We’ve wandered down Norton St many times as it was a popular go-to place for us when the kids were little and we were looking for a well-priced Italian restaurant.
But we’d never walked the area with a view to looking at anything else but menus!
We found this walk, produced by the Inner West Council and others, here.
What did we learn? Among other things, over the course of about an hour, we learnt that…
- there used to be a rocking horse factory on Norton St – right up to 1972. It also made seats for Cyclops dinkies.
- Pasticceria Mezzapica has been making cakes and cannoli since 1952.
| The Pioneers Memorial Park was a cemetery that had over 10,500 graves, and that when it was transferred from being a cemetery to a park, some of the headstones were used to level the park and build walls. |  |
| Leichhardt Town Hall opened in 1888. When the tower was added in 1897 it was the highest point in the colony between Martin Place and the Blue Mountains. |  |
| The statue in the middle of the Italian Forum is of Dante Alighieri, regarded as the father of the Italian language.
The Forum itself has fallen on hard times… lots of places for lease. |
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| Bar Italia has been there since 1959, and St Gerasimo’s Greek Orthodox Church is about a one-scoop walk away. |  |
Lots of other interesting stuff too. A good walk, really well done – youtube videos, audio etc. Sadly, the southern end of the street is hardly the bustling area it was 20 years ago.
So, this weekend, we... 