Six degrees from the ‘Stairway to Heaven’

6/4/2025

This month, the Italian American Cultural Center of Iowa (IACCI) breaks ground on a redesign of the majestic Butler Mansion. When complete, it will bring a museum, educational center, event space, cooking school, café, speakeasy, indoor and outdoor meeting places, suites, offices, commons, an Airbnb, and bocce ball courts to the historic mansion on Fleur Drive with the best views of downtown Des Moines anywhere. 

The project looks like a bona fide cultural gem and tourist attraction. Because its entire inspiration is preserving the story of intermingled destinies of Italians and Iowa, we took a dive into the historical context behind this most ambitious project.

 

One word – connectivity

In 1994, college students invented a game called “Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon.” That was a response to the actor saying that he “had worked with everyone, or someone who had worked with them.” Italian Americans pointed out that Robert Loggia had worked in more than 100 more movies than Bacon, but the game caught on because people love making connections — and Bacon. Ten years later, another college student invented Facebook, then called “an extension of the six degrees game.” That social network has demonstrated how connectivity shrinks and enriches the world. 

Italian-Americans believe in connectivity as much as any group of people. Tommy Fratto Farrell explained it this way: “Every time there’s a marriage in my family, it means I have several new relatives and also new relationships with old relatives. The last family wedding made my sister-in-law my cousin. It’s crazy.

“I am cousins with all the Rands, Rendas and Randas. They are the same family, just different spellings from Ellis Island. When Italians in Des Moines call each other ‘Couz,’ it’s literal.

“My aunt on my mother’s side was Jennie Renda. She had Aunt Jennie’s restaurant, next to where Tumea & Sons is now. Most of Des Moines’ famous restaurateurs began by working there — Johnny Compiano, Rocky Compiano, Gino Foggia, etc.”

Tommy’s younger brother, comedian Willie Fratto Farrell, adds this: “My niece Nikki dated Johnny Chiodo, another relative, when they were kids. They moved, married other people, had families and, a couple decades later, she’s back in Des Moines and they are together again. 

“My aunt tells Nikki, ‘That’s fine but don’t ever do a ‘23 and Me.’ My aunt has advice on dating without possibilities of incest — ‘Just walk one more block and maybe you can avoid it.’ We all used to live on top on each other on the southside.”

 

Alice and Caitlin – connecting to the mainstream

We asked Kathy Foggia about the one Italian Iowa connection that has baffled us for seven years: Is Caitlin Clark, whose maternal grandfather is former Dowling football coach Bob Nizzi, related to Iowa restaurant legend Alice Nizzi, as in Alice’s Spaghetti Land in Waukee and Alice’s Road today. Thousands of non-Italian Iowans remember Alice’s restaurant when it was “out in the sticks.”

The Big Ten Network made a series about Iowa’s basketball team traveling through Italy in 2023. Clark dominates a cooking class scene, joking about her teammate’s inability to keep up with her pasta-making skills. There must be some of Alice in Caitlin? 

Foggia delivered the answer. “I took Alice Nizzi’s family tree and compared it to Caitlin Clark’s family tree. If they are related, it’s prior to 1849, but their families came from towns just five miles apart, Fiumalbo and Pievepelago, both in Modena province. The odd thing is Bob Nizzi’s dad and Alice were both born in Bevier, Missouri, a coal-mining town. So, the families had to have been close for generations.”

 

“I was raised Italian before we were white people.” 

Caitlin Clark represents the endgame of Italians connecting with mainstream America. Early Italians in Des Moines were ghettoed, originally in the river bottoms north of the Raccoon River, where Black Iowans also lived and the city’s redlight district thrived. 

Before 1880, most Italians here worked for the coal mines or the railroad. The Des Moines Register called the Rock Island Railroad “an odious company” for bringing Italians to Des Moines. John Zeller’s excellent history of Italians in Des Moines writes that civil rights leader Joe Lacava said, “I was raised Italian before we were white people.” 

After 1880, the toll bridge to the south side of the Raccoon was made free, and Italians moved there while Black people moved to Center Street. That separation was likely a reaction to the Register writing about the ominous camaraderie between Black people and Italians, “stilettos and razors.” By 1900, only one Italian each was listed in the census as a coal miner and railroad worker. Commerce had begun thriving for both Blacks and Italians.

Zeller wrote that many early Italians went into the plaster business, making religious icons to sell. By 1920, though, outside of laborers, the most prominent occupations of Italians in Des Moines were grocers, candy store operators, fruit sellers, bakers, shoemakers and tailors.

