Historic Main Street auto shop burns - WREX-TV

ROCKFORD (WREX) — On Thursday, an iconic building on Rockford's southwest side went up in flames and on Friday, Llanitos Auto Repair is considered a total loss.

The Rockford Fire Department says there is $400,000 in damage.

One person and three firefighters were inside the building during the fire, and all were able to escape with minor injuries. Five cats were also killed in the blaze.

The Rockford Fire Department says it's still not clear on what caused the fire.

The building has roots that stretch back almost 90 years. A Rockford woman whose family used to own the building recalls rich details of its history. 13 WREX spoke with her Friday to get the full story.

Though little remains after the fire at Llanitos Auto Repair, the front facade, a piece of Rockford history, still remains standing.

"That symbol of it still standing is a symbol of strength in the face of adversity, and also a symbol of where the beginning was," Alicia Neubauer says.

The beginning is what Alicia Neubauer will remember when she thinks of the building. Her grandfather, Antonino Parisi, owned it in 1931, and has quite a story of his own. A Sicilian immigrant who didn't speak any English, Parisi was a boxer in the "Roaring Twenties," and changed his name to do so.

"From Antonino Parisi to Sam Paris so that his parents and his brothers did not know he was actually boxing," Neubauer says.

Eventually, Sam Paris started a family with his wife Mary, and they owned Paris Auto. Paris built an apartment upstairs, a secret in the 1940's, and for 50 years he lived there and raised a family.

"That's my childhood right there," Neubauer says. "My mother just died in February and now her childhood home is getting erased."

Llanitos Auto Repair is not the only historic building on South Main Street that Rockford's lost to a fire. The historic Hanley building was destroyed in 2017. Then just a few months ago in September, another building that stood for over a century also was burned to the ground.

Rockford's Fire District Chief Luis Duran says once a fire breaks out at an old building, it's tough to save it.

"Being old, often times they're vacant and often times when they were constructed, they were constructed when we didn't have codes [or] we didn't have standards," Chief Duran says.

In the case of Llanitos' fire, the building was still a working auto repair shop full of flammable materials that could fuel the flames.

"It really does pose different hazards to our firefighters," Chief Duran explains. "They (the older buildings with flammable materials like tires) tend to burn longer and hotter."

Neubauer says, while the building is gone, and Rockford just lost another piece of history, her memories will last forever. She hopes the area doesn't lose any more historic buildings because it can never get them back.

13 WREX spoke to a family member of the current owners, but they were too emotional to talk. The family is "devastated" by the loss.

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Historic Main Street auto shop burns - WREX-TV
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