Little Joe's Italian American Restaurant was a historic

Italian-American Italian Americans () are Americans who have full or partial Italians, Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeastern United States, Northeast and industrial Midwestern United States, Midwestern ...

restaurant which once stood in the

Chinatown Chinatown ( zh, t=唐人街) is the catch-all name for an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa, O ...

district of

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USA at the corner of Broadway and College Street. The area was once part of the city's

Italian American Italian Americans () are Americans who have full or partial Italians, Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeastern United States, Northeast and industrial Midwestern United States, Midwestern ...

enclave, which preceded Chinatown.

History

Italian-born Charles Viotto started a grocery store at the corner of 5th and Hewitt streets. After marrying Charles Viotto's daughter, Mary, Robert Nuccio took over that store, and in 1895 renamed it The Italian-American Grocery Company. In 1923, Robert Nuccio (the youngest of 12 children) took his children Chel and John back to Italy, to talk his family into moving to America. Before he left, he sold the grocery to his friends down the street, John Gadeschi and Joe Vivalda. They moved the grocery store to North Broadway in 1927. When Union Station began construction, the Italian immigrants building it began coming by the grocery store for lunch and John started making sandwiches for them. The rough-hewn nature of the Italian laborers was keeping the ladies away from their shopping, so John and Joe opened a restaurant next door. Now the men could get their lunch without disturbing the women at their shopping. When Italy sided with Axis powers in World War II, many Italian businesses changed their names; for example the

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was renamed as the

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. The Italian-American Grocery Company became Little Joe's, named after Joe Vivaldi. Little Joe's was not affiliated with any other restaurant of that same name. When Gadeschi's daughter, Marion, married John Albert Nuccio - Robert's son - the Nuccio family was once again involved with the restaurant. John, who had been in law school at USC before the war, went to work for his father-in-law at the restaurant after serving in World War II. The business remained under control of the Nuccio family until it closed in 1998. At the time of the closure, Little Joe's was operated by the third generation of Nuccio men: Steve, Bob and Jay. Jay went off on his own to open The Crazy Horse, a

West Covina West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

-based country-and-western bar and eatery. That left Steve and Bob to operate Little Joe's.

Closure

The restaurant closed in December 1998. The owners, having waited in vain for a revitalization of Chinatown and Downtown as a nighttime dining destination, decided that it was time to retire. The revitalization of nearby

Old Pasadena Old Pasadena, often referred to as Old Town Pasadena or simply Old Town, is the original commercial center of Pasadena, California, Pasadena, a city in California, United States, and had a latter-day revitalization after a period of decay. Ol ...

made it increasingly difficult for downtown establishments to compete for evening diners. As part of the revitalization movement of Chinatown, plans were put in place to turn the site of the restaurant into a retail and residential hub with a large car parking structure. On December 2, 2013, Forest City Enterprises began demolishing Little Joe's to start the construction of a new $100 million real estate development, the Blossom Plaza project. The Plaza, in the works for over a decade, will feature a large-scale five story apartment building over ground level shops. Demolition of the long-abandoned restaurant was finally completed on January 17, 2014. When excavation began on the site for the Plaza project, a section of the

Zanja Madre The ''Zanja Madre'' (, "Mother Trench") is the original aqueduct that brought water to the Pueblo de Los Angeles from the Río Porciúncula (Los Angeles River). The original open, earthen ditch, or '' zanja'' was completed by community laborer ...

was found and destroyed by rushed and careless work to clear the development site. The original water main for the early City of Los Angeles, it conveyed water from the

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from near what is now Griffith Park for use by the early residents.

References

{{Reflist 1928 establishments in California 1998 disestablishments in California Defunct restaurants in Greater Los Angeles History of Los Angeles Italian-American culture in Los Angeles Restaurants established in 1928