Foggia adds that “Supreme Bakery was the heart of many Italian restaurant origin stories. It was in the building that became Stemma D’Italia and the original Italian American Cultural Center, in Columbus Park. In its day, Supreme employed Noah and Chuck Lacona, Jim Loffredo, Rocco di Carlo and others who would impact the Des Moines food scene.

“Also, hardly anyone today knows about the Granger Homestead and Monsignor Ligutti’s role in our history. Those things revolutionized mining. Ligutti went to Washington and got a friendly ear from Eleanor Roosevelt to make known the plight of Italian miners in Iowa. 

“The Homestead became a New Deal program that gave miners 4 acres and a house. Before that, the miners, mostly from Modena, lived in bunkhouses and spent all their earnings at the company store. Granger Homestead gave them a decent place to live and enough land to grow their food.”

Supreme Bakery was a connection for much more. In his memoirs, the late Sam Marasco, Jr. wrote that Supreme’s ovens were used “by Greeks to bake their Easter lamb feasts and Jews to bake breads” for religious festivals. He also noted that “caravans of gypsies” would stop by for the day-old bread bargains and that every Chinese restaurant in town was a “good customer.” Marasco added that “the No. 14 at King Ying Low” was a tomato beef dish they borrowed from the southside Italians. 

Graziano Brothers, a grocery/deli and wholesaler, is the most constant connection between the mainstream and Italian populations of Des Moines. It’s been there since 1912. (See more in the Food Dude column in this issue.) 

 

The “stairway to heaven” leads to south Des Moines

Most all southside Italians were from Calabria or Sicily. That was mostly the result of an earthquake that killed more than 150,000 Calabresi and Sicilians two days before New Years Eve 1909, which caused a mass exodus to the U.S. and Argentina. 

Most of today’s Italian population in Des Moines can trace their roots to either Calabria, Sicily or Modena. Des Moines attracted them like a magnet. In the 1900 U.S. census, twice as many Italian Americans in Iowa had been born here than in Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Europe combined.

Tony Lemmo, grandson of Noah Lacona, is a third-generation Des Moines restaurateur who founded or co-founded Frank’s, Gusto, Café di Scala, Aposto, Juniper Moon, El Guapo, Anna Dolce, Breakfast Club and Gusto Pizza Bar. He currently has just Aposto at Café di Scala. We asked him about connecting with Calabria.

“On my first visit to Scala, I was a lost soul, a stoned college kid who had just quit playing football and was trying to find himself. With a Euro-rail pass and a few bucks in hand, I traveled all over western Europe. 

“Toward the end of that journey, I finally decided to get on a really slow train from Rome to Calabria. This was 2000 — before cell phones but not before email. I had written to my cousin, Antonio Loicano. I was the only person to get off the train in Cariati, so I knew the only person waiting there was my family. 

“My life and disposition changed completely then and there. My first experience when we pulled into Scala Coeli was to pull up a chair to a supper table and meet my family for the first time. Antonio’s mother and his wife, Carla, laid out a spread fit for a king, and a few jugs of the village wine that Antonio’s father Francesco was known for. 

“We talk about Southern hospitality in the states but it’s more so in Italy. There’s an attitude of superiority in the north. In the south, it’s hospitality. Down there, I felt like family amongst the tiny village of less than 1,000 residents.

“My second trip to Calabria happened nine years later after my mom wanted to go there and meet our relatives. Then they found out I had a restaurant named Café di Scala. This was a town with one restaurant, one pharmacy, a bakery, and one weekly farmers market. Transportation in Scala was a few cars, a handful of donkeys and tractors. The fact there was a restaurant name Cafe di Scala, after the town “Scala Coeli” (‘Stairway to Heaven’), in America was a big deal to the townspeople. 

“What really changed my life was realizing that the things that I loved about Scala — it was pristine, unspoiled and isolated — were reasons why the population had dwindled. In many parts of southern Italy, they are now giving houses away to bring people — for the survival of the towns.

“Seeing Scala is like viewing the Roman ruins — animals live on the rooves, time is frozen and it’s so isolated there, you can sense the mortal danger that lurked centuries ago from multiple invaders. German and Austrian tourists have discovered the charms of coastal towns just south of Scala, so maybe its chances are getting better. I hope they continue to brand and sell their olive oil, wines and such.”

George Formaro, who owns part of Django, South Union, Zombie Burger, Centro and Gateway Market Café, was so inspired by a trip to his mother’s roots in Sicily that he came home and built South Union’s first oven on the southside. He even excavated some bricks for it from the site of what he believes was an Italian bakery in an early Iowa coal mining town. 

