One Sweet Discovery: The Remnants of a Historic Downtown Phoenix Confectionery
People will do almost anything for ice cream and candy. Likewise, historians will dig deep to uncover the remnants of Downtown Phoenix’s most famous confectionery shop, which people of a certain age hold dear. “There was a time when Phoenix was small and Donofrio's was ‘a magic palace of deliciousness,’” declared a 1996 headline in The Arizona Republic.
The beloved store opened in 1887, 25 years before Arizona became the 48th state, and closed in 1955.
All that was thought to remain of this historic business were ephemera and memories from its now elderly customers. However, that has changed with the recent discovery of key remnants from Donofrio’s, including what is likely the oldest surviving neon sign in Arizona.
Charles Donofrio opened the confectionery at 45 E. Washington St. in 1887. By 1891, Charles had become successful enough selling candy and ice cream to expand his shop, which inspired his brothers, Sam and Dominick, to emigrate from Italy to help run the business. In 1905, Charles sold his shop to Dominick and went into semi-retirement. That year, Donofrio’s moved to the nearby Ellingson building, at 23 E. Washington St.
Dominick had an entrepreneurial flair and expanded his business. He created Crystallized Cactus Candy, a product that became one of Arizona’s most notable exports and was sold worldwide. He also opened a flower shop, a bakery, and an ice cream plant.
Donofrio’s confectionery was bought by John and Guy Alsap in 1920. After a fire in 1928, the business moved to a storefront in the Security Building at 228 N. Central Ave. In 1947, Joe Donofrio and George Grosso became co-owners and ran the confectionery and restaurant until it closed on December 31, 1955, citing parking problems and an expiring lease.
In 1986, an unsuccessful attempt was made to move one of Donofrio’s locations, the Ellingson building, to Historic Heritage Square, now known as The Square PHX! Longtime radio announcer Jim West recalls that the aging building “seemed to hold on for years before finally being demolished.” But all was not lost.
A Donofrio’s sign was recently found in an outdoor storage lot at the Arizona Historical Society Museum in Tempe. The name “Donofrio’s” once glowed in neon diagonally across the rectangular sign, though the glass tubing was long gone, and it featured other ornate accents.
"The words ‘Candy’ and ‘Ice Cream’ would have been backlit opal glass, making this sign even more unique,” says Debra Jane Seltzer, author of RoadArch.com website, which is the most comprehensive resource for commercial signage. “Those beaded borders are also very old and special.”
The news of this discovery led to another hidden historical artifact from the sweet shop. “Donofrio's also had a fabulous stained glass transom window over the storefront that was ‘salvaged and stored’ when the 1890s Ellingson building was 'disassembled' in the late 1980s,” says local historic preservation expert Roger Brevoort.
Popular belief was that the AHS Museum also had this artifact, but that’s not true, according to Kim Kasper, whose great-grandmother, Teresa Donofrio Grosso, was the sister of Charles, Sam, and Dominick. “That glass transom window was salvaged by my cousin, Charles Donofrio, III,” Kasper says. “It was put in crates in sections, and needs to be re-leaded, and is stored by him for safekeeping.”
It seems the pieces are in place to resurrect a monument to Downtown Phoenix’s most beloved confectionery.
Douglas C. Towne is the editor of Arizona Contractor & Community magazine, www.arizcc.com