By: Jim Fonseca Follow
Published in Portugal Calling
A lot of good things are happening in Fall River. After several decades of population decline, the city’s population rose from about 89,000 in 2010 to 94,000 in 2020, according to the Census Bureau. There are major infrastructure projects nearing completion that will impact the city for decades to come. In the Spring of 2025, the city will be connected (actually re-connected) to the greater Boston MBTA commuter rail system. Sometime in 2026, the massive Route 79-Davol Street reconstruction will be completed and that will enhance transport connections to the city’s waterfront and to the South Coast Rail Station.
This may be the time to reconsider an often-proposed idea to recognize an underutilized treasure the city has: Fall River’s large and vibrant community of Portuguese Americans. The community got its start in the mid-nineteenth century because of whaling. Whalers stopped at the Portuguese Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde to take on deck hands.
While the Portuguese initially concentrated in New Bedford, as the whaling industry declined, Portuguese immigrants quickly moved in to dominate employment first the textile industry and then in the apparel industries that were booming in both Fall River and New Bedford. Immigrants from mainland…
Today, Fall River and nearby New Bedford, just 15 miles away, have the largest concentrations of Portuguese Americans in the United States. Each city has about 100,000 people and in both cities, roughly half of the population has some Portuguese ancestry. That’s about 100,000 people in total in the two cities. The larger region of southern New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut) is home to more than 450,000 persons who have some Portuguese ancestry.
What follows is a proposal to expand Fall River’s Portuguese Heritage District which I have edited and updated from my 2018 book: Making History; Creating a Landscape: The Portuguese American Community of Southeastern New England by James W. Fonseca (on Amazon.com).
Why not expand the Columbia Street Heritage District with a catchy title such as “Little Portugal” or “Portuguese Village”? A waterfront location in Fall River would be ideal because waterfront attractions have great tourist appeal. The attraction would consist of museums, exhibits, shops, restaurants and more. Not all of the attractions would have to be constructed from scratch because many are already in place. It may be possible to move some monuments and to relocate some existing restaurants that are currently in hard-to-find locations; that is, locations difficult for out-of-town visitors to find at scattered sites in an unfamiliar city where they have to look for street parking.
The Village would feature a major Portuguese Culture Center and museum constructed with funding from federal and state grants, private donors, and the Portuguese and Azorean governments. Example of museums that already exist include the Madeira museum in New Bedford and the Dighton Rock Museum housing the “Portuguese Plymouth Rock” just a few miles north of Fall River. A new museum featuring all branches of Portuguese cultures, including Azorean, Cape Verdean and Continental Portuguese, could be incorporated into a single main building or in separate adjoining buildings. Outdoor spaces would be used for music and folk dancing.
An adjacent three-decker tenement building could be furnished to offer a view of Portuguese American life at different eras, perhaps 1890s, 1930s and the present. Many non-local visitors have never been inside a three-decker. If a three-decker building is not nearby, one or more could be moved to the site.
Perhaps part of the exhibit might be a recreation of an Azorean farm with animals — a petting zoo! With the waterfront location, boats could be available for boarding. These boats might include replicas of a Portuguese caravel and other boats, such as a traditional coastal fishing boat from Nazare in Portugal or from the Azores. Harbor sight-seeing cruises could leave from this site.
A variety of Portuguese restaurants would be available at the Portuguese Village serving food ranging from snacks to fine restaurants offering the music of fado in the evening. Street vendors at kiosks could sell favorite snacks such as roasted sardines and fresh-baked malasadas. A Portuguese food store and a bakery need to be included. Gift shops would sell Portuguese-made goods and those made by local Portuguese American craftspeople including items such as pottery, cork handbags, clothing and traditional hand-crafted items such as Madeira lace. Some of the buildings might be faced with traditional blue and white azulejos tiles as in Lisbon.
There’s more: an art gallery could offer works of Portuguese and local Portuguese American artists. A wine shop would sell Portuguese wines and beers. The streets could be paved with traditional Portuguese black and white wavy tiles. Perhaps a Portuguese-themed hotel might be built. New monuments may be erected at the Village or some existing Portuguese-themed monuments scattered around the city could be moved to the site.
Once a Heritage District is established, a targeted, consistent, well-budgeted advertising campaign utilizing all media — social media, print and broadcast — is necessary to make the project work. The population that would be most attracted to a major tourist site such as this “Little Portugal” is the population within a day’s drive who would visit and then stay a night or two in a hotel. If we define that drive as six hours, these potential tourists include 14 million in New England, 17 million in eastern New York State, all 9 million people in New Jersey, 9 million in the eastern half of Pennsylvania, and 4 or 5 million around Montreal. This total of more than 50 million is more than enough to commercially support this attraction. Consider also that more than a million tourists annually already pass through Fall River each year on their way to Cape Cod on I-195, “The Portuguese American Interstate Highway,” as I called it in my book.
The planning and design of the Portuguese Village must include Portuguese American leadership and it must be creatively and consistently advertised with a proper budget. The huge tourist population already flowing through Fall River on their way to Cape Cod is, counterintuitively, a problem. The tendency will be to say “Build it and they will come.” But the long-standing Columbia Street Portuguese Heritage District in Fall River speaks volumes about that approach. The streets around Santo Christo Church were paved with Portuguese-style tiles, ornate lanterns were erected, street signs posted, but there is hardly any out-of-area advertising for that district. No signs to the District are posted on I-195 and, critically, no designated parking is available, only street parking. An easy-to-find dedicated parking lot is a must for any serious effort to create a major tourist attraction. Few out-of-town visitors are going to hunt for street parking in an unfamiliar urban environment.
