Watertown's hair-itage The long and short of the Arcade barbering business

All of a sudden in April 1966, there was a new phenomenon in Paddock Arcade.

This was a first for Watertown, or so it was thought.

Pedestrians stopped for a moment or two and peered into the window of one of the shops. Curiosity had gotten the best of them.

A woman — yes, a woman! — was cutting men's hair.

Speedy DeCastro, as popular a barber in town as could be, had taken on a new associate at his Arcade Barber and Beauty Shop, and her job was not on the "beauty" side of the business.

The Watertown Daily Times set the stage for the breakthrough in man's domain when on April 27, 1966, it ran a photograph of Speedy in his barber's chair as he entrusted the care of his scalp to the newcomer.

"There will be something new added to the barbering business in Watertown Saturday when Miss Mary Johnson, Sackets Harbor, starts her duties as a barber at Alfred (Speedy) DeCastro's Arcade Barber and Beauty Shop," the caption began. "Miss Johnson will be the first woman to invade the barbering ranks in Watertown," the caption continued.

The 20-year-old blonde had taken her Syracuse Barber School training to Alexandria Bay for her first job — as a beautician.

"But I thought it would be more interesting to be a barber, because I found that men are more honest and true, less gossipy ... and less back-biting," said the former Miss Johnson, now married to Anthony "Tony" G. Mesires of Three Mile Bay.

"I talked with Speedy, and he immediately offered me the job."

She doesn't know if her presence brought more business, "but I had a lot of window peekers."

She had "no big problems," as she recalls.

"It was quite easy. Oh, there were a couple older gentlemen who wanted to stick with Speedy, because they liked talking sports with him. He had a lot of old cronies in there, talking sports and trading fish stories."

But she found favor with the younger crowd.

"I didn't do skins. The old timers raked the clippers up the sides, and the younger men wanted longer hair. That's what I gave them, to kids and to some older men, too."

Miss Johnson was not the only woman in the shop — there was also a beautician.

The cost for a haircut? Two bucks and a quarter.

Today, how times have changed. Arcade Barber & Beauty, a business that has continued under a succession of owners for at least 138 years, has a staff of six women, no men, and a clientele of men and women.

And the charge for "lowering ears" now "starts at $14," says Shelly Sullivan McLean, the 11th in the line of owners.

Ernest A.E. Meyer appears to be at the root of the business; he operated a shop in upper level unit 30 of the then-21-year-old Arcade in 1871. A native of Germany, he was 13 when his family settled in Watertown in 1861. By the time he was 20, a city directory shows him working as an associate of barber Frederick Wenzel in the Safford Block, at Court Street and Public Square.

Sometime in his first 14 years in the Arcade, he moved his shop downstairs to 6 Paddock Arcade.

Mr. Meyer was joined about 1890 by William L. Barrett, who was 24 at the time. The 1900 directory shows them diversifying within the same storefront, Mr. Barrett handling the barbering and Mr. Meyer running a laundry. By 1903, Mr. Meyer left barbering and took his laundry, now expanded to a lucrative business in Turkish baths, to 22 State St.

He was a picturesque figure on the streets, an immaculate-looking man who always wore a pink carnation in his buttonhole, said his obituary in 1916.

Even on the coldest days, he would not wear an overcoat. A story was told of one wintry day when his friends plotted to challenge his imperviousness to the weather. Each warmly dressed, they stationed themselves at intervals along State Street where he walked on his way to his 612 State St. home. Each person engaged him in conversation as he walked along, detaining him for five or 10 minutes. He never seemed bothered by the cold through it all, and as Mr. Meyer left the last of his encounters, he entered his house with a smile on his face while the others were left shivering.

Mr. Barrett moved his barbershop to 9 Paddock Arcade about 1902, occupying the space formerly filled by William G. Mothersell's Old Post Office Drug Store. As the name indicates, this unit had previously served as the post office.

Mr. Barrett's tenure in the Arcade was short. Ready to set up shop at the St. Regis Inn, Deferiet, he sold his Watertown business in 1904 to a team of barbering brothers, Ivan and George N. Smith.

