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Terry A. Necciai, RA, will be the featured speaker at the August 2014 meeting of the Charleroi Area Historical Society. The meeting will be at the SPHS Riverside Place Senior Center, Chamber Plaza, at 7 p.m. on Monday, August 8.

 The topic will be "Italian-Americans of the Monongahela Valley." Necciai, a native of Monongahela, is a licensed architect who specializes in historic preservation, business district revitalization, and other projects related to local history and heritage topics, mostly in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Necciai was the first Main Street manager of Charleroi, from 1987-1990. He was also retained later by the Charleroi Area Historical Society to prepare the National Register nomination for the Charleroi Historic District. The nomination makes nearly 1,800 buildings eligible for historic preservation incentives, such as tax credits to offset the cost of rehabilitating income-producing properties, and similar programs.

In the August presentation, Necciai will outline the historical events that drew immigrants from almost every part of Italy to the Mid-Mon Valley, especially between 1880 and 1920. He will also offer a sneak preview of a book he is releasing later in August for the Sister City Celebration in Monongahela. The book will trace the role of immigrants from the Province of Brescia who began arriving in Monongahela in the mid-1880s. The book shows how they paved the way for other groups of Italians who came, one group after another, in a chain-reaction, to the mining towns and other communities in the valley. The patterns of immigration from Italy and other countries to Charleroi will be outlined as well in the presentation, as it is part of the larger pattern presented in the book.

Necciai has been researching this topic for over 30 years. He helped to start the Italian heritage groups in Monessen and Monongahela in the 1990s.

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