Some 70 years ago, Iozzo’s Garden of Italy was a two-floor restaurant with a bandstand and a hearty menu of slow-cooked favorites of southern Italy.

It was a Midwestern destination spot, a place where people came to celebrate birthdays or dance the night away — a place so large it took up three addresses along South Illinois Street.

Iozzo’s closed in 1941 as the result of a family tragedy.

But this past summer, original owner Fred Iozzo’s 28-year-old great-granddaughter, Katie Cummings, reopened the restaurant.

Iozzo’s history

Originally from Calabria, Italy, Fred Iozzo brought his family to Indianapolis by way of Boston. Iozzo opened a line of grocery stores, but when the Depression hit, he closed the stores and in 1930 opened the restaurant.

In 1940, a group of sailors came into the restaurant and began flirting with Iozzo’s daughter Margaret. Margaret’s brother Dominic decided the flirting had gone too far and a brawl ensued. Iozzo, who heard the fight from the backroom, burst out and shot a sailor who was choking his son.

The sailor died, and Iozzo was charged and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He went to prison for a little more than 26 months, causing the restaurant to close. “There was no one to run the restaurant,” Cummings said. “It was such a tragedy for the family.”

The Iozzos, Cummings said, found themselves shunned by the Italian-American community and moved from the Southside to Broad Ripple. Iozzo died in 1945, a few years after his release from prison.

New beginnings

Now located at 946 S. Meridian St., Cummings said the new restaurant pays homage to her Italian roots both in the menu (which features many of the same veal, pork and lamb selections, as well as sauce recipes her great-grandparents used) and the decor (with hand-etched glass work illustrating a rustic scene and light fixtures made of blown glass from Italy).

Iozzo’s is just like it was in the ’30s — a mix of Old and New World.

“My grandma Elizabeth Iozzo just turned 93,” Cummings said. “She is so excited and thrilled that I’ve reopened the place where she met her husband (Dominic). He was singing behind the bar when she met him.”