There’s a new historical stop along the Freedom Trail — and tourists will find it tucked away somewhere between Paul Revere’s House and their next bowl of pasta.
The North End Historical Museum opened this week after years of efforts to preserve the neighborhood’s unique history. The North End is not only steeped the lore of the American Revolution, but it’s also as one of the city’s earliest and richest immigrant meccas.
Sitting at 3 Prince St. — the stretch between Hanover Street and North Square known to locals as “Little Prince” — the museum was fashioned out of a gutted ground-floor condo. When restaurateur Frank DePasquale bought the modest property last year, the only adornments were the exposed brick and electrical wiring.
But for Tom Damigella, president of the North End Historical Society, the spot was perfect for his long-cherished dream of a permanent home to share the neighborhood’s history — one that he felt had never quite gotten it’s due.
“We’ve got the Paul Revere House, we’ve got the Old North Church, we’ve got history pieces here and there,” he said. “But we’re trying to put it all in one place.”
As Damigella pointed out, the story of the neighborhood doesn’t end with 1776. For centuries, the North End was a gateway for new immigrants — not just the Italians, but also the Russian and Polish Jews before them, and the Irish still before.
Nor is Paul Revere’s Ride the only occurrence of note. The North End is also known for the Great Brink’s Robbery of 1950, the defense of executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, and of course, the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.
But even with a space secured, there was still a big challenge: As Damigella put it, “how do you tell 400 years of stories in 850 square feet?”
Enter Trivium Interactive. The Boston-based visual design firm, whose past clients include the Museum of Science and the Museum of African American History, helped turn Damigella’s vision into a reality.
As a result, the museum relies heavily on digital storytelling, from a series of touchscreen timelines to a hands-on “Flavors of the North End” projection wall, complete with an array of pasta and cannolis. Below them, QR codes are posted to give interested viewers even more background information.
“We try to suit whatever your particular interest might be,” Damigella said. “Some people have maybe two seconds of attention, other people love to read a lot of stuff.”
Both the digitized photos and the physical artifacts— among them, Tony DeMarco’s autographed boxing glove — took years of painstaking work digging through city and state archives.
“A lot of this stuff I started working on years ago,” he said. “I was collecting things, and people were saying, ‘I’ve got this, I’ve got this, I’ve got that, you might be interested in.’”
But there are a few parts of the museum that catch a particular glint in Damigella’s eyes. For moments where he wasn’t unable to source a copyright-free photo, such as an image of the 1976 visit of Queen Elizabeth, he had to dig through his personal archive.
“I was that close to her, by the way,” Damigella said, pointing to the screen. “No one gets that close to the Queen. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
The photo, a closely cropped shot of the queen next to then-Governor Michael Dukakis, is slightly off-center, a streak of light at the edges. Not the sort of photo that would run across the front page of a newspaper.
In other words, it’s intimate enough to feel like a glimpse of history through the eyes of someone who lived it.
“My mother often said she was waving to me,” he said of the queen, eyes fixed on the two smiling faces before him. “That’s my mother’s story, and I’m sticking to it.”
Damigella said he drew on the work of many locals, including the late Anthony Riccio, whose photographs are on display as part of what is intended to be a rotating exhibit. From the 1980s on, Riccio worked with senior citizens to record the life stories, interviewing them and documenting their everyday lives.
“Basically, what he did is what I wanted to do [with the museum],” Damigella said. “He and I talked about this idea to create a museum in the North End that would make sure that these stories were not lost. So 50 years from now, when I’m gone, [people] still know about this history.”
A flick of a finger, and up pops one of Riccio’s photographs: a typical 20th-century cold-water flat from the neighborhood, with a grimy sink and light streaking through the window.
“People think this [picture] is maybe 75 years old,” he said. “But look how old it is. It looks like 1910, but this is 1980. This is still what the North End looked like.”
One more click on the screen shows that Damigella isn’t just interested in the past. Gone is the image of the cramped, dimly lit kitchen; in its place appears a bright-white countertop with modern light fixtures and stainless steel appliances, something that could have been taken right out of a real estate listing.
“This is what’s happening to the North End,” he said, eyes fixed on the screen. “Taking the old buildings and gentrifying them, making it into one expensive [place to live]. That was then, this is now.”
Damigella said the opening was only possible with the help of a $200,000 grant earmarked in the state budget, thanks in part to House Ways and Means Committee chair Aaron Michlewitz, whose district includes the North End.
Michlewitz, along with DePasquale (who is renting out the museum space essentially for free — $1 a month plus utilities) and several other supporters of the society, were present at a soft opening last week.
“After decades of proposals and discussions, the North End’s history will finally have a home in a museum on Prince Street,” Michlewitz wrote in a social media post on Monday. “Please come down and visit!”
The museum will be open from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is $10, with discounts for seniors and students.
Damigella said he’s been overwhelmed not only by the support from longtime neighborhood residents, but also by the interest from visitors who may have never seen the North End, but traced their ancestry back there.
“They feel like this is something that is their legacy,” he said. “Not [just] mine. It’s theirs, it’s ours, it’s a neighborhood for people to really enjoy.”
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.