Immigrants from southern Europe, and Italy in particular, did not begin to arrive in Madison until the first decade of the twentieth century and the few who came first were often illiterate, spoke no English, and often had skills that were a poor fit with the needs of the urban centers in the United States that they found themselves in. Most of them had also arrived here without families and were isolated both by language and by culture from the larger society that surrounded them here. In Madison, these men settled in an area known as the Greenbush, and in 1912 a small group of them who were concerned about what would happen if illness or injuries kept them from working met to discuss their situation. Among them was Theodore Paratore, who had recently become aware of a similar Italian American group in Chicago that had formed a mutual benefit and aid society to help them deal with such problems and he proposed that the Madison community should do the same. This idea was quickly adopted and in 1912 the Club Lavoratori Italiani Sicilia di Mutuo Sucorso e Beneficenza, better known as the Italian Workmen’s Club (IWC), was formed with 42 paying members. In the years that followed, the city’s Italian community grew rapidly, and so too did the number of IWC members.

By 1922, the needs of the IWC had grown to the point where its members decided to build a clubhouse of their own. The result was a 29.5-foot by 60-foot one-story-tall brick building built by the members themselves that still forms the core of the present building today. With two large new meeting rooms available, the clubhouse soon became one of the most important social centers for the city’s Italian American community. In 1936, the clubhouse was extended in length and a new main façade designed by the prominent Madison architectural firm of Law, Law & Potter was built, again by the members themselves. The resulting building is still the clubhouse of the IWC today, and it continues to be a center of social activities for the Italian American community in Madison.

While no longer a mutual benefit society, the IWC’s members still provide thousands of dollars a year for scholarships to students of Italian descent and they also play host to a number of important Italy-related social events every year including Columbus Day celebrations and the IWC’s own three-day-long Festa Italia. Regrettably, most of the surrounding Greenbush neighborhood that was the home of the city’s original Italian American community was demolished by the City of Madison in the 1960s as part of its urban renewal activities and most of what remained afterwards has since been demolished to make way for medical offices and clinics and student apartments. As a result, the Italian Workmen’s Club’s clubhouse is now almost the only remaining building in Madison that was once historically associated with this important city ethnic group. It is also the IWC’s proud belief that their club is one of the oldest, if not the oldest continuously operating Italian American club in the nation.

Italian Workmen’s Club Madison