castle Village is situated) and West 187th Street.

Thomas Navin, AIA, ASLA, President of Friends of The Paterno Trivium Ltd., and members of the Board of Directors gathered with Paterno family and friends for an overview of the Trivium’s history and importance. Tom is responsible for shepherding The Paterno Trivium into existence. He saw a nondescript concrete triangular island and envisioned the potential for a restful and welcoming gathering space that would honor the architectural legacy of Dr. Charles V. Paterno.

[You can read more about the history of Thomas Navin & The Paterno Trivium HERE.]

Opening and welcoming remarks for the day’s event were made by Thomas Navin, the visionary of The Paterno Trivium.

Tom was followed by remarks by Elizabeth “Liz” Paterno Barratt-Brown, great granddaughter of Dr. Charles V. Paterno.

And Liz was followed by remarks by Gino Zamparo, Treasurer of Friends of The Paterno Trivium Ltd.

After celebrating The Paterno Trivium, the event moved to the grounds of Castle Village just a short walk away. Here I, Carla Cappiello Golden, great granddaughter of Dr. Charles V. Paterno gave a talk covering a brief history of our exemplary ancestor and three of his architectural creations located in proximity to the Trivium.

After my talk we enjoyed lunch at The Uptown Garrison located in the neighborhood. New friends were made and delightful conversation was enjoyed.

After lunch we proceeded to walk to Hudson View Gardens and amble down its quiet, quaint streets and gardens.

This concluded the end of a delightful day of camaraderie and celebration. Descendants of the Paterno Family would like to profusely thank Friends of The Paterno Trivium Ltd, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, for a marvelous day and their stewardship of The Paterno Trivium. Board members are David Fields, David Marshall, Thomas Navin, W. William Ryder, Jr., Lynn Torgerson, and Gino Zamparo. The Board can be reached at PO Box 732, New York City, NY, 10040 for more information and/or to make a donation to help maintain landscaping as well as trivium and bench upkeep.

May your spirit be lifted……

An extra special thank you to family and friends, including Victor Principe (below right), for capturing the day’s memories in photos and videos. This recap would have been bland without your visual contributions. Thank you!

Tom Navin’s invitation to The Paterno Trivium Event below:

Tom Navin’s invitation to my talk below:

Tom Navin’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration handout:

Tom Navin’s Bench Reinstallment handhout:

Tom Navin’s 20th Anniversary handout:

The booklet I shared before my talk (back cover, front cover):

The booklet I shared before my talk (inside pages):

Additional Links:

The Paterno Trivium

The Paterno Castle

Hudson View Gardens

Castle Village

Paterno Family Tree

If you have any questions or comments for me, please reach out to me HERE. Thank you!

Addendum: More information about the Paterno Palisades Tower:

(The below brochure profile of the Paterno Brothers contains inaccuracies for which I have footnoted corrections at the bottom of this post.)

The Creators of New York • Elected 1989 • A Hall of Fame honoring the gifted, visionary and energetic individuals who created the best of New York City’s built environment – its transportation and service infrastructure, its office towers and its residential buildings • The Real Estate Board of New York, Inc.

The Paterno Brothers: Charles, Joseph, Michael and Anthony

Giovanni Paterno arrived in New York from Castelmezzano, Italy, in 1884 (1), and immediately resumed the building trade he had pursued in his native village. In America, his four sons, as well as two sons-in-law (2), continued the Paterno tradition as builders for several decades. Although the four Paterno brothers did not build together after 1907 (3), their many individual projects, in prime Manhattan residential districts, reflected a shared vision of luxury, high-rise apartment living.

At the senior Paterno’s death in 1899, his two eldest sons, Charles and Joseph, completed his two unfinished apartment buildings.

