The Prince Macaroni Company was founded in 1912 by three immigrants from the same village in Sicily, who opened a small macaroni and spaghetti shop at 92 Prince Street in the North End and named the business after the street. By the company's account, Gaetano LaMarca was the administrator, Giuseppe Seminara the salesman and Michele Cantella the pasta maker. In 1917 the company built a seven-storey plant on Commercial Street, where a railway spur delivered semolina flour straight into the building. In 1939 it moved to a full-scale plant in Lowell, and in 1941 Giuseppe Pellegrino, another Sicilian immigrant, gained control of the business, which his family kept until selling it to Borden in 1987. Under Pellegrino the company adopted the slogan "In the North End of Boston, Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day." In the summer of 1969 three men scouting the North End for a television commercial asked 12-year-old Anthony Martignetti, who had emigrated from Italy three years earlier, for directions to Commercial Street, and chose him as its star. The advertisement showed him running home through the neighbourhood's streets as a woman called "Anthony! Anthony!" from a window on Powers Court, and it ran nationally for nearly 14 years. Martignetti died in August 2020. The 1917 Commercial Street building was converted into condominiums in 1974, and the Lowell plant closed in 1997.
Getting there
42.3654, -71.0562
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