Ivan made it a short cut, leaving the business by 1907, when George took in a new associate, Emmett E. Martin. That was also a short-term relationship, but George continued clipping away until 1920, when he decided it was time for a career change. Selling new cars, specifically the Hudson, became his major interest, in partnership with Merton E. Eveleigh at their brand-new garage at Arsenal and North Massey streets.

The next heir to the hair business in the Arcade came from Carthage. Benjamin O. Green was a boy when he was taken under the wing of a barber in a shop at the old Elmhirst Hotel in Carthage. Moving to Watertown, he went to work in a shop on Court Street in 1898 and even married a Barber — Clarrie E. Barber. Later, he began a 16-year stint at the Arcade under the Barrett and Smith regimes.

Finally, in March 1920, he became owner of the shop, an eight-chair establishment. He tried expanding, buying a beauty parlor on the second floor of the Arcade, but after three years abandoned that effort.

Mr. Green was the first to maintain ownership to his last day of life, Feb. 1, 1935. Dying at age 55, Mr. Green was given a funeral where fittingly his pallbearers were barbers — Claude O. Dashnaw, Oscar J. Wood, Elmer T. Lacquier and Fred J. Shampine, all employees of his shop, and two former employees, Albert J. Payne and Charles A. Barkley.

The estate of Benjamin Green appears to have kept the trimming business clipping away, according to city directories, until a couple of partners came along in 1937 — Francis A. Jessmine and Alfred H. DeCastro. The two had been a team for about a year, running the Woolworth Barber Shop and Beauty Parlor at the rear of McCarthy's Cigar Store in the Woolworth Building.

Now they were in a more prominent promenade, the Paddock Arcade.

Mr. Jessmine was older than his partner by nearly six years. He had worked under three different barbers prior to 1926, when he was taken in as a partner by Charles K. Crary at McCarthy's. Mr. Jessmine became sole owner of that business in 1933, until December 1936 when he began a 22-year association with Speedy DeCastro.

Mr. DeCastro was born in Rome, Italy, and was 5 years old when his father, Lalo DeCastro, moved the family to Jefferson County. Clayton was home for about three years while Lalo operated the Pastime Hotel there. Lalo subsequently worked on the New York Central Railroad, where he was eventually joined by young Alfred.

Following his marriage in 1926, Alfred and the former Rosalie Ann Netto of Watertown moved to Detroit, where he attended the Molar College of Barbering. After about three years, the couple was back in Watertown. There, cutting hair and boosting local sports would be in the young man's future.

The Jessmine and DeCastro Shop remained tucked in McCarthy's Cigar Store until 1937, when their lease expired. Now they could grab that storefront in the Arcade. The No. 1 chair in the shop became Mr. DeCastro's station, and the business became his shortly before Mr. Jessmine died in 1958.

When did he become "Speedy?" The nickname seems to have made its first appearance in the Watertown Daily Times in January 1947. How he got the name was explained in Smithsonian magazine by Washington Post reporter Michael Kernan, who had formerly written for the Times.

His story in the May 1991 issue recognized the history of the barbering trade.

"My first city editor (Gordon W. Bryant), up in Watertown, New York, used to go across the street to a barber named Speedy H. DeCastro for a six-minute haircut. Not bad, either. ... Speedy would say, 'And that is what you deserve.'"

His traditional rapid cut — "he never considered himself to be a haircut artist, nor did his customers," a Times editorial said — gave him more time to chat about sports, book sporting events or sell tickets to those events, the 1969 editorial continued.

Mr. DeCastro had played on baseball and football teams in his younger days, was an organizer of the Border Baseball League, involved himself in operation of the Watertown Athletics baseball team and the Watertown Red and Black, and was the leader in forming a sports program at Immaculate Heart Academy on West Main Street.

As president of Watertown's "Hot Stove League" and the Italian-American Civic Association, he was handy at snaring major sports celebrities for local events.

Mary Johnson Mesires recalled her most memorable experience in Speedy's shop was in May 1967, when 22-year-old Tony Conigliaro, about to begin his fourth season with the Boston Red Sox, walked in.

"I'm thinking, there's a good-looking guy."

