Tucked into the bustle of day-to-day life are hints of cultures that once dominated Southwestern Pennsylvania, brought by immigrants looking for work and new opportunities.

Details come in the form of ethnic social halls, proud churches parishioners loyally attend on Sundays, and neighbors who have known each other for generations scattered throughout Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Histories are brought to life through ethnic festivals, cultures shared through recipes and phrases, now woven into the makeup of the region.

Immigration “is foundational to the fabric and the history of this place,” said Leslie Przybylek, senior curator at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.

Western Pennsylvania has been home to several groups of people over the years who largely built the area into what it is today. In Pittsburgh, its melting pot exploded in the late 1800s, leaving behind a changed city influenced by Germans, Scotch-Irish, English and others.

Coming to a relatively small city at the time, those groups settled in the Downtown area, forming the Birmingham section of South Side and parts of the North Shore. Early settlers stayed in the “traditional, kind of heart of Pittsburgh at the Point,” Przybylek said. “That’s where most of the population kind of begins.”

As waves of immigrants continued to arrive, those settlements expanded to areas along the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers.

The Hill District became home to several groups, including Jewish and Middle Eastern residents, before becoming a largely African American neighborhood. Bloomfield has its own varied history, founded by a German immigrant but eventually becoming home to waves of Italians, resulting in Pittsburgh’s “Little Italy.”

Lawrenceville is traditionally Irish and German. Polish Hill takes the name of its founders; and Allegheny City, now known as the North Shore, was founded by German immigrants.

The population of Germans, Eastern Europeans and Slovakians once again grew during the Industrial Revolution, when they built mill towns such as Duquesne, Homestead and Braddock.

In Westmoreland County, groups largely came to work on railroads and in coal mines, said Lisa Hays, executive director of the Westmoreland County Historical Society.

While those neighborhoods don’t boast of those cultures as strongly as they once did, they are filled with generations of people who are keeping their heritage alive, whether it’s through the Homestead Slavs Club near the Waterfront, the American Serbian Club of Pittsburgh in the South Side or the Marconi Club in Leechburg.

Most Western Pennsylvania immigrant communities were home to numerous ethnic clubs since their founding — Croation, Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Polish, German, Irish, Serbian and more — and a few remain operating today as social and community-service based groups.

Today, the majority of people across the state, 95.5%, identify as an ethnicity other than American, 2018 estimates from the American Community Survey show. Allegheny and Westmoreland counties boast similar numbers, 97.2% and 95.6%, respectively. The largest group that people identified as was German, numbers show.

Those representing that vast history of immigrants now have the opportunity to identify by their ethnic background with this year’s census. The designation allows people to state their origins after selecting either Black or white as a race. It was added in an effort to secure more accurate data on race and ethnicities, census spokeswoman Susan Licate said.

For Western Pennsylvania, the designation will allow historians to identify where different groups of people are located across the region, adding to their historical understanding.

“I do think, for us, understanding who is here now, what groups are still identifying in different ways of where they are located in the city, would add to our historical understanding of where we are now, just building off where we’ve come (from),” Przybylek said. “That’s always information that historians can look back on and use in future generations.”

For different ethnic groups across the region, the designation is a way to educate others about different cultures while learning more about their own backgrounds.

“If we understand each other’s cultures, we can tolerate our differences,” said Maryann Sivak, who heads the Carpatho-Rusyn Society in Munhall. “I think especially now, during this time, not all of us think alike. … (But) we are all Americans, and, even though they have different backgrounds, we can complement each other.”

Heritage and the census

Growing up, Sivak felt firsthand her heritage being stripped from her.

A citizen of communist Czechoslovakia, Sivak was unable to identify as Carpatho-Rusyn, a group of Eastern Slavic people who lived in remote villages along the Carpathian Mountains that stretch from the Czech Republic to Romania. The group does not identify with any particular country.

