In another life Danny DeVito might have grown up on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, working his way up through the family businesses, maybe running his own ice-cream parlour, cafe, or chipper someday.
Instead, while the Hollywood star’s Italian ancestors emigrated to America, another branch of the family came first to Belfast in 1915, then to Dublin, and along with other Italian families, dominated the cafe and restaurant scene of O’Connell Street for the rest of the century.
In a large front room on the second floor of a five-storey building on Lower O’Connell Street, between the river Liffey and the Spire, Leo DiVito recalls his always-busy home.
“There were five of us boys, and then Rosanna, so that’s six kids, oh and two cousins lived here as well, so eight kids, then there was my grandfather and a couple of uncles as well.”
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His mother’s family, the Cafollas had set up in Dublin between the two world wars with cafes on opposite sides of O’Connell Street – “we could wave to our cousins across the road”. His father, Ercole DiVito moved in with his mother’s family on the east side of the street and developed the business.
“There was ice cream, tea, coffee, cakes – like a mini Bewley’s. Dad put a self-service restaurant in the basement, one of the first self-service restaurants in Dublin.”
‘I got out of the house one time without anyone seeing me. In my little pyjamas with the bunny pattern and my bare feet, and I walked the length of O’Connell Street. Someone recognised me and walked me home’
The businesses took up the rooms from the basement to the first floor, with the family occupying the remaining three floors above.
“The ice cream was on this side, then opposite, the other Cafollas, was a grill house and restaurant, where Schuh is now. Then there was the Green Rooster, a steakhouse, that was my dad’s, where Foot Locker is. The Monaco, that was uncle Tony’s.”
Opposite the GPO, Philip Forte had the Mayfair Grill with his wife Nina, sister of Leo’s mother Maria. “Uncle Philly’s brother Frank had Frankie’s. There were about six or seven cafes or restaurants, all of us related. Then further up the street there were other Italians we weren’t related to, but everyone knew everyone, the Italians, the Irish.”
That came in handy when Leo was a child because he had a tendency to sleepwalk.
“I got out of the house one time without anyone seeing me. In my little pyjamas with the bunny pattern and my bare feet, and I walked the length of O’Connell Street. Someone recognised me and walked me home. I was about six or seven, so late 1960s. That would sound insane now, if it happened today, but there was that community back then.”
It would be tempting to see O’Connell Street of that era as some idyllic Little Italy, but of course they were also grim and troubled times.
‘You’d come in every day, there’d be six uncles around a table. Nana and Tina would be making the pasta, and we’d sit down and eat our pasta after school’
“My first memory was when Nelson’s Pillar, where the Spire is now, was blown up [in 1966] and our windows were shattered. I was in my cot upstairs. A bit fell on uncle Philly’s car parked outside the Mayfair… we still have that bit here somewhere.
“Then the 1970s, the time of the bombs and the bomb scares. Every couple of months you’d have to evacuate really quick and we’d go to our cousins. One time the angel was blown off the O’Connell monument, and our windows were shattered again.”
Peter Borza’s family opened their first chipper in Dorset Street just off O’Connell Street in 1949. He married Leo’s sister Rosanna in 1989. “We could get married in the Pro Cathedral, because we were parishioners.”
The young couple made an attempt at suburban life. “Rosanna didn’t want a house. She was so used to living over the shop. When we went house hunting, we’d go into these cul-de-sacs, Leo used to come as well, and my mother-in-law, and they’d all say ‘it’s too quiet’. We ended up buying on a main road.”
When their children started to come along in the 1990s, they moved back to the house on O’Connell Street.
“This is going to sound like we’re a real stereotypical Italian family” says Nicoletta, one of Peter and Rosanna’s daughters. “But that’s exactly what we are. You’d come in every day, there’d be six uncles around a table. Nana and Tina [that’s Aunt Nina who moved in when Uncle Philly died in 1999, Leo explains] would be making the pasta, and we’d sit down and eat our pasta after school.”
Then there was the time their distant American cousin, who for some reason spelled his surname with a De rather than a Di, dropped in.
