Anna's business decisions proved sound, and A. & L. Tirocchi continued to be strong into the early 1930s. Her most loyal clients continued to visit 514 Broadway even after the stock market crash of 1929. By 1933, the number of clients was beginning to decline steadily, along with the amount of money they were spending. From 1931 to the spring of 1933, Anna listed sixty clients in her ledger; the 1933-34 ledger listed forty-four; the 1934-35 ledger listed thirty-eight; and the number continued to decline until 1938, when twenty-eight clients remained. Mrs. Harold J. (Mary Colt) Gross, who had become friendly with Anna and sent her photographs of herself wearing Anna's clothing, continued to purchase the majority of her wardrobe at the Tirocchi shop throughout the 1930s, although after 1931, she was seriously in arrears with her bills. In fact, all three Colt sisters had been good long-term customers, placing hundreds of dollars worth of orders, but they seem to have suffered financial reverses during the Depression. Theodora Colt Barrows left the Tirocchi fold in 1931, and Elizabeth Colt Anthony placed her last order in 1936. In 1933, Mary Colt Gross stopped making new orders and began to slowly pay off her balance of $1,219. In a letter dated June 11, 1934, she writes that she regrets "very much my delay in settling my account with you. As you know nothing like this has happened during all my business relations with you until the last year...I dislike very much to ask your further forbearance because I realize your need of money in these times." By 1935, her financial situation must have improved, since orders for imported suits, hats, blouses, and dresses reappear. Perhaps this was because she had gone to work as the manager of the Good Luck Tea and Coffee Shop. At the beginning of the next decade, however, she ceased coming altogether. The end was amicable, for Anna enjoyed one of her greatest successes in 1939, when Mrs. Gross entrusted her with the cleaning of an heirloom handmade lace wedding veil that had been wrapped in blue paper and stored in the vault of a Providence bank. During the legendary hurricane of 1938, downtown Providence was flooded by more than seven feet of water, and the veil became hopelessly stained with blue dye from the paper. Anna asked Mrs. Gross for payment in advance for this task, despite being none too sure that she could remove the stains. She washed the veil in Ivory Soap Flakes, then sun-bleached it several times and was successful. Never one to miss a chance for self-promotion, Anna wrote a testimonial about the effectiveness of this method to the Ivory Soap Flakes Company.(37)

In the late 1930s, the shop's business correspondence is full of comments regarding Anna's state of health. By 1939, Anna had closed the shop to all but her favorite customers, employing two girls to help with the work. Letters, such as one dated July 26, 1939, from Mrs. Frederick S. Peck, one of her most loyal clients, must have been extremely disheartening. Mrs. Peck complains about a mistake on her bill, about high prices, and cancels an order, then goes on to request that Anna clean a piece of Brussels lace that her granddaughter wishes to use on her wedding gown. She finishes the letter by saying, "I am sorry she has decided to order her dress from someone else." By 1940, when she would have been around sixty-seven years old, Anna could no longer keep up with the pace of fashion and let the two remaining girls go. The last ledger in the archive covers the years 1941 to 1947. Anna continued to sew for only eight women: Mrs. Stuart Aldrich, Mrs. Edgar Brunschwig, Mrs. Fred Campbell, Mrs. H. A. DuVillard, Mrs. Harold J. Gross, Mrs. William Hoffman, Mrs. Frederick S. Peck, and Mrs. David A. Seaman. Most of these women had found other dressmakers by 1942, except for Mrs. Peck, who stayed with the Tirocchi shop until Anna's death from coronary thrombosis on February 26, 1947.