Fall River is fortunate to already have a number of tourist activities along or near the waterfront including the Portuguese Heritage District on Columbia Street focused around Santo Christo Church. Close by is Battleship Cove, the Maritime Heritage Park, the Maritime Museum, and the Portas da Cidade.
The new MBTA rail terminal will be located east of Davol Street at Pearce Street, due east of Bicentennial Park. Just a few blocks south is the Senator Norman City Pier that appears largely vacant. Close to the attractions listed above are what appear to be vacant or underutilized parcels of land that might be purchased for tourism expansion or parking, all on or near the waterfront. For example, below is a Google image of property on each side of Ferry Street/Firestone Avenue, across Broadway from the foot of Columbia Street.
Multiple sites could be used along the Heritage State Park — Bicentennial Park Trail. The trolley could easily take tourists from one site to another. Multiple sites also allow for sections of the project to be created one at a time as funding is available. For example, an Azorean Village Petting Zoo might go well on vacant land behind the Fall River Heritage State Park Building because it is within easy walking distance of the existing Fall River Carousel at Battleship Cove. Both sites would appeal to people with young children. The existing Fall River Heritage State Park Building offers a large space for exhibits, some of which could be re-purposed to become the Portuguese Cultural Museum.
Once constructed and properly advertised, visitors to “Little Portugal” or “The Portuguese Village” would create jobs and the multiplier effect would spill over to the local economy. And isn’t it time for Fall River to become a stop for more of the small cruise ships that ply the New England coast? About 50 cruise ships stop at Newport each year during tourist season but only a few come to Fall River. Tourists would have a good time, spend money, and learn about Portuguese culture. Local residents would benefit from jobs and also experience renewed pride in their Portuguese heritage.
A Portuguese Village or A Little Portugal for Fall River or New Bedford is not a new idea, but perhaps it’s an idea whose time has finally come. Fall River has a head start because of the Columbia Street Portuguese District, many additional already-existing attractions, the River Walk and the tourist trolley. Now the city needs to take more advantage of its exciting waterfront opportunities!
As I noted in my book, there is a long history of proposing such a project in both Fall River and New Bedford. Here are just some of them. In 1999 Maximilian Ferro wrote about ongoing interest in developing a vacant site in New Bedford as a cluster of Portuguese villages modeled after Disney’s Epcot Center. In 2007 developers proposed that a residential complex called Howland Place be built around a Portuguese cultural center at the then-vacant Goodyear Mill site in New Bedford’s South End. Then in 2011, Dennis White wrote about the concept, citing Ferro’s Epcot theme but attributing a revival of the idea to former New Bedford City Councilor, Victor Pinheiro. White proposed a waterfront site near Belleville Avenue and Washburn Street in New Bedford’s North End. In 2015 newspaper reporter Michael J. Vieira wrote about further developing Fall River’s Columbia Street district as a “Little Portugal.” A Portuguese Heritage District has also at times been proposed for the Point Loma neighborhood of San Diego.
Here are a few references about proposals for a Portuguese Village in the past: Maximilian Ferro, “The Art of Public Display: More on New Bedford and the Portuguese Village,” The South Coast Insider, May 1999, Urban Living section; Aaron Nicodemus, “Developers Propose ‘Portuguese Village’ for Goodyear Site,” Southcoasttoday.Com, September 21, 2007; Dick White, “Little Portugal, This Is Your Time to Shine,” Southcoasttoday.Com, January 11, 2011; Michael J. Vieira, “Fall River’s Little Portugal,” Coastalmags.Com, August 31, 2015; Dave Schwab, “Is Little Portugal the Next Big Thing in Point Loma?,” SanDiegoNews.Com, August 31, 2016.
I’m a retired geography professor. Follow me on Medium.com for more posts from The One-Minute Geographer. You can get an email when I publish by clicking this link (a few posts each month): https://jimwfonseca.medium.com/subscribe
About Jim Fonseca:
James W. Fonseca is Dean Emeritus at Ohio University — Zanesville where he served as Dean and Professor of Geography from 1998 to 2011. He was Executive Dean of Regional Higher Education at Ohio University until 2013.
Prior to coming to Ohio University Jim Fonseca spent 25 years as an administrator and faculty member at George Mason University in Virginia where he taught and held administrative positions including Director of Individualized Studies, Associate and Acting Dean of the Graduate School, and Founding Director of the University’s Prince William Campus in Manassas.
Jim was born in Fall River and grew up in New Bedford’s North End Portuguese community and graduated from New Bedford High School. He commuted to Bridgewater State University for his bachelor’s and earned his Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Along the way he worked in warehouses, grocery stores, the Titleist golf ball factory, a bakery, a soda-canning plant, a plastics factory and as a cab driver. He also taught geography as an adjunct faculty member at Clark University, American International College in Springfield and Rhode Island College in Providence.
Jim Fonseca’s publications include (with Alice Andrews) the Atlas of Higher Education and the Atlas of American Society both published by New York University Press, and World Regional Map Skills: Student Supplement to de Blij’s Geography: Regions and Concepts published by John Wiley, and a monograph, The Urban Rank-Size Hierarchy by the Institute of Mathematical Geography, Ann Arbor.
Jim lives in Florida and spends time in Maine and Newport. He and his wife Elaine, have one son, Jim, who lives in Chicago. Jim Fonseca visits family in New England several times each year where he stocks up on linguiça, chouriço and bacalhau.
Jim can be reached at fonseca@ohio.edu