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1 Sylvester Andriano, a Catholic Attorney in San Francisco The comforts offered by American free-life appeal to them and almost before they know it, they have learned to love America. When this stage is reached none are more eager than Italians to become full-fledged American citizens. —Sylvester Andriano, “Italian Immigrants in America,” 1909 ‘Little Italy’ is no longer so little, for the Italians, 60,000 strong, are San Francisco’s largest and most powerful national minority. —San Francisco: A Guide to the Bay and Its Cities, 1940 Sylvester Andriano began his lifelong practice of combining the promotion of Catholicism with the preservation of Italian culture during his student days at St. Mary’s College of California . Then located in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, the men’s college attracted the aspiring sons of Catholic families to study under a faculty drawn from the Christian Brothers religious order. Andriano graduated from St. Mary’s in 1911, ten years after he arrived in San Francisco from his birthplace in Castelnuovo d’Asti, ten miles southwest of Turin in the Piedmont region of Italy.1 Sylvester’s older brothers Giuseppe and James were the first to leave the family orchards in Castelnuovo d’Asti for opportunities in San Francisco, arriving in 1895 and 1898, respectively. Giuseppe bought a restaurant and married a fellow immigrant named Eugenia, who, assisted by a servant, ran a household that included several lodgers and members of the extended family. Sylvester lived with Giuseppe, Eugenia, and their daughter Edna, working in the restaurant after school, until he graduated from St. Mary’s. Another older brother, Angelo, a Roman Catholic priest ordained in Turin, 16 CHAPTER 1 arrived in 1905 and became the pastor of a series of Bay Area churches. Angelo was one of two siblings who became priests, but the other, Pasquale, died shortly after being ordained into the Salesian religious order and never came to the United States.2 Five years after Sylvester arrived in the city, the great San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed two-thirds of the city, but he and his family survived the catastrophe unhurt and undeterred in their goal of establishing an Andriano family branch in California. Like other up-and-coming Piedmontese immigrants to San Francisco , Giuseppe moved out of the North Beach Italian colony, bought a large new residence on Polk Street, and filled it with his family members and seven lodgers. Their sister Serafina joined them in 1908 and lived in Giuseppe and Eugenia’s household until she married a waiter in the restaurant and moved a few blocks away to start her own family. James married and bought a house in the city’s Eureka Valley district (today’s Castro neighborhood), working as a gardener in Golden Gate Park. Their brother Angelo returned to Italy in 1929, with the expectation (false, as it turned out) that the Lateran Accords between the Vatican and the Fascist regime would restore the Catholic Church’s power and prestige in Italy. None of the other siblings returned to Italy except on visits, and all became naturalized citizens even while marrying fellow Italians or Californiaborn children of Italians. During the Prohibition years, Giuseppe and Eugenia, now parents of three children, traded the restaurant business and city life for a fruit orchard and the rural Valley of Heart’s Delight—today’s Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County. Country life also appealed to Sylvester, who once he had established himself in San Francisco purchased a ranch in nearby Los Altos, to which he retired on weekends and vacations as a respite from his professional responsibilities in the city.3 While all the Andriano siblings made a successful transition from Italy to America, Sylvester stood out as the scholar, becoming the only college graduate in the family and later an influential lay activist in Catholic Church affairs, both Italian and citywide. He excelled in his studies at St. Mary’s (and played varsity basketball), won the Cottle Medal for Oratory in his junior year, and graduated maxima ANDRIANO, A CATHOLIC ATTORNEY IN SAN FRANCISCO 17 cum laude, having won medals for excellence in both modern languages and Christian doctrine. Andriano also served three years on the editorial board of the Collegian, a monthly literary review, and his articles exuded love for his native country and earnest Catholic piety in equal measure.4 In “An Italian Hill Town” the nineteen-year-old imagined himself back in his birthplace. After a two blocks...

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