A distinctly American story of our early Italians
by Jack Neely
This weekend a downtown festival will celebrate Gioacchino Rossini, the most Italian of Italian opera composers, with an Italian street fair. I have failed to prove that Signor Rossini ever visited here, though his work has been performed on Gay Street since the 1800s. Knoxvillians have long admired Italian opera. When Grace Moore began singing opera, some suggested she change her name to Graziana Moroni.
If this is Knoxville's first Italian street festival, it's because we never had quite enough real Italians to incite one.
But for the last 150 years or so, we've always had a few. There are a couple of Italian names in Knoxville's first city directory, published in 1859: a housepainter named Lorenzo Bencini; Signor Stefane, a sculptor. They left few traces.
On the northeast corner of Gay and Summit Hill is a handsome three-story brick Victorian-era building recently renovated as a residence. Though it was built by industrialist Charles McClung McGhee, and served as the county's first free public library in 1885, it has been known for most of its history by an Italian name. How it got that name is a story. There are a couple versions of it, but this one's my favorite.
Maybe the first for-sure Italian to settle here permanently and prominently was Gay Street merchant Rafael Marmora. The Neapolitan came to Knoxville around 1883, with his wife, Maria. Raf, as we knew him, was a fruitseller, retail and wholesale. Like the Irish immigrants before him, he favored the neighborhood near Immaculate Conception, the only Catholic Church in the region. He set up a fruit stand on Gay Street, near Commerce (now Summit Hill).
He'd apparently been the only Italian merchant in town for a few years when, one chilly day around 1890, he spotted a young countryman, a tall, thin stranger, just off the train. The mustachioed traveler's name was Fiorenzo Rebori. He was from Genoa, on his way to see relatives in Memphis; he got out to stretch his long legs on Gay Street only because his train was stalled by snow. He was, for the time, stuck in Knoxville. Forget Memphis, Marmora said. Knoxville's a good business town.
The young man took Marmora's challenge and stayed. Rebori opened up his own confectionery on Vine, just a block down from Marmora's stand. It was just a lean-to, hardly two feet wide, beside Col. McGhee's imposing brick library building.
Rebori was a hard worker, arriving at 4 a.m. to roast the day's peanuts; he'd often tend his stand until after midnight. It was an ideal location for the many working-class people who walked by here, black kids running by from the east side, market farmers ambling up from the livery stable.
Raf Marmora retired at 50 to live with his wife in their house on East Park, where they babysat their grandchildren; the Marmoras' daughter was an opera singer, and spent much of her time traveling. They lived there until 1909, when Mrs. Marmora burned to death at home in a freak clothing fire. Raf Marmora never recovered from the loss, and died four years later in an Asheville sanitarium.
Meanwhile, his protégé Fiorenzo Rebori was becoming known as the Peanut King. As improbable as it may seem, for a guy who sold peanuts in a shack, Rebori made a lot of money. He was able to return to Genoa on occasion; he returned from one such trip with a wife, Vittoria Castagna. They started a sizable family.
Other relatives from Genoa, the Brichettos, came over. Mary Brichetto ran a sweet shop on Gay Street in the 1890s. The Marmoras, Reboris, and Brichettos were just the first Italian confectioners downtown; others would follow, with names like Armetta, Righetti, Maroni, Provenza, all running stands in the same general neighborhood, on the south and east sides of Immaculate Conception's hill.
After about 25 years on the job, selling peanuts and ice cream from his lean-to at Gay and Vine, Rebori had saved a good deal more than anyone guessed. In 1915, when the library moved to more modern quarters, the old building that held up his shack was to be auctioned off. Rebori suspected Knoxville honchos wouldn't sell a prominent Gay Street building to an Italian immigrant; but he sent one of his nephews to attend the auction and bid on it.
The pesky teenager kept upping the bid, annoying the auctioneer, who didn't think he could be serious. When it got to $63,000, the auctioneer challenged the impertinent kid to produce the money; if you have it, he said, the building's yours. They waited while the kid ran into a bank a few doors down the street, where the elder Rebori had pre-arranged a withdrawal. The Italian kid astonished the auctioneer with $63,000 in cash.
It was just the first of several downtown buildings Rebori purchased. He called his apartment building at the top of Vine, near Immaculate Conception, "the Genoa."
Unlike Marmora, Rebori didn't retire early. Ever frugal, he never used the Rebori Building for his own business; he rented it to a furniture store. He was still the Peanut King in 1946, working in an extended version of the same shack. He was 82, past retirement age, but only reluctantly gave up his old stand. As he signed the lease turning his place over to a hamburger joint, the grief-stricken confectioner suffered a heart attack; he died a few months later.
Renovated, the old building is now a residence for Jim and Jo Mason, who recently removed the remnants of Rebori's peanut stand. But go to the Italian street fair Saturday and ask around on Gay Street where the old Rebori Building is; chances are you can find somebody who can point to it.
April 11, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 15
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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