For more than 120 years, the Potenza Lodge has served as a safe haven for North Denver’s Italian community. Though the present day lodge on 38th Avenue and Shoshone Street differs in many ways from the mutual aid-based society founded in 1899, the lodge principles remain steady: amore (love), benevolenza (good will), and pace (peace).

Early newspaper articles in Denver illustrate public misperceptions about the lodge, reporting that it was a secret society of immigrants from the city of Potenza, Italy. While it’s true the lodge was composed of hundreds of Italian immigrants from Potenza, The Denver Times, a daily paper that ran from 1872 to 1926, came to the conclusion in 1901 that it was not a secret society as they had initially reported less than two years prior.