Romolo Vanni: The Man who built the Theatre

VannI was born on November 23, 1885 in Piano di Coreglia, Italy, a small town in Tuscany only 30 miles east of Florence and set at the edge of the mountains leading down to the seacoast. The town fairly tumbles into the sea at only 60 feet above sea level and is now, in 2006, only just about as big as Jaffrey. It must have been a very small village 120 years ago when Romolo, son of Giocondo and Carminella, was born.

He came to New Hampshire in 1899 from Piano di Coreglia when he was 14 years old and lived in the next town over, Peterborough. He couldn’t read or do numbers in Italian and he spoke no English. There’s not much known about his life for those first 9 years except that it is certain that he learned his numbers and how to read. He also had a place to live and some work to do. It was in June 1908 that he married Lena Rondina, a young woman born in Providence, Rhode Island on July 3, 1891. Romolo was about 23 years old when he was married. Lena was 16.

Two years later they moved to what was then East Jaffrey, bought a house on Main Street and started a produce and dry goods business. They had five children in as many years: Dorothea Nellie, Charles, Margherita, Edna Elizabeth and the youngest, Romolo, named after his father. When the young Romolo was just a year and a half, Lena and his brother Charles died in the Spanish Flu epidemic on October 18, 1918—just before the end of World War I. Lena was only 28. She left behind four children all under the age of 7.

Romolo took all the children and went to Providence for a year so he could find a wife. Seven years later he was married again, on April 13, 1925, to Leonella Stanghellini. She was 26 and he was 40. Together they had two more children: Lena Lucy, born on December 13, 1925 and Mary Elizabeth born on February 24, 1928.

Romolo had a cousin, Romeo Vanni. Romeo was also born in Piano di Coreglia on October 28, 1889, and, like Romolo, he came to the United States. At 21, Romeo was older than Romolo when he left his family to come to America, and, like his cousin Romolo, he, too, went first to Providence, Rhode Island.

It so happened that Romolo had a younger sister, Aleda, born in Piano di Coreglia on May 29, 1893. As an unmarried sister, she had been sent to her brother’s home in Jaffrey soon after he had married because she would be good company for Lena. Aleda was only two years younger than Lena and helped with the family, the young children and the business. So, when Romeo came to see his cousin’s good fortune in Jaffrey, he met Aleda.

Aleda and Romeo were married November 3, 1913, three years after he had come to the United States. By 1921 he had a successful fruit stand, along the banks of the Contoocook. Like the Ania River in Coreglia, the Contoocook River runs right through the middle of town. It is also the only river in the whole United States that flows northward. Romeo and Aleda had Romolo Vanni: The Man who built the Theatre four children between 1915 and 1920: Victor, Helen, Carmella and Lillian.

Jaffrey’s Town History, updated in 1971, has a section entitled “Unhappy Things.” The second unhappy thing the town remembers is the following: “Romeo, age 31, died September 30, 1921, from accidental shock of an electric current. He was born in Italy Nov. 2, 1890, and conducted a store in the old Riverside Block on the site of the present Korpi Service Station on Main Street.”

Over time, the Vanni family prospered, and Romolo, head of the family, became a legend in Jaffrey. In 1934 when he was 49 years old, he is described in the Town History as “a man of unusual business ability and enterprise.” As proof, the history notes that in 1912, when he was 27, Romolo bought the N.W. Mower block in East Jaffrey which he owned and occupied until 1915. Then he bought the Jule C. Durant place on the Square in East Jaffrey to which he added “a modern fruit store and a moving picture theatre.”

It is this final comment in Jaffrey’s Town History that is of particular interest. In order to have his fruit store and moving picture theatre, Romolo lifted his house up one storey and built his store and entrance to his barn underneath it. That was 1923 and probably not long after Romeo was killed. At that point Romolo had six of his own children and four nieces and nephews— probably all living together and helping each other.

Romolo’s youngest daughter, Mary Elizabeth remembers helping her brothers and sisters and cousins sell tickets, fix bags of popcorn and clean up after the shows. Often her father would give them all an orange popsicle from the ice box in his store when the work was done. She had a cat that was only hers. When she wanted to be alone, she and the cat would climb out the kitchen window and sit on the roof where no one could see them and she would read. But when it was time for the movies to start, her cat had to be down in the theatre. He would walk down the center aisle looking for just the right lap, and when he found it, he would curl up and stay for the whole show.

Romolo was 38 when he dreamed up this “moving picture” enterprise. He used his barn as the place to show his movies. He sold fruit and other dry goods in front of the theatre and, true to his Italian roots, made wine in the basement. His building stood directly across the street from the town “Square,” as green then as it is now, and so he called it “The Park Theatre.”

His theatre was so successful that he expanded it in 1935, sending away to his native Tuscany for the black marble lintel with blue and green veins running through it to place over the “moon doors” in the front. Romolo operated the projector out of the pantry on the first floor of his house up on the roof. In 1941, he expanded the theatre again and built a proper stage with arch and curtains. He decorated it in the Art Deco style which was the height of elegance when he opened the theatre. When he expanded it this second time, he commissioned a local artist to paint four murals of the Mountain that overlooks Jaffrey—one mural for each season of the year. It cost him $80 in water colors and canvas. The WPA paid Carl Eric Nelson to paint the murals.

Romolo Vanni showed films in his movie theatre from 1923 until he died in 1954. What he started, others continued and movies were shown at Mr. Vanni’s theatre for another 25 years, until 1976, when it was sold as a warehouse for a bike and art supply store. By that time, the moving picture theatre was a thread that wove through everyone’s lives—including the new, bike store owner. He treated it tenderly, always thinking that someday he would reopen it. His name is Roy, and he and his wife, Nancy, have been careful to preserve all that they could—including most of the 720 horsehair seats that were in there. The young people can’t imagine that there’s a movie theatre behind his store, but the rest of us know: it’s true.

A few years ago, Roy agreed to sell the theatre so a group in town to restore and reopen it. It wasn’t a ‘hard sell.’ More than 800 people in Jaffrey and eleven towns around the region contributed money to help buy the theater—everything from $5 to $5,000. Roy and Nancy sold the theatre at a discount this past February. Now the new owners are at that stage where they are deciding what to do and how to do it. Foremost in everyone’s mind is to follow the vision of the first impresario—Romolo Vanni.

The descendents of Romolo Vanni still live in Jaffrey. His youngest son, Romolo John Vanni, served honorably in World War II in the Army from November 1942 to March 1943. His cousin, Victor, who was dear, departed Romeo’s first born, served in the United States Marine Corps from July 1942 to October 1945.

Jaffrey’s Town History reports that after the war “Romolo John Vanni was employed in the postal service in Jaffrey for over sixteen years and when the street delivery of mails was adopted in 1957, he and Emile Despres, along with Postmaster Homer J. Forcier, were instrumental in establishing the routes and assigning house numbers. Romolo John and Emile were the first two street letter carriers in Jaffrey.”

Romolo John had three children: Brenda Louise, Madelyn Alice and Steven Joseph. Brenda Louise traveled to Tuscany in 2006 to find the Vannis and the Rondinas. ‘Lyn’ lives in Jaffrey and is married to one of the town’s Selectmen, Rick Lambert.

 

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