In the pouring rain on Election Day 2018, North End resident Ellen Hume and a group of neighbors started a petition drive calling on city officials to designate the Nazzaro Community Center a historic landmark.
Nearly five years later, and after collecting more than 1,500 signatures, Hume saw what she had been desiring for a while: Mayor Michelle Wu declaring that the Nazzaro will be staying in the community for generations to come.
The resident recounted when a woman asked her why she was so passionate about saving the community staple that has served the neighborhood in some form for over a century since she’s not Italian.
“I said, ‘Look, my Swedish ancestors came on the bottom of a ship here. They were poor as dirt. They were bankrupt. They were desperate. And, they built a new life in this country,’” Hume said.
“This immigrant’s history belongs to all of us, so let’s celebrate it properly,” she continued. “Keep this in public use and go onto the next generations.”
Gaining historic protection means Nazzaro’s early 20th-century Beaux-Arts Renaissance Revival Style architecture will be preserved, while the city will be allowed to redesign and upgrade its interior for new public uses.
The Boston Landmarks Commission last month unanimously approved the landmark status for the building, in the heart of one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.
In the early 1900s, officials constructed the building as one of 12 city-ran bathhouses in response to a public health policy that sought to address effects of industrialization, urbanization and poverty by offering bathing and recreational facilities, according to a city report.
“The bathhouse operated until the 1970s when it was officially closed, having fallen into a state of neglect,” the report states. “In 1985, the Boston Centers for Youth & Families (BCYF) acquired the building and reopened it as the Nazzaro Community Center.
“I know this has been a longtime coming for the community to have the solid guarantee that this space will be here forever more, preserved as a treasure of history in Boston,” Wu said.
The Nazzaro marks the twelfth building to be designated a landmark so far under the Wu administration, said Murray Miller, the city’s director of historic preservation.
Though the Nazzaro will be preserved, officials have their eyes on offering services provided at the facility on North Bennett Street at a new community center with more space on Commercial Street, adjacent to the Mirabella Pool.
The city in January secured $25 million in a combination of state and federal funds to support creation of that facility. That money also includes $5 million to renovate the historic Nazzaro Center so it can continue hosting community events.
“Everything that goes on in here has been so critical to the growth of our neighborhood, to the survival of our neighborhood,” state Rep. Aaron Michlewitz said of the Nazzaro. “For us to celebrate this today, and to make it something permanent going forward, I’m really, truly honored to be a part of it.”