The lack of identity, as some countries saw it, led to the silencing of the group. For Sivak, that meant she was forced to conform to the Russian Orthodox Church rather than practice the Greek Catholic faith.

When applying for a passport, “I was actually not allowed to say I was Rusyn,” she said.

On Christmas Eve 1968, Sivak left Czechoslovakia, arriving at her grandfather’s Aliquippa home. There, she realized the importance of her ethnic background with the help of her grandfather.

“Don’t be afraid of who you are,” he told her. “Every language is beautiful. If you know who you are, you can be a better American.”

She carries that message with her today as she heads the Carpatho-Rusyn Society, a group aimed at bringing together Carpatho-Rusyns to learn more about their history. In Pittsburgh, the group is most famously represented by the artist Andy Warhol.

Sivak is hopeful the census designation will allow the group to gain a sense of self and learn more about their background, which was largely forced to identify as Slovak over the years because of the location of their settlements.

Those of Portuguese descent have faced a similar lack of self, having to identify as Hispanic or Latino on forms such as the census. That’s one of the main reason the Portuguese-­American Leadership Council, a national organization aimed at adding a Portuguese option to the census, worked to include that designation on the survey.

“Attitudes are changing about what race means,” said Marie Fraley, census director for the group. “It’s almost like a moving target.”

The group, which came up with the tag line Make Portuguese Count, worked with the Census Bureau for more than 10 years to create a separate line for Portuguese in the race category, according to the organization’s website. The outcome was the heritage portion of the census, which could help groups across the country, Fraley said.

Over the years, different race designations were added to the census, which started with three — free white people, all other free people and slaves — during the 1790 census, a Pew Research report shows. Changes were slowly made through the 1800s, and eventually other races were added beginning in 1860.

By 2010, the last time the census was administered, people were able to identify on the census by a small group of races, including Black or African American, white, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Highlander, Hispanic or Latino, or two or more races.

“We all come from somewhere,” Sivak said. “I think it helps us to have a better understanding of other people’s cultures. We have different approaches when we come from different countries.”

Banding together

In Crabtree, the Emilia Sammartino Lodge, which is part of the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America, boasts about 80 members, said Terry Lucarelli, president of the club.

“It’s hard to describe,” Lucarelli said of being part of the club. “There’s a sense you’re woven together. There’s fabric and, if you live in that community, you really do have that honestly deep, close-knit connection.

“Crabtree has a pretty strong Italian population because they knew when they left Italy they had employment in the coal mines, so they banded together,” he added.

People would gather at the lodge, which has several locations across the region, after a long day in the mines or the foundry. The social halls acted as a piece of home when immigrants were largely marginalized.

“At one point, Italians were looked down upon and sort of looked as a lower cast,” he said. “I think that was important for them to hold tight and be close because you might not have been the most welcomed member of the community, especially if you ventured out to a bigger area that was more white.”

A similar club, the Marconi Club, was founded in 1911 in Leechburg, giving Italian immigrants a chance to speak their native language and to “feel the touch of the old country,” according to the club’s website. Today, the Leechburg facility is home to up to 350 members, said Dan Logero, secretary and treasurer for the club.

“It’s nice,” Logero said of the membership. “I think it shows a lot of the commitment to the Italian heritage, because so many of their grandparents and great-grandparents are the ones that started this club. And I think that’s why a lot of them belong.”

The club previously held large events featuring big bands and hypnotists along with a women’s auxiliary group, Logero said, noting that he often attended events with his parents.

Members today often take part in bocce tournaments or spaghetti dinners, both staples at the club.

Logero said of the census designation, “(It’s) just a tribute to those who came over and got this started. They worked hard to get us where we are.”

Lucarelli is hopeful the designation will cause people to become more open to learning about different cultures represented across Western Pennsylvania.

“We need to realize we can’t really be so one-sided, that it’s a big wide world. … I think we would all benefit from acceptance,” he said.

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