by Danya Henninger

When Luigi Fiorella was 19 years old, he left his parents' farm in Foggia, Italy, to try his luck in the New World. He gathered his savings, booked passage on a transatlantic ship, and landed in Philadelphia in 1892. Like many other Italian immigrants in South Philly, he began working as a butcher.

In 1904, he purchased the building at 817 Christian St. - a three-story masonry structure that had been constructed for the express purpose of hosting a butcher shop. A giant scale was built right into the foot-thick cement floor, and a hand elevator ran from the basement to ground level, making it easy to transfer animal parts from one story's large ice box to the next.

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Source: http://www.philly.com/