No, she didn't get to apply her clippers and comb to the slugging outfielder's mop of black hair. Here for two-week Army Reserve training at Camp Drum, Mr. Conigliaro had been recruited by Mr. DeCastro to help the Federal Little League open its season.

Mary Johnson was still working in Speedy DeCastro's shop when he died on Feb. 23, 1969, and would remain a couple more years under new ownership before moving on to run her own business on Franklin Street. But she had surrendered years earlier the claim — not of her own making — that she was Watertown's first female barber for gentlemen.

A letter to the Times in June 1966 set the record straight. Charlotte Butterfield, writing from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., made it known that her mother, Emma Bouchard Emery, a graduate of a Chicago barber school, opened a barbershop on Stone Street in 1900. The shop was later moved to Empire Flats, 83 Court St., where Mrs. Emery, wife of Chauncey Emery, continued her business until about 1908.

Mildred Anthony and her son Dean, both of 331 S. Indiana Ave., purchased the Arcade shop business, with a staff of four beauticians and two barbers, in July 1969 from Rosalie DeCastro.

"I was back from Vietnam and had some money saved up," said Dean Anthony, now of Sackets Harbor. "My parents were neighbors and friends of the DeCastros, and mother was a hairdresser. She ran the shop. I didn't have anything to do with it. I was just a long-haired hippie at the time. But I did renovations in the shop for her, and that got me started in the contracting business."

Public Square was booming then, he said, and the business did well.

"My mother loved it there because she met lots of people."

When his father retired from a Civil Service job at Camp Drum, they moved to Florida and sold out in 1975 to Gretchen Paul, Adams Center.

There was one male barber when Mrs. Paul took over. Walter E. Moore was about 68 when he was hired in 1971, a veteran of 50 years in barbering. He died on Oct. 31, 1981, after putting in another day at the shop. Since then, there have been no male haircutters at the Arcade Barber and Beauty shop.

As Public Square lost its luster as a shopping destination, Mrs. Paul saw small shops abandon the Arcade. With closed shops, traffic declined.

In a 1994 interview, she said, "Up until five or six years ago, to get through the Arcade in a hurry, you had to dodge people. This shop was just buzzing."

She took advantage that year of the closing of Chellis-Kemp Opticians, adjacent to the Arcade's east entrance. Taking advantage of the visibility her business would gain on Washington Street, she relocated, leaving the storefront which had been the home of Arcade Barber and Beauty for 92 years.

"We either stay here and die," Mrs. Paul said, "or move on, and I've got to move on. There's no reason for anyone to come through here anymore."

In 1995, Mrs. Paul joined other beauticians in introducing to Watertown the "Look Good ... Feel Better" program, sponsored by the American Cancer Society, in which men and women who are being treated for cancer receive hair and cosmetology services at no charge.

Mrs. Paul retired in 1997 but continued to own the shop for about eight more years, with one of her employees, Sally Cean Shepard — the beautician back in 1966 — serving as manager.

In October 2005, Shelly A. McLean had that "coming full circle" experience when she purchased Arcade Barber and Beauty. It was here, or rather at 9 Paddock Arcade, that she had begun her career as a beautician in 1991 after learning the trade at Jefferson-Lewis Board of Cooperative Educational Services. From there, the 1987 graduate of South Jefferson Central School, Adams, went on to work in a few other shops. And now, she is carrying on the tradition that began with Ernest Meyer.

Mrs. McLean estimates that 30 percent of her customers are men. Serving them, besides Mrs. McLean, are Mrs. Shepard, Kim Hutchins, Dee Dee Foley, Kathi Sanford and Tanya Priest.

"Business is good," Mrs. McLean said. "Women will always be getting their hair done."

Watertown city historian Donna Dutton, Times Librarian Lisa Carr, Mrs. McLean and Mrs. Shepard assisted with research for this story.

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Cocoa Café

top notch

from soup

to desserts

Have you noticed that the Chocolate Cottage on Coffeen Street is now called Cocoa Café?

Amy Rivera is the new owner. She has a degree in culinary arts and restaurant management from Jefferson Community College and she's putting it to good use.

