Banca Italia Building
28 Mulberry Street | also 101 Mosco Street | Chinatown | built 1910
Open on the map4 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1888
Antonio Cuneo builds an Italian Renaissance bank and apartment building at Mulberry Bend
Antonio Cuneo, a Ligurian immigrant who rose from a fruit seller to a grocer, real estate owner, and banker known as "the Banana King," completed this five-story building in 1888 across from the planned Mulberry Bend park. It wraps the corner of Mulberry and Park (now Mosco) Streets, with a brick facade, terra-cotta panels, and a pressed-metal cornice. His Banca Italia filled the ground floor, and apartments upstairs were reached from Park Street. A carved, temple-like doorway with an eagle on top came a few years later.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1905
Banca Italia manager Angelo Cuneo turns in a Black Hand extortion letter
On December 4, 1905, Angelo Cuneo, who had taken over running Banca Italia, received a Black Hand letter demanding $250. He gave it to the police, who set a trap by leaving an envelope holding a single dollar at the specified spot. Detectives followed the man who collected it, and arrests followed.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1914
Depositors withdraw about $200,000 in a five-day run on Banca Italia
In February 1914 Angelo Cuneo, by then going by Andrew, traveled to New Orleans on business, and rumors spread that he had fled to Europe. Over five days depositors pulled out roughly $200,000, until his return ended the run. The bank still failed that year, leaving him owing depositors about $200,000. By 1929 the space was a Bank of America branch.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1934
The former bank floor becomes a Chinatown funeral home
In 1934 the ground floor that once held Cuneo's bank became the Kimlau Mortuary, run by Benjamin Kimlau, whose family lived upstairs. As the neighborhood turned as much Chinese as Italian, the space stayed in business as a Chinese-run funeral home. It still sits behind the bank's old corner entrance.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The Banca Italia Building -- 28 Mulberry StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- What remains of an 1881 bank at Mulberry BendEphemeral New York
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