1401 Cannon St Unit A History - Laserfiche WebLink

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Frank Rizzi, who grew up at 1401 Cannon and served in World War I with the 44th Army Infantry, became a leader in Louisville at a time when the town was transitioning from being a coal mining town to a modern city. His terms as mayor were from 1956 to 1960 and 1962 until 1970. He was also a councilman for 18 years. According to his 1991 obituary, it was during his civic tenure that the residents of Louisville got paved streets, sewers, and a new City Hall building. He was also instrumental in obtaining more water rights for Louisville. In recorded oral history interviews from 1977 and 1990, he stated that his parents always had a garden and that he remembered playing on an informal Little Italy baseball team with eight boys from the neighborhood; they had to find a ninth player from town to make a full team. For his occupation, he started working as a coal miner at age 16 and later worked for Fischer Construction. He married Annie Jasko in 1923 and they lived one block from his parents, at 1401 Courtesy Rd. (Highway 42), in a house that he built. The following photo shows Frank Rizzi in the 1970s. He died in 1991 at the age of 94. In 1995, the Historical Commission selected him to be the recipient of the 1996 Louisville Pioneer Award. FRANK gIZZI Joe Rizzi married Christina DiGiacomo and they lived on Grant Ave. in Louisville. Their daughter, Rita Ferrera, was born in 1924 and was available to be interviewed for this report. She remembers many family gatherings at her grandparents' house at 1401 Cannon when she was growing up, particularly on Sunday nights and holidays. She stated that on Christmas Eve following Midnight Mass, her grandfather, Tom Rizzi, would cook sausage for all of the relatives to enjoy at the house at 1401 Cannon. She recalls that Little Italy was almost all Italian when she was a child and remembers a big garden and an outhouse in the back yard. A "shanty," or summer kitchen, was also in the back yard for cooking and eating in the summertime to keep 6