Location: 151 Broadway, Haverstraw

Owner: Richard Sena

​

This site is a privately owned business.

​

At the turn of the twentieth century, Charles Waldron, a prominent man in the development of North Rockland, built a small and simple Italianate Haverstraw brick two-family house at 151 Broadway. It had no fireplaces and was heated with two coal-burning furnaces and illuminated with electricity. Directly across the road from the de Noyelles brickyard, the building was set in a prime location to lease to new American immigrants.

 

In 1895, James Gamboli came to America from Italy with his wife and son and found work as a laborer in the Haverstraw brickyards. Housing was limited, but he found an apartment on Railroad Avenue. By 1920, he had moved to Waldron’s small Italianate brick building on Broadway with his wife and five sons. James’s son Nick was a barber, and his son Anthony was his apprentice. Thus the history of the barbershop began.

 

Gamboli’s barbershop was a place men could go to meet and socialize in a congenial environment. Many would visit the barbershop weekly, if not daily, because they enjoyed it so much. Gamboli’s barbershop was in the “Bronx” section of Haverstraw, where Nick was affectionately known as “The Mayor.” He also was a nationally recognized boxing official for forty-four years.

 

By the late 1970s, Nick was ready to retire and enjoy the community he was involved with, as his descendants continue to be to this day. The barbershop was purchased by Mario Colecchia and became known as Mario’s Barber Shop. The friendly conversations and remembrances of times gone by continued for the next thirty-six years. In 2015, Mario also was ready to retire and sold the building, ending its ninety-four continuous years as a barber shop.

 

In 2016, Richard Sena bought the two-story brick building and brought new life into the space as a real estate brokerage office. Not only has the building been restored, but the Koken barber chair, Carrara marble mirror, and mid-century chairs manufactured at the Empire State Chair Factory in Haverstraw have been preserved.

 

Richard's RPS Realty office at 151 Broadway won an Adaptive Reuse Historic Preservation Merit Award from the Historical Society of Rockland County in 2016. A longtime Rockland resident, Richard will apply his skills as a real estate broker and historic redevelopment specialist to help revitalize the Village of Haverstraw, once known as the brick-making capital of the world. “I feel that this village has the potential that other river towns don’t,” he says. “This village has 90 percent of its original architecture, and that’s almost unheard of in America.”

​

Thanks to Andrea Caccuro and Robert Brum for their assistance in writing this essay, which is adapted from the building’s nomination for a 2016 Historic Preservation Merit Award.