Rozarios’ resort, the successor to Parente’s Villa, was located on Verano Avenue between the Highway and the bridge.
Louis Parente, a notorious bar owner, fight promoter and would-be politician, came to El Verano in 1906 from San Francisco. (Please see Jeff Elliot’s great santarosahistory.com for much more on Parente: http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2016/07/the-village-of-vice-in-the-valley-of-the-moon/
By 1925 he had built a “new” hotel.
According to the Index Tribune, “The 43 room hotel, hut, cottages and grounds were purchased by the Rozarios in 1943, and it was on January 1, 1944 that they opened it for business. The former San Francisco and Marin county residents had purchased the property from Joe Parente [actually Louis Parente], colorful Bay Area sports figure who brought many prize fighters here to train.”
Rozario’s was popular through the 1950s for wedding receptions, fashion shows, and formal dinners.
The Rozarios sold the resort to Carl Innskeep and Joe La Rango in 1955.
It later became known as the El Verano Inn.
The buildings were torn down in 1985 to make way for an extension of the Finnish American Home Association’s housing complex for retired people, which was located behind the old resort building. In that year, the editor of the FAHA Manor News explained in a letter to the editor of the Index Tribune that FAHA wanted to preserve the building, but “could not afford the very expensive improvements necessary…” Thus we lost another piece of our history.
Post marked 1912.
February 2017