 

Breaking out

Southside Italians broke out of their isolation by dominating the club and restaurant businesses in Des Moines between Prohibition and the 1960s. Babe Bisignano’s Babe’s, his brother Chuck’s namesake restaurant, Joseph Cimino’s Wimpy’s, Noah Lacona’s Noah’s Ark, Pete Riccelli’s Riccelli’s, Johnny Compiano’s Johnny and Kay’s, Rocky Compiano’s Rocky’s, Ralph Compiano’s Ralph’s, Jimmy Pigneri and later Bobby Tursi’s Latin King, Joe Tumea’s Tumea & Sons, and Vic Talerico’s Vic’s Tally Ho were a few of the places that southern or Sicilian Italians brought to town. 

Before he died, Babe told us he would close his restaurant down before operating it without his daily presence. He was articulating a new style of hands-on hospitality that Italians brought to the business here. 

 

Modenese Des Moines and steak de Burgo

Most Italians who settled in the “Francis Avenue” neighborhood near today’s Broadlawns Medical Center were Modenese. Ann Tancredi was a caterer in Modena before emigrating to coal-mining parts of Boone County. The real-estate-developing Colby family liked her Madrid restaurant so much they bribed her to move it to Windsor Heights — with free rent for life. Her Anjo’s was a legend that introduced Des Moines to the graces of a three-hour dinner. Taking full advantage of her free rent, she worked until she had a stroke in the restaurant basement. 

Both Vic Talerico and Johnny Compiano married Modenese women who influenced their cuisine. Des Moines’ most famous dish — steak de Burgo — was created by either Vic or Johnny, as both claimed it. Since both men and their wives came out of the Francis Avenue hood, where many other internationals lived, we have long suspected that the dish was a Francis Avenue synthesis of Spanish Civil War opportunism. 

After that war, the Republicans and their cultures were abolished by the victorious Nationalists whose war headquarters were in Burgos, a dairy center. Bistec allioli, the traditional olive oil, garlic and herb treatment of steak in Catalonia and Valencia, became taboo. Clever restaurateurs changed the name to bisteca de Burgos without changing the recipe. We haven’t heard a better explanation. 

 

Mob influences

In the Des Moines Police’s history “Behind the Badge,” it is told that Al Capone sent lieutenants to Des Moines to run clubs — first Charly “Cherry Nose” Gioe and, after Gioe became infatuated with Hollywood mobsters, Lou Farrell, nee Luigi Fratto, and the father of Willie and Tommy. 

Gioe was assassinated in 1954 in Chicago. He was in a new Buick with Hymie Weisman, who was Lou Farrell’s partner in Hymie’s Pizza and Bar B Que on Fleur Drive and two other places. Weisman was also in a car when Basil Prosperi was assassinated. Prosperi’s name was given to Des Moines restaurant Basil Prosperi’s on East Fifth. That was created by Steve and Joe Logsdon, Basil’s grandkids and now owners of Lucca and La Mie.  

Steve explained: “My grandfather was born in Lucca in northern Tuscany. As I understand it, he opened a candy store in the East Village area of Des Moines. He settled on the southside near to Graziano’s. He had a communal oven that everyone used there.

“My parents told me that Basil was a snappy dresser. When anyone asked him how he could afford to dress so well, he told them that he invented the bowling glove. My aunt Josephine was Italian, but she married Hymie Weisman. Basil was murdered at age 45 in Chicago.”

“Behind the Badge” relates that Lou Farrell became involved “as much in legitimate businesses as illegitimate.” Loretta (Tursi) Sieman, who babysat for Lou Farrell, told us he was heavily involved in good will, like Dowling and St. Joseph’s schools and St. Anthony’s Church. 

IACCI is so involved with connections that it had planned to include the Iowa Genealogical Society before both groups needed more space than the mansion could accommodate. We asked IACCI Chairman Jeff Lamberti how this marvelous project happened. Whose idea was this anyhow? 

“Pat Civitate was the first to express the need to bring the lodges together. We had Vittoria Lodge in the north and Stemma D’Italia by Columbus Park on Indianola Road. That was her dream for about 20 years before she and Loretta Sieman identified the Butler Mansion as the place to do it. 

“They got me involved as a legal consultant to contract a sale with Bob Boesen, who owned the mansion. He accepted a trade of the old Stemma D’Italia building (in the former Supreme Bakery) as partial payment. That got it started,” said Lamberti, who traces his Italian roots to Piandelagotti, in southern Modena province, closer to Lucca than the town Modena. 

And two degrees from the Stairway to Heaven.