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http://accordions.com/news.aspx?d=31-Jul-2015&lang=en&s=10540
http://accordions.com/news.aspx?d=31-Jul-2015&lang=en&s=10540
31-Jul-2015
Italo-American Accordion Co. is marking 100 years owned by family - USAby Rob Howard |
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 The Romagnoli family has been running the Italo-American Accordion Company in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for 100 years. Rosanne Romagnoli (picture below) runs the Italo-American Accordion Co. out of a storefront on 95th Street, the third-generation of her family to do so over 100 years.Her grandfather bought the company in 1915, and it's still going strong - no longer making accordions but selling and repairing them. Romagnoli said her grandfather emigrated from Italy to San Francisco with a brother but eventually settled in Chicago, where he bought an accordion factory with two of his brothers. "We're from the town where the bellows for accordions were invented, Castelfidardo, Italy," she said. The factory was on Taylor Street in Chicago's Little Italy and moved to 3137 W. 51st St., in Chicago. In 1996, the factory closed, two years after her father died, but her mother opened the store, 5510 W. 95th St., that same year. "We've been here ever since," she said. Her mother and father, Anne (picture left) and Joe, started running the business in the 1950s when her grandfather returned to Italy. She proudly hauls out a Chicago Tribune magazine that featured a story about her father in the early 1990s. "I'm not really the head honcho. My mother thinks she is. I don't like to say I run the show. Let's say the family does," Romagnoli said. "I've got great employees. At one time we had 100 employees. We have four now." Her mother (picture left) is the company's best saleswoman, she said, and while in her 80s "still plays the accordion beautifully." |
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