Suffolk County officials announce a new Italian-American museum opening on Long Island

Don’t fuggedabout history! Suffolk County is opening a brand new museum celebrating Italian-American history, heritage and the generations who helped shape Long Island. County officials, alongside numerous Italian-American organizations and activists, announced their plans to build the new museum on Thursday, which they said will not only feature the history of how Long Island came to be what it is today, but the contributions of the Italian-Americans who helped forge the region. “So many Italian Americans have contributed to building Long Island and its continued success — we’re finally going to celebrate that properly,” Bob Fonti, who leads the Italian American Political Action Committee, told The Post.Suffolk County is home to roughly 320,000 Italian-Americans — the most in any one county in the country — who account for nearly a quarter of the area’s entire population, according to census data. Neighboring Nassau County is home to an additional 238,000 Italian-American residents, meaning that there are roughly over 557,000 Italian-Americans living between both counties — roughly 20% of Long Island’s whole population, according to census records.Those figures, according to Dr.Joseph Scelsa, the founder and director of Mulberry Street’s Italian American Museum in Manhattan’s Little Italy, makes Long Island the perfect and most obvious location for the next museum, he said. “It’s about time,” Scelsa said as he announced the plans for the museum. “How did we get here — from steerage to the suburbs — that’s what this museum is going to talk about, that’s what this museum is going to tell you about,” Scelsa said, referencing Italian-American contributions. Italian immigrants first started pouring onto Long Island at the turn of the 20th century, taking the Long Island Rail Road from the city to Long Island for work at places like Port Washington’s sand mines and Patchogue’s lace mills. Many eventually settled in ...