History Was Made Here

January 7, 2026 Michael Olesker

Nancy Pelosi (File photo)

From the time she was a youngster in Baltimore’s Little Italy, when other girls played with dolls or studied the details of Elvis Presley’s love life, Nancy D’Alesandro sat at a little desk beneath portraits of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and learned how to make history.

Now, as she announces retirement plans for next year, it’s time for history to pay tribute to her and to her remarkable family, and do it right there inside their old house at Albemarle and Fawn streets.

This is a family that helped change life far beyond Little Italy.

Her father, Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., was Baltimore’s first Italian-American mayor. He served a term in the U.S. Congress and three terms as mayor, all while the future Nancy Pelosi made her way through school.

Her brother, “Tommy the Younger,” became mayor a few steps behind the father. And the mother, “Big Nancy,” was the power behind the throne at a time when women were mostly political afterthoughts.

Nancy Pelosi was the most powerful woman in American political history. She was not only the first woman Speaker of the House, but arguably one of the best.

“According to many historians and political scientists,” Ms. Magazine wrote a decade ago, “probably the most successful House speaker in U.S. history.”

The journey started at the family home, where young Nancy sat at a little desk near the front door and learned to help those waiting outside for help.

She wrote the names of the helpless on yellow legal pads. She put penniless people in touch with the welfare department. They were lined up daily outside the D’Alesandro home, many looking for jobs.

On a brief trip to Baltimore a few years ago, where the city was renaming the corner of Albemarle and Fawn streets “Nancy Pelosi Way,” she remembered all those gathered outside their door. Many were immigrants struggling to find their way.

“They were poor, they were patriotic,” she said, “and they built America. They were told the streets were paved with gold, and when they got here discovered they would be paving those streets.”

Today, you go down to Little Italy and the neighborhood still has many of the charms of the D’Alesandro years: restaurants, ancient St. Leo’s Church, boccie ball, street festivals.

But go to the old D’Alesandro home and there’s barely a hint of the history made there. Part of the old house is a hair salon now, and part a sandwich shop.

Both are nice additions to the neighborhood but not here, where there ought to be a museum honoring one of the great families in American political history, with photographs, documents and all manner of memorabilia.

Not only would this honor a remarkable family. It would give an entire neighborhood, and the city of Baltimore, an opportunity to puff out its chest a little: history was made here.

It wasn’t just Nancy. Years earlier, her dad began regular treks a few blocks north, to Lombard Street, where the beginnings of friendships and political alliances were made: the Italians and the Jews.

When Tommy the Younger became mayor, he was a healing figure as the city struggled with racial tension in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Meanwhile the mother, Big Nancy D’Alesandro, was a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the city’s Democratic politics, organizing squadrons of women who helped win citywide elections.

The daughter learned from the mother. She learned that women can do any job that a man could do. She learned such toughness that she could stand up to a bully like Donald Trump. She learned how to bring people from all backgrounds together, which is the original blueprint for America before we started snarling at each other.

So much history came out of this little southeast Baltimore neighborhood and the old house at Albemarle and Fawn. It’s nice to have a hair salon and sandwich shop in the neighborhood. But not at that particular corner.

That’s the corner where they made history, and it’s the place where they ought to have a museum to make a whole city proud.

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).