The Pisa Village was a humanitarian housing project in
Italy partially completed by the
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the desi ...
(ARC) during
World War I.
The refugee situation following the
Battle of Caporetto provoked an American concern of disorder and unrest. Members of the ARC commission sympathized with the Italian families who had become
refugee
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution. s, whilst others feared the disaster’s potential to create a "moral hazard to young girls" and the opportunity for
socialism to take root. In late February 1918,
B. Harvey Carroll, the U.S.
consul in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, proposed that the ARC should construct a model village near
Pisa
Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...
for 15,000 Venetians.
[.]
The plan was scaled down by the ARC to 2,000. The planned village included eighty concrete homes, offices, shops, a community kitchen, a church, workrooms, school, a hospital, and a concrete replica of the
Piazza San Marco.
[
The village was advertised separately to American and Italian audiences. For Italians, the ARC presented the village as a stable environment where families could support themselves through employment rather than charity. The ARC marketed the Pisa Village to Americans as a "modern American city".][.] The designers followed contemporary notions of hygienic housing, reflecting the work of reformers of immigrant housing in the United States. Carroll and the ARC viewed the project both as a solution to the refugee crisis and as a "concrete example of what America can do when she bows her neck to it".[.] The Pisa Village was envisioned as a testament to the ARC and United States' innovative approach to disaster relief, and as a model for Italians to follow.
The sudden end of the war following the November 1918 Armistice meant the project was never fully completed despite the laudatory depictions within the IW Cross Magazine and Bulletin that implied otherwise.[ The village was turned over to the Italian Commission to the Ministry of War, to provide housing to wounded soldiers. Designed to venerate the United States' role in preserving Italian communities, the project was representative of the ARC and United States' increasingly international humanitarianism.
]
Gallery
References
Footnotes
Works cited
*
*.
*Anon (1918). ''Public Roads: A Journal of Highway Research''. 1 (2). Washington: U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. {{ISSN, 0033-3735.
Further reading "East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, September 04, 1918, DAILY EVENING EDITION, Page PAGE FOUR, Image 4 « Historic Oregon Newspapers"
''oregonnews.uoregon.edu.'' Retrieved 2020-07-24.
Refugee camps in Europe
Italy–United States relations
Italy in World War I