The Barengo Homes — Lost Corner? by Zoann Campana
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Membership Renewals Are Due! FDedicatedo to Preservingo and PromotingtP Historic Resourcesri in then ts WINTER 2018 Truckee Meadows through Education, Advocacy and Leadership. vol. 21 no. 1 The Barengo Homes — Lost Corner? by ZoAnn Campana he southwest corner of Center and East 7th streets is The brothers relocated to Reno with a plan to open an Italian something of a lost corner, overlooked in our city’s relent- foods store. They knew that the town—despite its thriving Tless march into the future. The corner is situated on the Italian community—had no such business at the time, and 600 block of North Center Street, a bleak and unassuming the contacts that Camillo had made with Molinari would assemblage of vacant lots, Mid-Century triplexes, a motel, help stock their shelves and get their business off the ground. and scattered early-20th century residences. It is a study in Soon after their arrival, the brothers opened the Reno Italian the failed redevelopment and speculative demolition that has & French Sausage Factory, a sausage manufactory and grocery plagued downtown Reno from the 1950s into the present day. store, on Commercial Row across from the train station. The On the southwest corner of the block, two brick bungalows— brothers made their sausage by hand, overseeing the process nearly identical to one another—sit side-by-side. The pair of from beginning to end: they purchased hogs from local ranch- houses is easy to miss, a blip on the approach to Interstate ers, slaughtering and butchering them in-house before trans- 80, but their provenance is well-documented. The houses forming the meat into Italian-style salumi. were built by immigrant brothers who would go By 1916, the brothers on to build a wine and diversified their grocery liquor empire in Reno. business by purchasing Their story is deeply California wine grapes, interconnected with that and reselling them to of Prohibition and its home winemakers in repeal, as well as with Nevada. Before they the subsequent renais- became involved in the sance of winemaking in grape trade, their custom- California. ers—whom Camillo’s son Pete Barengo described Brothers Camillo and as “good Italians [who] Natale Barengo arrived needed grapes for mak- in Reno in 1914. After ing wine”—had to travel immigrating to the The Barengo homes on Center at E. 7th Street in 2017. Built in 1922, to California to acquire United States from his the future of these well-loved homes is in doubt. quality grapes. Little native Italy in 1906, Photo by ZoAnn Campana. did the Barengo broth- Camillo Barengo rested ers know that this side in New York for a beat before journeying south to join gig would end up supporting them through Prohibition and, the well-established Italian community in New Orleans, later, the Great Depression. where he picked up work as a carpenter. After the Great Earthquake of 1906, Camillo traveled west to San Francisco, The Nevada Supreme Court certified Nevada’s vote on the sensing that there would be a wealth of carpentry jobs as 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and ushered in the city rebuilt. He worked as a scaffolding foreman on the Prohibition as Nevada law as of midnight December 17, 1918. Tower of Jewels, which was being constructed for the 1915 Despite the sudden unlawfulness of commercially manufac- Panama-Pacific Exposition. He also worked for the Molinari turing, selling, and transporting alcohol, it remained legal to Factory, which manufactured and distributed traditional produce up to 200 gallons of wine per year for personal con- Italian foods throughout the greater Bay Area. Soon there- sumption. Grape growers pivoted to sell their grapes directly to after, Camillo sent for his brother, Natale, who arrived in consumers. In some cases, the grapes were pressed into bricks San Francisco in 1910. continued on page 2 The Barengo Homes continued from page 1 of concentrated juice and packed into boxes that were printed brick walls, cut stone foundations, and low-pitched gabled with instructions on how to dilute the concentrate with water. roofs. The interior walls were finished with lathe-and-plaster. The instructions also included a coded warning to consume the Both residences have experienced alterations that obscure the juice within 21 days, lest it turn into wine. These packages of fact that they were identical when first built. For example, grape juice concentrate became known as “wine bricks,” which the porch of 655 N. Center has been enclosed, whereas 661 were shipped from California to Eastern markets. The resulting N. Center retains its generous front porch. Upon inspection wine did the trick, although it was barely palatable. of the side and rear elevations, the uniformity of the houses becomes clearer. Each