Rosy Cafe

The construction of Barry Parade was among the major roadworks the newly-formed Brisbane City Council undertook from 1925. Resumption of properties in the path of the new road started prior to the amalgamation of Brisbane’s local governments, and the land on which this building now stands was resumed in 1924. The resumptions included entire properties, rather than smaller sections, with the intention that unused land could be offered for sale once Barry Parade was completed. In October 1925 Lord Mayor William Jolly reported that, ‘all the necessary resumptions have now been made’. He recommended to the Council that no further sales of property facing the new road should be made until it was constructed and ready to be opened, as Council would get much better prices when the improvement was complete.

The Brisbane City Council had resumed numerous properties around the proposed road and offered them for sale when the work was complete. Sales of the Barry Parade allotments were announced to take place in November 1927. The allotments, ranging in size from 4.5 perches to 13 perches, were unusually small for Brisbane, but were considered valuable business sites.

Guiseppe Mangione took possession of this site, resubdivision 58, in January 1928. In February of that year he applied for and received approval for a brick and concrete building which he constructed himself. The building appears to have been finished by 1929, when Mangione was listed in Post Office Directories as a modeller in the Barry Parade building. Mangione and his wife Guiseppina moved into the building, which included a dwelling and operated the shop. 

(The property was soon joined by a number of commercial and industrial businesses. The growth of the motor industry, combined with the new availability of inner-city land meant that many of the new properties catered to motoring such as tyre manufacturers and garages, although a ‘canvas cathedral’ was erected on a vacant block in 1930 and was transformed into a church in 1932.)

As an Italian citizen, Mangione was unable to own his property. In 1932 he applied to become a naturalised British subject and, his application granted, gained title to the Barry Parade property in 1933. In 1939 the Mangiones moved to Sandgate and leased the ground floor to fellow countryman John Fontanella in 1939. Fontanella’s tenancy of the Barry Parade property was short. In 1940 Fontanella, an Italian citizen, was interned as a prisoner of war. A year later Mangione was also interned, despite his status as naturalised British subject. In 1942 Fontanella’s wife Veronica was also detained as a prisoner of war. The properties were left under the management of Isles Love and Co while the internees were held in Gaythorne and South Australia.

On their release, the Mangiones and Fontanellas returned to Brisbane, where the Fontanellas applied for naturalisation. In 1949 Mangione died and the property was transferred to the Fontanellas. As at 2015 the Fontanella family still own this property.