Youngwood 1950s Memories: Severini Tailor Shop

Also on this block of Depot Street between 3^rd and 4^th streets was the Severini tailor shop.  I visited my grandfather’s tailor shop many times when I was a child, almost certainly from before I could walk.  I can hazard a guess that certain memories were fixed by the time I was five, but probably they mainly come from the year I was in fourth grade, probably that summer, when I was almost or actually 10.  I remember specifically being there alone as my grandfather worked while I was nursing a burned finger with a prominent blister on the back of it that I thought was never going away.  It limited my usual activities (and was my own fault: literally playing with matches provided by one of my fellow Cub Scouts.)  So this would be 1956. 

2006 photo of Depot St. up from 3rd.  The
Gelfo barber shop and Severini tailor shop were
in the yellow brick building on right lst floor
 

I might approach the shop from my grandparents’ house on 200 Depot Street.  Walking up the street, I cross at the light on 3^rd Street and then to the other side of Depot Street. About halfway up that next block towards 4^th Street was a yellow brick building (the Wolfe Building) at 313 Depot.

 I would first pass the window of the Gelfo Barber Shop, with the traditional barber pole.  Its entrance was slightly to the left.  To the right was a single door into the tailor shop, which was in the same building.  A bell above this door would ring when it was opened.

 The door, partly glass, opened onto a long narrow room. To the left was the inner wall, with the barber shop on the other side.  To the immediate right and slightly behind was a display window with a wide ledge in front of it. I seem to recall that a window sash was pulled down to cover the door and a larger one to cover the display window when the shop was closed.  My grandfather would pull them down just before leaving the shop for the night.

 In the display window was one of the cardboard cutouts with the drawing of a tailor with his legs crossed, stitching a garment.  He had white hair and square glasses.  When I was younger I wondered if he might be Santa Claus.  This was the “Taylor Made” sign, probably a company that sold patterns for suits and other clothes.

 I seem to recall long florescent lights hanging from the very high ceiling, or perhaps globes.  But I remember it as not being a bright room, though there was light coming in from the display window.

 To the right was a long table, perhaps where customers could examine garments when they were finished, or lay out garments they wanted altered, or where they might examine patterns and cloth for suits to be made to order: usually a jacket and two pairs of pants, and perhaps a vest.  This was probably a bigger part of the business in the 1930s and 1940s, but I seem to recall that my grandfather was still making some suits from patterns in the 1950s. Cloth could also be cut and assembled here, or garments stretched out and worked on.  There would also be an area where measurements were taken.

 Somewhere behind the table were garments on hangers, ready for pick-up.  At the end of the table was a big gold cash register. I seem to recall a kind of desk in the corner.  Perhaps this is where the bills were made out, and the ledgers were kept.

 Apparently on the wall in this room was the reproduction of a painting featuring George Washington.  I don’t really remember it, but it is one of the artifacts from the shop that John Marr and Nancy Severini Marr saved and display at their farm. (Most of the photos here are of this collection.)  The painting is called “General Washington Greeting the Troops” by Edward Percy Moran (1862-1935), who often painted historical subjects, many of them featuring George Washington.  They were popular and widely reproduced. 

 The narrow room ended in a kind of partition, and a doorway. There might have been a curtain over this doorway, usually pinned back.  Beyond the doorway was a much larger, wider room.  This is where I saw my grandfather do much of the actual work. 

This very large dark room was dominated by a large steam presser.  This machine caught my attention because it gave off vapor and made a noise.  A garment was placed between two fat beige sections—a lever brought them down, and locked. Then a lever opened them with a satisfying hiss and a cloud of steam.

 There was at least one sewing machine, irons and other tools of the trade in this room. Some of the tools were quite small.  The shape of a suit could be tailored in the process of pressing it, including hand-pressing using a tool called the pressing ham. Another small wooden square was likely used to cut patterns.

 To the left of the big presser was a staircase down to the basement.  I believe it was covered by a large wooden doors (perhaps two), as sometimes are seen on the outside of old houses. Everything had the weight and color of old mahogany.  The doors were often open, and there was nothing but darkness beyond and below them.  I was warned not to go near the stairs, and the darkness alone sufficiently dissuaded me.  But my curiosity got the better of me once, when I was about five. 

There was a kind of wooden peg on the wooden table into which a sewing machine was fitted.  I grabbed this peg and threw it down into the abyss of the basement.  My grandfather retrieved it, and so when he came back up alive I was more or less satisfied that there wasn’t anything really dangerous down there.  Still, I don’t recall I ever went down those stairs.

 Immediately upon entering this larger room, there was a door to the left on a slight diagonal.  It was the back door into the Gelfo Barber Shop.

 I usually entered the barber shop from its front door, which was on an angle next to the tailor shop door—to the left as viewed from the sidewalk. The barber shop was one large and very bright room. There were three or four big, swiveling barber chairs with silver bases and black seats facing mirrors and rows of bottles of different colors, giving off various scents.  This alone made it a fascinating place. 

50s style barber shop

The barbers wore white smocks or coats like doctors, and customers were draped with a kind of thin blanket from chin to knee, to catch the hair. 

   I may well have had my first haircut there.  I had blond curls, and my mother said she cried when they were cut.  She even saved one.  I do remember getting a haircut there when I was small enough to require sitting on the varnished but worn wooden slat that was placed on the arms of the barber chair, so I was high enough for the barber to work.

 

Ignazio Severini probably on bocce ball court
behind the Manoppello Club in Greensburg. 
Behind him smiling (on R) is Domenick Gelfo.

I remember Domenick Gelfo, who started it, but my memories of the barber shop begin when his son, Sam Gelfo, was in charge.  The barbers were friendly, chatty men, and I was allowed to sit in the waiting area near the window, even when I wasn’t getting a haircut.

   There were piles of magazines there, and comic books. When I was ten and in prime comic book age, I sat there and devoured one comic book after another, as the barbers marveled at how fast I read them.  In particular they had the entire Superman and Batman line: from Action Comics to Superman Comics, Superboy, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and so on.  Eventually Mr. Gelfo would let me borrow several at a time to read back in the tailor shop, where I would sit behind that long table, losing myself in those stories, and forgetting about the blister on my finger.