La Golondrina in Screenland magazine, 1930.
News came this week that current owners of historic La Golondrina Cafe could soon be foreclosed on by the city of Los Angeles. La Golondrina is the oldest brick building in Los Angeles, possibly built in 1857, and located in the heart of Olvera Street and the very beginnings of Los Angeles. It represents the junction of Italian and Mexican history in the city, as early pioneers Antonio Pelanconi and Consuelo Castilo de Bonzo both owned the property and helped promote the winery and restaurant business from its environs.
Some early records claim that Austro-Italian immigrant Guiseppi Covacchichi constructed the brick building on Vine or Wine Street somewhere in the 1850s, with most histories resting circa 1855-1857, in an area surrounded by vines and wine businesses. The two story building featured a second floor exterior wood balcony, while inside featured painted wood beams, balcony inside, and large fireplace on the first floor. Within a few years, he sold to Antonio Pelanconi, who would establish a successful wine business in the property. Pelanconi operated his wine cellar and business on the first floor, living with his large family on the second.
A sketch of La Golondrina, New Movie Magazine, April 1932.
Born 1833 in Gordova in the Province of Sondrio, Italy, Pelanconi immigrated to America at 18. Arriving in New York, he traveled by prairie schooner to Los Angeles and began working in orchards. Ambitious and savvy, he moved up to ranching and then the winery business. In 1866, Pelanconi married Isabel Ramirez, daughter of early pioneer, Don Juan Ramirez, who owned the land on which the building was constructed, near his own large winery on what is now the east side of Olvera Street. Thus he united Mexican/Spanish and Italian interests in the area. Pelanconi would become one of the largest vintners in Southern California, and would help incorporate the California Wine Growers Association in 1875. He would die just four years later in 1879 after purchasing large tracts of land around Glendale to grow his business.
The area around the La Golondrina Cafe and the Plaza slowly disintegrated over the next 50 years as ruling elites moved the city center south and west. In 1928, Northern California transplant Christine Sterling determined to save and rehabilitate what was then known as Olvera Street, particularly the forlorn Avila Adobe, recognizing the Spanish history of the city in a romanticized fashion. The restored Olvera Street opened Easter Sunday, April 1930, rechristened “Paseo de Los Angeles,” Pathway of the Angels in English, highlighting the Spanish and Mexican history of the area but restored without their help.
Sterling approached local La Mision Cafe owner Consuelo Castillo de Bonzo to open a cafe on the first floor of the former Pelanconi building. Born in Mexico March 22, 1897 and arriving in Los Angeles in 1902 with her family, she married Italian American John A. de Bonzo in 1917. Proud of her Mexican heritage, she opened La Mision Cafe serving traditional Mexican food. Casa La Golondrina Cafe at 35 Olvera Street opened April 20, 1930, with newspaper ads announcing the serving of a Mexican turkey dinner and other delicacies with a $2 reservation. Later ads proclaimed it a “quaint Mexican cafe” and listing Mexican and Spanish Chicken Dinner for $1 as well as a la carte dishes. The restaurant occupied the former wine cellar, while the main floor, up a small flight of stairs, hosted the Fiesta Room, with dining, dancing, and entertaining.
Both La Golodrina and Olvera Street quickly became popular with local residents who adored the charming, romantic look of the city’s early history. Movie stars and celebrities such as Greta Garbo, Joe E. Brown, Warner Baxter, Ramon Novarro, Ronald Colman, William Powell, Gary Cooper, and Antonio Moreno descended on the Street, happy partakers of Mexican food such as guacamole, chicken mole, and chicken taquitos at La Golondrina and audience members at the puppet theatre located on the street. Consuelo charmed audiences, bubbly and infectious in her Spanish, though she spoke English. Musicians strummed guitar and marimba while waitresses dressed in native garb also sung to audiences.
de Bonzo, called the “patron saint of Olvera Street” by the Los Angeles Times in 1932, happily saluted her country on days like Mexican Independence Day while greeting guests who flocked to the cafe thanks to celebrity attendance and plenty of publicity mentions in newspapers and magazines. Historic and civics groups booked luncheons and families came to celebrate special times. Hungry patrons celebrated Olvera Street anniversaries, Posadas, and Fiesta de las Flores Parades by eating at the famed cafe. Casa La Golodrina became a Los Angeles institution, one of the oldest restaurants in the city at the Olvera Street, Plaza de Los Angeles HIstorical Monument, and one now popular with Mexican immigrants and entrepreneurs.
After de Bonzo passed away in 1977, the cafe continued to be owned by family members until sold late in 2021 to the Gomez family during the pandemic. Now the city is demanding back rent and fees from them or otherwise face foreclosure. The junction of early Italian and Mexican history in Los Angeles, Casa de la Golondrina has survived almost two centuries of the city’s history, may it live centuries more.