Larimer, like Bloomfield, was a German neighborhood that turned into an Italian neighborhood. The German residents mostly left as the Italian residents moved in; then, later, the Italian residents mostly left as the Black residents moved in. “White flight” is the usual term for the latter migration; Father Pitt has coined the term “Nordic flight” to describe the earlier evacuation of Northern European residents as “undesirable” Southern and Eastern Europeans moved in. If we look at a 1923 plat map of a block near this building, the names tell the story: Giordano, Romano, Bastone, Labriola, Ross, Boccella, Giaccia, Ferrara, Costa, Neff, Junker, Barni, Dettrich, Terenzio… Mostly Italian, with a few German stragglers; and it would not be surprising to find that those houses were being rented by Italian families.
This one Italian business remained in Larimer until just a few years ago. It had a convenient location at the end of the Larimer Avenue bridge, and as a restaurant supplier it did not depend on the walk-in trade, so there was no reason to move. Like many another shop in down-on-their-luck neighborhoods, it simply locked its door one day and pickled the shop as a gradually fading time capsule.
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