Although Charles Paterno earned a medical degree at Cornell University, and was the head of a Belleview Hospital clinic, he was an active partner with Joseph in Paterno Brothers until 1907 (3). Shortly after opening a medical practice (4), Charles purchase a block front on West End Avenue and 83rd Street where he put up a twelve-story, $2.5 million apartment building (5). He went on to build The Marguery at 270 Park Avenue in 1918, whose 137 apartments were “the last word in refined elegance.” With the profits from these ventures Charles (6) purchased rural acreage at 182nd Street and Riverside Drive, and built himself a turreted Rhenish castle, complete with a $61,000 organ, a swimming pool surrounded by aquariums and seventeen greenhouses. Paterno Castle was his home during the 1920s while he constructed Hudson View Gardens (cooperative garden apartments at Fort Washington) and several other units in the neighborhood. In 1938 he demolished his private castle and erected the five twelve-story buildings above the Hudson still known – and sold – as Castle Village. Its unique site plan, in the form of the letter X, gave each apartment a spacious view and streams of sunlight. Charles died in 1946.

Joseph, who had been helping to support the family as a dentist (7), went into the construction business full time at his father’s death. Reasoning that if bigger were better for commercial structures, the same should be true for residential ones, Joseph planned an apartment tower on Morningside Heights. With his brother Charles, he sought investors willing to back a ten to twenty story building. Lacking the financing for the larger structure Joseph finally settled for a six-story residence and constructed several walk-ups near Columbia University. In 1904 he finally secured a contract for a ten-story apartment house at 620 W. 116th Street, and never settled for building smaller structures again. Although most of his buildings were near Columbia, Joseph also built cooperative, skyscraper apartments at 30 Sutton Place and 1120 Park Avenue, as well as garden apartments in Riverdale. Joseph was decorated by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1932 for building and supporting Columbia’s Casa Italiana, a project supported by the entire family. He died in 1939.

The other Paterno brothers also created elegant apartment houses in Manhattan. Michael E. (1889-1946) built 775 Park Avenue, a six million dollar thirteen-story plus penthouse building, which included maisonettes, duplexes and simplexes. Designed by the Italian architect Rosario Candela who was known for his spacious and luxurious residential buildings, the apartment house had ample closets, 659 square foot living rooms and fireplaces in nearly every library, dining and living room. Michael also built apartment houses at 1172 Park, 1105 Park, 1020 Fifth Avenue and 2 East 67th Street. During World War II, he applied his talents toward building FHA housing in Norfolk, Virginia.

The last surviving brother, Anthony (d. 1959) also built war housing beyond New York City. In his hometown, however, he constructed apartments on West End, Fifth and Park Avenues. His five million dollar 1040 Fifth Avenue housed some of New York’s wealthiest families when it opened in 1930.

Two family members who, after training with the Paterno Construction Company, also built luxury residences were Anthony and Armino Campagna, the husbands of two of Giovanni’s daughters. (8)

Full brochure below:

(1) Giovanni Maria Paterno (1851-1899) arrived in New York City, NY, USA in 1880.

(2) All five Paterno sons and all five Paterno sons-in-law were involved in Paterno construction. (source) Saverio, Charles, Joseph, Michael, and Anthony Paterno and sons-in-law Victor Cerabone, Anthony Campagna, Ralph Ciluzzi, Joseph Faiella, and Armino Campagna.

(3) Charles and Joseph did not build together as The Paterno Brothers after completion of The Colosseum which was initiated in 1910.

(4) Charles never opened his own medical clinic and never practiced medicine after earning his degree. He was a member of the Cornell University Medical College Class of 1899, the same year his father Giovanni died. (source)

(5) I think this description is referring to the 12-story Alameda built in 1914 though it’s not an exact match to any confirmed Dr. Charles V. Paterno buildings. (source)

(6) Charles built his castle in 1907, long before the Alameda and the Marguery. (source)

(7) Joseph never attended medical or dental school and never worked as a dentist. There is some evidence that he may have worked for a dentist making false teeth as a night job. (source)

(8) Anthony and Armino Campagna married into the Paterno family but they were also second cousins of the Paterno siblings. (source) Three other men, who married into the family, participated in Paterno construction projects. They were Victor Cerabone, Joseph Faiella, and Ralph Ciluzzi. (source)

2 July 1927 issue, page 19 & 20, written by Poster Ware

Charles Vincent Paterno, M.D., Cornell Medical College, Class of 1899, came by his doctor’s degree as a result of a feeling in the family that he never would make a builder, like his father. Of the numerous Paterno offspring, Charles seemed least likely to thrive in the robustious “building game.”Anthony and Joseph, his brothers, plainly had the stuff that builders are made of, and the Paterno tradition could be carried on by them. The family had come to New York from Potenza, Italy, when Charles was a child of seven. He was smaller, and not so strong as the other boys, and he limped just a little – all of which seemed to mark him for a career in the great, sedentary indoors. Hence, it was decided that Charles should go to college and get an education , something that no Paterno had ever before felt called upon to do.