[ Danny DeVito: My comic career and my Irish familyOpens in new window ]
“He was staying in the Clarence, I think he was over for Matilda at the time, the mid-1990s, before you were born, Nico,” says Peter.
Leo takes up the story: “Mammy picked up the phone and someone at the end says ‘this is Danny DeVito’.”
Thinking it was one of her other sons playing a prank, she gave the caller a few choice words before hanging up. “He rang back and said: ‘Please don’t hang up. This really is Danny’, and Mammy thought, ‘God maybe it is’.” Calling his bluff, she invited him to O’Connell Street for his dinner.
“It must have been a Friday or Saturday, because we were mad busy in the restaurant on Abbey Street, next door to where the Indo [Irish Independent newspaper] used to be,” says Peter. “Rosanna gets a call to say ‘Danny’s calling over now’. Well, she just downed tools, abandoned the shop, and ran back across the road.”
Pictures of a delighted looking DeVito in the kitchen, hugging cousins, holding babies and eating biscuits (“Leo makes a great traditional biscuit” Peter says), attest that a good time was had by all.
These were largely happy times for the Borzas as they raised their young family, but in more recent years life on the street has changed.
“The change has been pretty dramatic in the last 10 years. There were always people with problems, but I think the whole drug scene now is different, and I think there’s a lot of lip service paid to trying to control it. It’s one thing politicians walking down the streets saying it’s safe, but we live it, on the ground, we look out our window and we see what really goes on,” Peter says.
‘I don’t think we’d have moved out, any of us, if we’d had a belief that they were going to do what they need to do for the city’
“People have died in that back lane through drug overuse,” says Leo, referring to Harbour Court which runs behind the house and was recently closed off by Dublin City Council.
Then in November 2023 came the horror of riots in O’Connell Street.
“It was terrifying,” says Nicoletta. “I was out for drinks with my friends on Grafton Street and I was walking home. I had no idea what was going on, but I could smell fire. Then I got to where the road turns, and I could see the flames. I knew my mum and my sister were here.”
Incited by far-right agitators, following the stabbing of three children and a carer on Parnell Square, rioters had set fire to a bus, tram and Garda car on O’Connell Street and were looting shops.
“When I got home, we turned off the lights and stayed down on the floor, because they were throwing stuff up at the windows. I’ve never been so scared,” she says.
Peter had been at a meeting in Dalkey with his phone turned off. “I must have had about 600 missed calls, I thought ‘my god what’s going on?’.”
He managed to get a taxi as far as Grafton Street, then ran the rest of the way to O’Connell Bridge. Gardaí were at that point not letting anyone across the bridge.
“I told them I needed to get to my building, my wife and kids are there. I had to walk all the way down to Butt Bridge to come back up. On that walk there were pockets of kids on bikes, youngsters, and there were these individuals directing them. This was well organised. You could see these adults telling these kids what to do, where to go next ... it was the saddest thing.”
In recent months Peter and Rosanna have made the decision to leave O’Connell Street, although family members will be there for some time yet, and the ground floor is occupied by other businesses. A decision on the building’s future has yet to be finalised.
Planning permission had been granted to turn it into a boutique hotel, along with an apartment, but the planning process took several years, during which time construction costs spiralled, and the number of rooms permitted was reduced, making the project unviable.
Leo, an artist, at one point wanted to open a gallery and artists’ studios with his partner, but again “there were lots of problems with the planning” he says.
All three agree the street needs people back living in it, but, Peter says, “I don’t see that happening in the next 10 or 15 years.”
It requires significant investment “about €500 million” he reckons, and a consistent, visible Garda presence.
“I don’t think we’d have moved out, any of us, if we’d had a belief that they were going to do what they need to do for the city,” he says.
Leo says the thought of the family, probably the last of the street’s owner-occupiers, permanently leaving O’Connell Street breaks his heart. “If O’Connell Street could ever come back to what it was, it would be lovely – the boulevard it should be, the showcase it should be. That would be really something.”
