Tommy Washbush
Kathy Pickett plants some history in her garden.
It’s sunny, hot and humid as Kathy Pickett digs a hole 12 inches down along the edge of her backyard garden on South Orchard Street. Three grapevine cuttings sit nearby in small, plastic containers, waiting to go to their forever home.
Pickett has spent the last couple of days researching how to plant the cuttings, a King of the North variety, after responding to a July 19 message on the Greenbush neighborhood listserv with the subject line, “Grapevines available.”
The cuttings are from Paul Williams, a UW-Madison professor emeritus in plant pathology, who says the vines originally grew in the Triangle, the old Greenbush neighborhood bordered by Regent and Park streets and West Washington Avenue that was home to mostly Italian, Albanian and Jewish immigrants and African Americans. The city destroyed the neighborhood in the early 1960s in the name of urban renewal, razing about 233 residential buildings and 33 commercial and industrial structures, and displacing more than 1,150 people.
As Pickett digs a second and third hole for her plantings, her husband, Brian, prepares a couple of wooden stakes that will serve as bookends for fencing to keep critters away from the new plantings. Next year she’ll put a trellis there. She looks forward to making jelly and likes the idea of having a bit of Greenbush history in her garden. A resident since 1992, she says, “I feel like we’re newcomers.”
Williams got his grapevine clippings from a former colleague, the late George Klingbeil, a longtime horticulture professor at UW-Madison, who rescued them before the bulldozing of the old Greenbush neighborhood. But start talking to members of the Italian Workmen’s Club on Regent Street, founded in 1915 and believed to be one of the oldest Italian clubs in the nation, and you’ll hear other tales of salvaged clippings. Some vines survive today in the backyards of nearby homes once owned by the Italian families forced from the Triangle, on such streets as Erin, Mound, Chandler and Regent, and in other parts of the city.
John Caliva, born in 1940, recalls that his grandfather, John Sr., planted grapevines at his home at 5 S. Park St. “I can remember grapes at Nonni’s house from about the time I was 5 years old.” He says his grandfather brought the vines over from Sicily, probably around 1913. His family and other Italian families used the grapes to make jam and, usually with cartons of other grapes bought from a fruit vendor, wine.
Caliva says his grandfather and three friends would each year make “500 to 600 gallons of wine” to share. A sprig of the vines that grew at his grandfather’s house was planted in the backyard of the Italian Workmen’s Club; it has since grown to cover the fence at the adjoining storefront that houses the pub Sweet Home Wisconsin. The app “Picture This” identifies the variety as a common grape, originating in Italy.
King of the North grapes.
Caliva’s father dug up cuttings of the original grapevine on South Park Street when the family moved to Wingra Street. He says his grandfather and others also contributed cuttings from the original grapevines to Olbrich Gardens on the city’s east side.
According to Olbrich’s records, grapevines planted by Josephine Brasci’s husband at their Regent Street home were rescued before the home was demolished and eventually replanted at Brasci’s new home at the Gay Braxton Apartments. When she passed away, the roots were salvaged with the help of another UW professor, Edward Hasselkus, and donated to Olbrich.
A photo of Brasci with her grapevine now hangs as part of a tribute to the old Greenbush neighborhood in Chapter Madison, the new student apartment building opening at the corner of Regent and Park streets.
Around the corner from Kathy Pickett’s house, a huge grapevine bursting with not-yet-ripe grapes drapes the back fence of Anna Maria Di Piazza’s home on Wingra Street. Di Piazza says her father, Vito, got the vines from another Italian family down the block who brought them from the old Bush. The family’s wine press is still in Di Piazza’s basement.
Williams, who lives near Sequoya Library, says he offered the cuttings to Greenbush residents because he wanted to see them returned to the neighborhood. His own vine is going strong on a trellis in his garden. “It’s loaded with grapes,” he says, “and a good place to escape.”
Attributes of King of the North grapes:
• Nearly black grape
• Vigorous and productive
• Cold hardy
• Good for juices and jellies