Into this scheme Paterno entered obediently and even eagerly. He rather liked the idea of becoming a doctor. He took his degree on schedule time, and was all set to begin practice when – the break came.

Paterno’s father died, leaving a grieving family and a new apartment house in upper Manhattan only about half finished. It was up to somebody to finish that house. The other brothers were busy. It was decided that Charles should put aside his medical practice for the time being and help Joseph finish the house. This he did. When they had the house up, Joseph and Charles traded it for a nice vacant lot uptown. The lot was of no use to them unless they “improved” it. Another building job for the doctor. He would build this one more house and then pull out and open a medical office. But when the second building was finished and sold, the Doctor found that in two years he had accumulated $40,000, which quite impressed him when he thought of what he might have collected from patients in two years of doctoring. About this time he gave up the idea of ever being a doctor at all.

It was a period of tremendous activity in Manhattan real estate, and the Doctor, when not building, found time to invest in a lot or two. He proved a shrewd operator, apparently knowing instinctively where the market was good. Dealing in building lots was a business with a quick turnover – and this he liked. Altogether, he scored many more hits than misses, and the riches grew.

Although he has never had a patient, Paterno hangs on to the title of Doctor. He seems to like the sound of it. Go into his office, twenty-three floors above Forty-second Street and Park Avenue, and you will alway find a flock of people waiting to see “the Doctor.” All the Paternos have met with success in their building ventures, but the Doctor alone seems to have displayed genius above the average. He is what the success school of writers would call a dynamo for work. He fairly lives on the scene of a “big job” while it is under way. In fact, in the case of Hudson View Gardens – the enterprise which he considers his greatest achievement to date – he did camp out on the premises, night and day, for nearly a year.

He “sees” everybody at his office by appointment and all appointments are made for three o’clock in the afternoon. Mornings he is always away somewhere, superintending work on one of his new buildings or prospecting for other sites to conquer. By early afternoon, when he breezes into his office, the waiting room is pretty certain to be filled. This is as he would have it. Since everybody there has been told to come at the same hour each must wait his turn to see him.

The Doctor is a short, erect, vital little man with a neat goatee and a shock of black hair streaked with gray. As he strides from the inner office to greet you, hand extended, blue eyes snapping, there is more than a suggestion of the medical man about him. Indeed, you are half conscious of a feeling that this man will presently be peering down your throat, inquiring into your blood pressure and wanting to know how many cigarettes a day you smoke. But the consulting room overflows with blueprints and architect’s drawings; and the talk is of brick and stone and steel, of building lots and big “developments,” of Castle Paterno, the Doctor’s feudal home of upper Riverside Drive, and of that greatest of all Paterno projects, the Paterno Tower, which some day may – nay, will, since the Doctor has ordered it – top the Palisades, for a mere matter of a thousand feet.

The Doctor talks earnestly about that tower. In fact, he talks earnestly about everything that has to do with Charles Vincent Paterno. Dinner parties there have been at the Castle at which, after the ladies have withdrawn and the gentlemen are mulling over their Paterno Havanas, the Doctor has stood up and for perhaps an hour entertained his guests with a glowing account of his “plans.” Superlatives fairly stagger as the Doctor talks, yet no item is too small to escape his notice. He can recall every detail of one of his earliest triumphs – the Magic X-Ray Box, a device which, as a boy, he invented, constructed and himself sold to the passing throngs at Ann and Nassau Streets. Would you like to know how the trick worked? Ask the Doctor. He will tell you. It was all very ingenious, and the Doctor – who was a mere kid then – made quite a lot of money with it.

