DID THE 1990 AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT KILL LITTLE JOE'S, 1897-1998?

Little Joe's
Address: 904 North Broadway.
Opened, 1897.
Closed, 1998.
Demolished, 2013.


My dad and Charlen and Chuck Pullman had eaten at Little Joe's several times, and according to him, it was a hotspot for LA celebrities.  

LITTLE JOE'S, 1927.

Exterior view of Italian American Grocery Co. at 900 North Broadway.  The photo was probably taken to document the purchase of the building by John Gadeschi and Joe Vivalda.  At the left is the restaurant room which was acquired by Gadeschi and Vivalda around 1933. 

The expansion of the grocery business into the restaurant business was necessitated in the early 1930s by an increasing number of construction workers frequenting the grocery store for meals and driving away other customers from the grocery business.  By expanding to the café next door, John and Joe were able to keep their grocery customers and accommodate an increasing number of restaurant/meal customers.  The Italian American Grocery Co bought its first stove in 1933.  The grocery business site remained an active grocery store at the corner of the building shown in the photo until 1984.  Note the red car tracks and paved street surface. 

Little Joe’s began in 1897 as the Italiano-Americano Grocery company by Italian-born Charles Viottou at the corner of 5^th and Hewitt Streets.  When Italia sided badly in the war, many Italianos businesses changed their names; one famous example was the change in name from Bank of Italia to Bank of America.  Subsequently, the Italiano-Americano Grocery Company became Little Joe’s after maître d’ and hen co-owner, Joe Vivalda.  Little Joe’s is not affiliated to any another restaurant that took the same name.  

PHOTO OF LITTLE JOE'S, 1939.  

Exterior view of Little Joe’s Restaurant and Little Joe’s Groceries at 900 North Broadway.  The photo was probably taken to document business name change from Italian American Grocery Co. to Little Joe’s.  The photo shows a restaurant room on the left and grocery store on the right.  A sign that reads HOTEL is seen below the corner window of the second floor. 

Little Joe’s roots go back to the turn of the century.  I was started by Italian-born Charley Viotto at the corner of 5h and Hewitt Streets in 1897 as the Italian-American Grocery Co. 

When the city’s Italian immigrant community relocated to the North Broadway area after the turn of the century, the grocery store followed—moving to the ground level of a three-story hotel at the corner of Broadway and College Street in 1927. 

The family skirted Prohibition laws and was soon catering to the Hollywood crowd—including comedian W. C. Fields, who slipped in for drinks weekly from a nearby sanitarium where he was staying. 

Bob Nuccio is the great-grandson of the restaurant’s founder.  That makes Little Joe’s one of Los Angeles’ oldest family-owned and operated businesses (founded 1897).

LITTLE JOE'S, 1962, BEFORE RENOVATIONS   

Exterior view of Little Joe's Restaurant, 900 North Broadway. Photo taken before major remodeling of the building took place. Another renovation took place even earlier.

Here are some interior shots, a view I wished I'd always had.  And now, thanks to Hadley Meares and KCET, I've got it.  Though I don't have dates for these pics, my guess is the early 1960s.  

DINING ROOM

LITTLE JOE'S, 1972, AFTER RENOVATIONS  

Exterior view of Little Joe's Restaurant, 900 North Broadway. The photo was taken after a major remodeling of the building.

Bob Nuccio, his brother Steve and their mother, Marion, decided to close because the restaurant needed to be remodeled and updated. But to do that, they would be required to retrofit the over 100-year-old building (constructed in 1886) to make it earthquake-resistant and make it comply with the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, 1990. That would cost $800,000, more than they can afford.^^*

Little Joe's closed for business in December of 1998. The building would remain vacant until it was demolished December 2013 to make room for a mixed-use housing project.

2014 

View of a section of original Zanja Madre ("Mother Ditch," i.e., aqueduct, a section of which runs down Olvera Street, which you can see in that link) unearthed at a construction site located on the northeast corner of Broadway and College Street in Chinatown, previously occupied by Little Joe’s Restaurant.  Here is a little background on the Zanja Madre,

The Zanja Madre, or “mother ditch,” was the first aqueduct in Los Angeles, constructed by Spanish settlers in 1781, and providing the city with water for over a hundred years, nearly until the completion of William Mullholland’s Los Angeles Aqueduct in the early 20th Century. Originally an open ditch, and later an enclosed brick pipe, the Zanja Madre took water from a large water wheel on the LA River at a site near the present day Broadway Bridge, channeled it close to Broadway’s current route, to a small central reservoir building in the middle of the Plaza of the Pueblo de Los Angeles. Pieces of the Zanja Madre have occasionally been discovered by accident during various construction projects in Chinatown, including the excavations for the Gold Line Metro Rail.

In December of 2013, developer Forest City Enterprises started demolishing Little Joe’s to make way for the five-story project (Blossom Plaza) that will link Broadway with the elevated Chinatown Metro Rail station above North Spring Street to the east.  Blossom Plaza will have 237 residential units, including 53 apartments where rents will be reduced for low-income tenants.  It will also house 175 parking spaces open to the public and landscaped courtyard next to the Metro Rail stop.  

LITTLE JOE'S MENUS
Here is a 1957 Little Joe's menu.  It sells on eBay for $37.  

This menu probably comes later, because the price of the spaghetti dinner is a little more.  

And finally, what is a great establishment without a few celebrity visits?  Well, you can see Jack La Lane there to the left, and Rudy Vallee with spaghetti bib on at the far right.  This is a 1970 shot.