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.