It would seem that Paterno has what is called “vision.” Also there is a touch of magic in his business undertakings. Where a more cautious builder might think twice, Paterno says “Presto” – and a new building rears its roof. He put up that modern multiple mansion, No. 270 Park Avenue, at a time when many sage realtors were convinced he out to have his mind examined. Paterno chose for this venture an entire city block Forty-seventh to Forty-eighth Street, between Madison and Park Avenues. He had Warren & Wetmore design the building, and he installed duplex apartments in it renting as high as $25,000 a year. No. 270 Park Avenue “went over” and blazed the way for many another Park Avenue “millionaires’ home.” The building today is said to have a market value of $15,000,000.

Castle Paterno is clearly the product of his penchant for living and doing things in the grand manner. Here, in this feudal pile on Fort Washington Heights, Paterno enjoys having people about him who listen in rapt attention to the story of what he has done, what he is doing and what he will yet do. There is much to amaze the visitor at the Castle. A fountain plays in a large central rotunda. Hidden away somewhere is a great organ, and that too is invariably playing – electrically. The there is the Japanese room, the dining-room, the living-room and finally the Louis XV library containing life-size portraits in oil of the lord of the castle and his chatelaine. Nor shall we forget the mushroom cellar and the grand ballroom upstairs. Still another wonder is to be added – a two-hundred-foot swimming pool, to be enclosed in glass and equipped with an electric sun-ray apparatus which the Doctor say will put a Palm Beach tan on while you wait.

With equal pride, Paterno points to the building to the north of his home – Hudson View Gardens – a venture in which he risked nearly everything. These buildings, on land which he bought from the James Gordon Bennett estate, cost more than $5,000,000. They have apartments for three hundred and sixty families. Today they are all occupied on the ownership plan; but for one whole year Paterno had to carry them with over two hundred apartments vacant. Instead of spending $50,000 in advertising, as he had planned, he spent $400,000 – and he camped out there till the last flat was sold.

From the window of the castello Paterno can look across the Hudson and see the wilderness where as a boy he used to go camping. Of late he as been acquiring most of this territory – in fact, he now owns about six hundred acres of it – and as soon as the new Hudson River bridge is actually under way he plans to begin work on his greatest opus, Paterno Tower, which will rise above the Palisades.

When he came back from a trip to Europe last year, Paterno’s mind was set on one thing – to out-Eiffel the Eiffel Tower; Paterno Tower will be the fruit of this ambition.

Paterno Tower (to be) will rise to a height of a thousand feet, starting on the top of the Palisades, which give it a six-hundred-foot rise to begin with. Thus the topmost turrets of Paterno Tower (to come) will loom head and shoulders above all other skyscrapers and properly glorify the name of its maker. There are to be apartments for contented tenants all the way up; each apartment is to have an electric sun-ray bath. Several engineers are trying to help the Doctor bring this monument nearer to a reality. He himself has already figured out that it will take at least sixty million separate and distinct bricks.

Though essentially a man of business and a thinker in large terms, Paterno finds time for the gentler arts of dancing and golf. The latter he plays with much vigor and perhaps a little less skill than he himself might desire. Dancing, on the other hand, has been cultivated to a point where it may be said to rank as a major sport.

Probably Paterno is the only man in these parts who makes a hobby of raising Christmas trees. At his farm in Bedford Hills he has planted some 100,000 seedlings which he bought at a cent apiece. In three years they will be being enough to go to market and fetch and dollar each at Christmas time – at least, so the Doctor figures.

Mrs. Paterno was a widow when he met her. It was almost romantic. She had been visiting friends in New York when the loss of a garment that had been hung on the line caused such distress that a complaint was made to the managements of the apartment house where she was stopping. Who should answer the complaint but Dr. Paterno himself? For it was he who owned the building. And so they met and became friends, and before very long Castle Paterno had a chatelaine. The Paternos have one son, Carlo, who is just finishing his freshman year at Yale.

