Inducted in 2019
Physician; Surgeon
Founder, Pelham Bay General Hospital, Bronx, NY
Pioneer in Obstetrical Medicine

In an era when some folks unashamedly clung to their assumptions about Italian-Americans from the Bronx, one boy from 328 East 149th Street set about proving them all wrong.  A scholar, physician, medical pioneer, patron of the arts, devoted husband and supportive father, Louis Perrotta remained for decades a pillar of his community, in service to the people of the borough he loved so very much.

Luigi Antonio Perrotta was born on September 27, 1899 in Arienzo, Italy to Gennaro and Maria Sophia Crisci Perrotta.  Arriving in America in 1908, the Perrottas settled in the Bronx.  Luigi’s father was a tailor and his mother a homemaker who took in piecework when she could.  Louis, as Luigi became known in America, was one of eleven brothers and sisters: Carmela, Angelina, Antonietta, Carmine, Agostino, Gelsomina, Maria Sophia, Gennaro, Gerald and John.  As was tragically common in those days, Gennaro did not survive infancy.

A bright and curious boy, young Louis adapted quickly to his new life in the Bronx, learning English and attending P.S. 37 on 145th Street before arriving at Rose Hill to begin his long and illustrious Fordham career.  At St. John’s College High School — as the school was still officially named in those days — Lou was an honors student, winning medals for general excellence, mathematics and Spanish all while holding a part-time job sweeping up at a neighborhood barber shop to help pay for his books.

During his Hughes Hall years, Louis Perrotta devoted what time he could to the Fordham Music Society, playing the violin and mandolin with the Band and Orchestra, and raising his voice with the Glee Club.  Overseeing Lou and the other musicmen was none other than Fr. Hugh Gaynor, SJ, Prep Class of 1888, remembered today as the lyricist of “Alma Mater, Fordham,” sung at every Prep graduation.

Beyond the classroom and the practice halls, Louis also put in some time on the tennis courts, and not surprisingly so.  Among Lou’s classmates was teenaged tennis sensation, then future Olympian and later still, Prep Hall of Honor inductee, Vincent Richards.  Fordham was just about the epicenter of the American tennis scene in those years.

Completing his Prep studies in 1920, Perrotta would remain at Fordham straight through, graduating a member of the College Class of 1924. Louis’ love of music and tenor’s voice played a very practical role in those years: he literally sang his way through college, performing with the San Carlo Opera Company in Manhattan for tuition money.

Perrotta received his medical training at Belleview Hospital Medical College, today part of the NYU School of Medicine.  He graduated in 1927, and in1928 would open his bilingual general practice on Morris Avenue in the South Bronx.  Straightaway, the competent and compassionate Dr. Perrotta was well-received by the Bronx’s Italian-American community.  He was a physician who could speak to them in their own language: literally and figuratively.  His waiting room never seemed to be big enough, and lines of patients sometimes stretched out onto the street and down the block.

1928 also marked the year that Louis would marry Caroline Perillo.  Together they would have two daughters: Benita and Dolores.  Caroline would pass away in 1937 of rheumatic heart disease.  A widower with young children, Louis would marry Elvira Spatafore in 1942.  Lou, Elvira, and his daughters would move across the borough and settle in Country Club where the Perrotta family would continue to grow with the births of Maria, Paulette, Louis Jr., and Vera.

In the decades that followed, Dr. Perrotta would come to specialize in surgery, serving as an attending surgeon at various institutions across the city: Columbus Hospital, Lutheran Hospital, City Hospital on Roosevelt Island, Crown Heights Hospital and the New York City Cancer Hospital.  He also held teaching positions at the New York Medical College and the SUNY Maritime College Department of Medicine.

With great pride and satisfaction, through the ‘50s and ‘60s, Perrotta was the personal physician to opera stars Franco Corelli and Carlo Bergonzi and was considered the on-call house doctor of the Metropolitan Opera House — a position that was strictly pro bono, or to be precise, pro arte.

Professionally, Dr. Perotta is perhaps best remembered for his research into the safety of spinal anesthesia during childbirth as well as for his founding of Pelham Bay General Hospital on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, where he would serve as director of surgery from 1960-1970 and would remain in practice through the end of his life.

Personally, however, Louis Perotta will be remembered for his outgoing nature, his energy and spirit, his passion for music, his patriotism as well as his deep connection to his Italian heritage, his love for his family and friends, his genuine care for his seven decades of patients, and, of course, for his extraordinary generosity.

Many a Bronx Catholic, charitable, and cultural institution were the recipients of Dr. Perrotta’s time and talent — from Fordham University and the Villa Maria School his children attended, to the parishes where unforeseen expenses were taken care of at the (remarkably steady) hands of an unnamed angel, to the convents and nursing homes where he made evening house calls, often after a full day at Pelham Bay General — all for the glory of God, and in the service of His children.

A grandfather of nine (many of whom would carry on the Perrotta Family’s legacy in medicine), Dr. Louis Perrotta was called home to the Big Bronx in the Sky on March 29, 1985. 

His memory, however, will endure in his beloved borough always, most especially here at Fordham Prep, where Luigi's grandson, Alex Canter, would continue his great-grandfather's legacy as a member of the Class of 2026.