When he died, Los Angeles newspapers addressed Giovanni Piuma as “Cavaliere,” as befitting a man who had gone from impoverished immigrant youth to Italian royal consular agent for Southern California, a confidant of Italian King Victor Emmanuel, and Italian knighthood. Piuma’s rise had been fostered by his businesses, making wine and selling whiskey.
Piuma was born in April 1864, the son of Francisco and Rosa Peluffe Piuma, in Vado Ligure, a coastal town near Genoa in northwestern Italy. A photo from his youth shows him doing a roof repair with his father at the family home. At the age of 20 he left Italy in 1884 and headed for Los Angeles where he found a “small but vibrant” community of Italians, then known as “Wine Street.” Piuma then began almost a decade working in the area as a grocer and liquor dealer
In 1887, Giovanni married Maria Toso, like him a recent immigrant from Italy living in Los Angeles. Over the next 14 years she would bear him seven children, four daughters and three sons. This growing family may have provided some of the impulse for his undertaking new endeavors. After obtaining American citizenship in 1890, Piuma took a lease on the basement of an adobe house, shown left, for a wine-making enterprise. The rent was $35 a year and two gallons of wine delivered to the homeowners monthly. A sign on the roof read “G. Piuma Winery.”
The next few years would bring some bumps in the road for Piuma. A dispute involving the lease on his Piuma & Company grocery store threw him into a local court in September 1899. Piuma went to see the judge in the case and when he left, with “old country” ways apparently having come over him, he left $50 on the judge’s desk. He lost the case anyway, lucky not to be charged with bribery. The headline in the Los Angeles Times read: “Justice Not for Sale: Futile Attempt of Litigant to Bribe a Jurist.”
Piuma also was subjected to authorities seizing of cases of liquor from his store that did not bear the required revenue stamps. Later his liquor license would be revoked by Los Angeles authorities “because of crimes committed in the vicinity of the winery,” located in the adobe house. Despite these setbacks, Piuma experienced considerable success as a grocer and vintner. His liquor, wine and grocery store expanded considerably. Shown above is an interior photo showing barrels and bottles of wine and liquor. Piuma in a dark suit stands among his sizable staff. He was featuring his own brands of whiskey, including the labels shown below.
About 1910 Piuma moved his wine-making to a new and larger location north of downtown Los Angeles. This winery and brandy distillery was a far cry from his adobe basement. An artist’s drawing from a port wine label, shows a large building, with chimney spewing smoke, indicative of internal activity. Around the structure are arrayed modes of transportation: horse-drawn wagons carrying away barrels of wine, an engine on a railroad spur with open boxcars, and at far right a motorized vehicle. This winery was a first class operation, Piuma’s illustration tells us.
As the Italian businessman was rising in wealth, he also was establishing a reputation for leadership in his Italian community and in Los Angeles as a whole. Piuma gained considerable prestige when he was appointed by the Italian government as consul for Los Angeles. In this role he was charged with looking after Italian residents of Los Angeles, including arranging burials in the homeland, and assisting Italian tourists, especially those in trouble.
Piuma is credited with making some 18 trips to Italy during his lifetime. Remember this was an era before airplanes could hop the Atlantic in a day. Piuma’s trips meant continental train rides and weeks aboard ships, or an even longer water route “Around the Horn.” On two trips the vintner/liquor dealer was ushered into the presence of King Victor Emmanuel, who eventually would bestow on him the title “Cavaliere” (knight), bestowing the medal shown here.
Piuma’s interests ranged well beyond just his Italian compatriots. He was a founding member of the Los Angeles Liberal Alliance, founded in 1905 for the stated purpose of bringing together all the city’s nationalities in an organization dedicated to instilling fealty to the American flag. As one writer has put it: “It sought to promote citizenship through the preamble to the Constitution, specifically the famed words about the “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Alliance also emphasized “important questions concerning the ballot.” Shown here is the emblem of the organization.
Although California had stayed “wet” until the end, National Prohibition in 1920 brought an end to both Piuma’s winery and his liquor sales. Piuma, still only 56, retired to concentrate on his consular work. A son took over, reverting to wholesale groceries with a specialty of imported Italian olive oil. With the rise of Mussolini and fascism in Italy, Piuma resigned his consular office and went into full retirement. He lived long enough to see the end of National Prohibition and Piuma family members again began selling whiskey and wine. A photo taken sometime after 1934 shows the interior of the post-Prohibition store, replete with liquor bottles.
When Piuma died in June 1938 at the age of 74, the Los Angeles printed a long obituary, addressing him as “Cavaliere.” After a funeral conducted under the auspices of the French Masonic Lodge, he was interred in a mausoleum in Forest Lawn Cemetery. Although Piuma is said to be a little known figure today in Los Angeles, his leadership during a period of intense immigration from all over Europe, including Italy, was important in the city for forging a sense of American identity.
Note: My path to Giovanni Piuma began by seeing the whiskey labels shown above. They led me to an article on the Internet called ”A Pressing Matter: A Lease of the Temple Adobe at Old Mission with Winemaker Giovanni Piuma, 10 September 1893” by Paul Spitzzeri, Despite the seemingly narrow scope of the title, Mr. Spitzerri provides a considerable information about Piuma, as well as several of the photos found here. Sentences above in italics are direct quotes from his article. Other information about Piuma was found on ancestry.com and several other sites.
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