Even if Paterno Tower never materializes, there should be glory enough in the Paterno bookplate that the Doctor is going to put in each of the fifteen thousand volumes which he intends of give to Columbia’s new Italian House. It is done in simple black and gold and contains the names of Italy’s great – in one corner, Leonardo da Vinci; in another, Michael Angelo; in a third, Galileo; in a fourth, Verdi. Below these, in larger letters, appears the name of Charles V. Paterno. Within the border are the figures of Dante and a lady, who this time isn’t Beatrice but – Miss Columbia. The happy pair walk in the chummiest manner toward a streaming light. Some say this light is meant to be the light of learning. Other suspect it really represents the beacon that some day will flash from the top of Paterno Tower.

25 December 1937 Issue, page 11

For some year we’ve had in mind a Christmas visit to Dr. Charles V. Paterno’s country estate, Windmill Manor, at Bedford Hills, and this week, learning that he was to be there and could give us a little time, we drove up. The Doctor has 1,500 acres at Bedford Hills and in 1922 he began the planting of 1,500,000 pine and cedar trees of various species, completing the chore in a few years. We are sorry to have to report that his evergreens have attained such size that they are not salable any more, at least alive. That was the original idea. The enterprising Doctor, who has a medical degree but never had a patient, bought the saplings at a penny apiece, and over a period ending in 1932 sold little Christmas trees in red cans at the rate of thirty or forty thousand a year. They retailed at $1.50 each, including a label reading something like this (the Doctor couldn’t recall exactly): “I am your little Christmas tree. Take good care of me, because if you do I’ll grow bigger and stronger, just like you.” The kids ate this up and Dr. Paterno had a profit annually.

He still has 600,00 trees left. Although the Christmas-tree market was cut off when the trees attained ten feet, the Doctor’s ingenuity wasn’t. There are sixteen miles of bridle paths at Windmill Manor and he set about transplanting 200,000 pines to their flanks. The big idea was that pines are resinous and turpentiney and horseflies are violently antipathetic to resin and turpentine. The result is that in mid-summer, when other Westchester equestrians and their mounts twitch and flinch as the flies buzz merrily, the Paterno guests (the Doctor does not ride himself) jog along in pine-protected comfort. Moving 200,00 trees cost $70,000, but the Doctor doesn’t regret a penny of it. The reason for his may be that he has evolved another scheme, a rather grand-scale one. It’s pretty much of a secret still, but we learned a little about it. Things being what they are generally, the Doctor and some of his outdoors friends are working on a project to turn Windmill Manor into a sort of sportsman’s paradise, right in Westchester. Some four or five years from now – it will take that long to get the place ready – the Doctor expects to reveal to the public a vast playground with facilities for what he considers the four major sports: riding, fishing, golf, and aviation. There are two golf courses already and a third is to be built. Lakes are being created; one has been stocked with 50,000 brown and speckled trout. In due time there will be an aviation field and hangars. One feature of the club will be a blimp taxi service to and from Manhattan with a ship departing from each end every fifteen minutes and a landing field somewhere near Fiftieth Street. We could tell you a little more about his, but you wouldn’t believe it.

Dr. Paterno hasn’t lived at Windmill Manor for the last two or three years, preferring his smaller place at Greenwich, but he runs over there frequently to watch progress. He has two or three hundred men at work now. He drove us by a recently complete concrete dam and noted happily that the lake basin is filing up nicely. We saw several of the windmills from which the place takes its name. There are nine of them all told, each capable of pumping three hundred gallons per minute in a fair breeze. They are not ordinary steel windmills but have huge, colorful stone and wooden towers. No two are exactly alike. We also saw a few of Dr. Paterno’s twenty-five deer. The Doctor is trying to domesticate four that were born last June, and if he succeeds he plans to hitch them to a sleigh and, some Christmas when there’s snow, drive them right down Fifth Avenue.

Link: Additional information & photos of Windmill Farm

Link: More information on Dr. Paterno’s Greenwich home

All of the confirmed Paterno Family buildings are now pinned on a Google map which you can view HERE. Existing buildings have blue pins and demolished buildings have red pins.

This article appeared in the 16 February 2021 edition of L’Osservatore Roman and was written by Enrica Riera. Below is a translation from Italian to American English.

