P.A.H.H. logo

Out of the Balkans

Part 1: Out of the Balkans

Chapter 3, continued:
Madame Helen, Louie and Lily:
New York, New York

On 8 January1921, thirteen years after her husband Hristodul's death, Eleni's mother, Vasiliki Zissis, arrived in America on the S.S. Alexander accompanied by Fotios Demas' mother, Sofia. Both Vasiliki and Sofia listed 250 West Thirty-eighth Street, New York City as the address to which they were going; Vasiliki to her daughter, Eleni; and Sofia to her son, Fotios. Vasiliki had lived in Kalithea, Athens with her daughter, Sofia Capidaglis, for several years.

Many Greek immigrants remembered the S.S. Alexander as the ship on which they arrived, and the ship that brought Greek delicacies to them on its every return trip. Ralis Pierides, son of Sofia Capidaglis' daughter, Theano, recalled his grandfather Constantinos talking about his expeditions to the S.S. Alexander when it came to port in New York City. There he would purchase tziri and lakerda and other specialties from the Black Sea for his family table.

Eleni, Louie, Lily and Vasiliki moved into their new home in Brooklyn. It must have been a momentous event for Eleni, who in fifteen years had been three times married and twice widowed, given birth to a daughter, survived as a refugee, and immigrated to a foreign land. Daughter, mother and grandmother are shown together in a photograph.

The brownstone on Ovington Avenue (Seventieth Street) was at the very edge of housing development at the time. Eleni's home was located between Third Avenue and Ridge Boulevard. Third Avenue provided the retail and food shopping establishments for the community of Italian, Irish, Greek, and Jewish immigrants that lived in what was then a suburb.

Concentrations of German, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish families were on the other side of Third Avenue between Fiftieth and Seventy-fifth Streets. A bit further away were communities of Italian, Jewish and Finnish immigrants. Brooklyn provided a richly diverse cultural and ethnic setting, with each group desperately clinging to its language, customs and religion while at the same time encouraging its children to excel at school and become part of the fabric of America. The children and children's children of one group would meet and marry those of the other groups and, over time, lose their identities and become part of the ethnic alloy formed in America's great melting pot.

Victorian homes, farms and open space occupied the land all the way from Ovington Avenue to Fort Hamilton, which guarded the entrance to lower-New York Bay at the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island. Within a very few years Bay Ridge developed new housing and greatly expanded its population. The city demolished the elevated section of the transit system,(7) and extended the subterranean railroad (the Subway) from Sixty-ninth Street to Eighty-sixth Street and beyond. In those years uniformed police escorted Lily home from the subway station in the evening. It was a service provided to all women who were without escort.



Helpful Links

[Skip the navigation links: Jump to the Citation Guidelines.]

Navigation Links


[Skip the citation guidelines: Jump to the Bottom of the Page.]

Citation Guidelines


(This is the bottom of the page.)