RiNo Holdout La Casa de Manuel Is For Sale

After 68 years, La Casa de Manuel may finally close for good. Its building at 3158 Larimer Street is for sale, and at 84, Manuel Silva isn’t ready for another move.

Silva came to Denver in the ’50s with his father, mother and eight siblings; the family had $500 in life savings and dreams of opening a restaurant. They leased space at 2010 Larimer Street that had previously been occupied by a Japanese jeweler and opened Monterey House #1. By the ’70s, Silva had taken over the spot. He changed the name of the restaurant to La Casa de Manuel and filled the modest space with a half-dozen folk-art murals painted by Jose Castillo, a bellman at the Brown Palace.

For two decades, he ran the place on a month-to-month lease, watching as the neighborhood changed with the establishment of the…