fea- Despite the increasing preva- tures a long dormer window lence and ease of wine bricks on its backside, and the during Prohibition, other north elevations both have growers sold unadulterated a small bay window that wine grapes to distributors, corresponds to a breakfast who tied up many a rail line room. The houses also share with the bounty of what matching plans. In 1924, the would eventually be made City of Reno issued a build- into home-fermented wine. ing permit to the Barengo The price of grapes increased Brothers for a garage valued tenfold between 1919 and at $450. The flat-roofed, 1921, from $9.50 per ton to two-car brick garage, shared $82 per ton. Taking note between the two houses, also The rear view of the Barengo homes on Center at E. 7th Street. of the increasing lucrative- remains in its original place The homes share matching house plans and physically share a ness of supplying grapes, on the lot. the Barengo brothers sold two-car brick garage built at the back of the lot in 1924. their grocery business in Photo by ZoAnn Campana, Despite the houses’ location 1921 in order to expand their in what is now a bustling grape distribution business nationwide, selling high-quality stretch of road linking downtown Reno with the University, California wine grapes to markets as far east as New York Pete Barengo recalls the rural character of the neighborhood and Boston. Operating as Barengo Brothers Grape Shippers, in the 1920s. A pasture of grazing cows and horses was locat- they sourced their grapes—usually zinfandels—from the Lodi- ed on the corner of University Avenue and 6th Street, which Stockton area. They would also broker for other farmers and Pete would pass every morning while walking to school shippers in the San Joaquin Valley. at Orvis Ring. Overall, it was a pleasant and quiet quarter whose character was altered irrevocably by the introduction As their grape distribution business grew, the Barengo of Interstate 80 in the 1970s, which essentially ripped the Brothers built identical brick houses next door to one another, neighborhood in two. at 655 and 661 University Avenue (now Center Street), in 1922. The brothers used a team of horses and a scraper to excavate When the United States Congress passed the Blaine Act in eleven-foot basements beneath the houses. Heavily influenced 1933, effectively repealing Prohibition, the Barengo Brothers by the Craftsman style, which was popular in Reno from the intuited another business opportunity. In April 1934, Sierra early 1900s into the 1930s, the houses both feature dark red Wine opened for business. According to Camillo’s son Pete An advertisement for the Barengo Family Grocery Store on Commercial Row from the January, 7 1915 Reno Evening Gazette. 2 historicreno.org Winter 2018 vol. 21 no. 1 The Barengo Homes (Pierino), who dropped out of UNR that year to manage the appointment as president. In 1943, Mondavi sold the winery family’s new wholesale and retail wine enterprise, “It was phe- to the Gibson Wine Company, who appointed Dino Barengo— nomenal. The day liquor was finally legal, the line of custom- Camillo’s son and Pete’s brother—as manager. Dino had ers stretched around the block. Everyone paid cash.” Sierra graduated from the University of Nevada with a chemistry Wine was headquartered on an alley off of Lake Street at 107 degree, which he translated into winemaking with overwhelm- Peavine Place. The warehouse was well-suited for wine stor- ing success. age, featuring a dirt floor basement stuffed with rows of oak barrels and redwood tanks. The Barengos’ new wine enter- Dino purchased the Acampo Winery outright in 1946, renam- prise supplemented their booming grape business, and it also ing it Barengo Cellars. The same year, the Barengo Brothers offered an ingenious contingency plan when grapes threat- Grape Shippers Company disbanded. Two years later, Acampo ened to spoil during shipment. Winery’s chianti won the silver certificate—the highest honor If bad weather jeopardized a for the chianti style—at the crop of grapes, they could be 1948 California State Fair crushed for wine instead of in Sacramento. Dino ran the transported to market. winery until 1976, producing interesting and unique vari- Sierra Wine supplied wine, pri- etals, including Muscadelle marily in the Burgundy style, du Bordelais and Muscat of to various bars, restaurants, Pantelleria. The winery pro- and gambling houses—some of duced table and dessert wines, which had only recently transi- most notably cabernet, port, tioned from speakeasy to legal sherry, muscatel, and tokay. operation. In his 1986 mem- Dino’s traditional red wine oir Bottles of Joy, Pete Barengo vinegar, also produced through insists that most of his early the winery, was known as one customers were “ex-bootlegging of the best vinegars on the mar- From the Nevada State Journal, March 10, 1948.