Stories of yesterday • Story of Charles Vincent Paterno, builder of some of the tallest buildings of his time in New York • High mountains in the city

“Short, serious, successful”. When Carla Ann Cappiello Golden describes her great-grandfather, based on what has been discovered “from her books or handed down by her relatives”, she uses these three adjectives. Charles Vincent Paterno, of Italian origin and one of the greatest builders in New York, in addition to being a serious and successful man, was short. But why should this be considered primary information? At the end of the correspondence with the woman, the writer wonders about the meaning to be attributed to short: if the term should be understood as practical? However, any doubt disappears as we enter the history of the Paterno. A story in which the obsession with height, in the sense of man’s aspiration to infinity and the desire to rise from earthly things, always returns.

Charles V. Paterno was one of the first builders of skyscrapers destined to draw the profile of the Big Apple. “He did not build today’s skyscrapers – specifies Cappiello Golden – but he created some of the tallest buildings of his time: even 15-storey condominiums”. On her website “Marabella.family”, there is a table on the buildings built in Manhattan by Charles V. and the others Paterno, with a lot of location (most of them are in the Upper West Side), number of floors, name (from Santa Maria to the Colosseum) and fate (“So far I have identified 142 buildings built by the Paternos, of which only 10 have been demolished”).

A prospectus that takes the reader back in time. Because if the first building (San Marino) built by Paterno dates back to 1900, 1885 is the year in which the adventure begins and the future builder arrives, at the age of 7, together with his mother Carolina and his brothers, in America. From Castelmezzano, a small mountain village in the province of Potenza, the Paternos travel to reach the head of the family Giovanni, who first settled in Manhattan and managed to make his way in construction. Charles V., born in 1878 with the name of Canio Paternò, became an American citizen and, after a childhood as a newsboy, graduated in medicine at Cornell Medical School (to pay for his studies he patented a lighting device) finally deciding to continue the profession of his father, who died suddenly. The dreamer boy never stops looking up, building a life up to dreams.

“I am very proud of what my great-grandfather (the father of my mother’s father) achieved as an emigrant – says the granddaughter -. I have never met him (he died in 1946, I was born in 1969) but, thanks to my discoveries, I admire him very much “.

The story is also the subject of Renato Cantore’s book Il Castello sull’Hudson. Charles Paterno and the American Dream (Rubbettino 2012, translated into English in 2017). They are pages on emigration, memory and the aforementioned American dream. It can be said, moreover, that memory and dream are founded in the very existence of Paterno, who, with the fixed idea of ​​height (he climbs on a stool at the time of the photographs), makes his fortune by building in the highest points of the city: it is the giant buildings that remind him of the mountains of the country, the roots. “He was joking about his desire to live in places from which you could see the world from above. “I was born in a mountain village, with the roofs of the houses that seemed to touch the sky. And a certain desire for infinity remained inside me, like a gift of nature ”», we read in the book on Paterno, whose deeds can be traced in the US newspapers. At the time, the “New York Times” described the imposing buildings (and the donation of 20,000 books to the Italian House of Columbia University) of the visionary with his mind in Castelmezzano. «I’ve never been there – answers Cappiello Golden – but I’d like to visit the town» said Dolomites of the South. And just like a mountain is the Paterno Castle that the self made man builds on top of Manhattan to live there with his wife and son. “A structure – comments the niece – unique, romantic”, demolished in 1938 to make room for the garden city, Castle Village, 5 towers, 12 floors, on the street named after Mother Cabrini, patron saint of emigrants.

In addition to it and Hudson View Gardens, Paterno – “a genius” for the mayor of New York La Guardia – gives life to palaces (“The Paterno is my favorite”, says Carla about the building, which is also a film location) «Higher and higher, also thanks to the use of modern, fast and reliable electric lifts». An example is the no longer existing «Marguery, the first real skyscraper for apartments (…), one of the most important building complexes in Midtown».

At 68, the manufacturer passes away. He leaves his last dream unfulfilled: the Paterno Tower, the tallest building in the world, “100-storey tower, higher than the Eiffel Tower (…), destined to look down on the skyscrapers of Manhattan”. Today, his niece wants to “pass it on to young family members, to get to know who was there before”. Among all, Charles Vincent Paterno, with his eyes upwards to feel at home.