The place looks pretty much the same as it did before, obviously an old house from the outside and the inside. The interior is cozy, all dressed up festive and pretty for the holidays. Kind of like going to grandma's house for Christmas dinner.

While it's got "chicks welcome here" written all over it, I was perfectly comfortable with the surroundings, as was the other male in our foursome. His only complaint was the really small tables, perfect for two but awfully crowded for four. "I felt like I was having a play dinner with my daughter and her dolls," he said. The fact that he's 6 foot, 4 inches tall may have something do to with it, we figured.

That aside, we were about to experience a delightful evening. While the name Cocoa Café would lead you to believe they serve only dessert and coffee, that's not true. We were pleasantly surprised to find a dozen fresh, non-dessert selections that are quite special — delectable without being overly fussy. Perfect for a light dinner or certainly for lunch any day of the week.

Amy makes two homemade soups daily, priced at $4.95 each. We tried both of them, the consensus around the table summed up in one word: fabulous.

Tomato basil was tangy and flavorful, ruby red in color, simple and elegant. But the cream of broccoli — oh, my. It was the richest, creamiest cream of broccoli we've ever had. So creamy, as one person at the table put it, "You could get that soup to have stiff peaks if you whipped it."

The soups were served with a fresh-baked croissant and honey butter nicely piped into a small ramekin.

A mixed greens salad ($4.95) was top-notch, a very large portion containing both romaine lettuce and spring mix along with nuts, berries and blue cheese, tossed with the Cocoa Café's own balsamic vinaigrette.

But here's the best part. When we ordered it, we told Ron, our young waiter, that we'd be sharing the salad. Didn't he arrive with a little side table, the lovely salad, four salad plates, four forks and new napkins. This kid didn't miss a trick all night long.

A neat twist on the same old bruschetta is Cocoa Café's chicken brushetta ($6.95). It's more like a flatbread pizza, a crispy grilled crust covered with roasted red pepper sauce, sliced chicken breast, smoky bacon and blue cheese crumbles that melted ever so slightly after being baked in the oven.

Believe it or not, real men DO eat quiche. A veggie quiche at that! The entree ($5.50) consisted of tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onions encased in luscious creaminess and a perfectly cooked crust.

I love smoked salmon. A very generous amount of lightly smoked, just-salty-enough Nova salmon was served on a pair of petite croissants ($6.50) with slices of red onion and a lovely, smooth cucumber dill spread. Personally, I would have thrown a few capers in for good measure. But not everyone likes capers, I realize.

Two paninis are offered ($6.95 apiece), a "panini du jour" and their menu mainstay, featuring a chicken breast, roasted red peppers and cheddar cheese. It was a man-sized sandwich for sure.The bread had a nice crispy-pully texture and all the ingredients melded together nicely.

The only items we did not try from the non-sweets side of the menu were the chicken salad (chicken, celery, onion and Hellman's mayo in a tomato rosette), "Bastien" salad (same as the salad we had with the addition of chicken, bacon and tangy red pepper sauce) and North Atlantic salmon (7-ounce portion poached with garlic butter, served over mixed greens with honey mustard).

Our truly decadent desserts, priced at $7.95 each, were perfectly outstanding.

Amy's homemade "personal" cheesecake was extremely dense, served on a cookie crust that formed a sweet, soft layer underneath. Choice of toppings are chocolate, whipped cream or fresh seasonal fruit. We went with a drizzle of chocolate.

Flute limoncello was a semi-frozen dessert, served in a tall champagne flute. It incorporated refreshing lemon gelato swirled with limoncello liqueur. The base of the flute was surrounded by a fruit medley of sliced kiwi, a wedge of pineapple, a chunk of banana and a small shortbread cookie. A "spoon" made of hard candy with seasonal red and green swirls was over the top.

I ordered chocolate mousse cake, but I think Ron misunderstood and brought out one of their signature chocolate cups. Probably the better choice, as it turned out — a delicate white chocolate cup, thin as an eggshell, filled with creamy milk chocolate mousse, the plate turned into a work of art with the beautiful fruit medley.

The "bomba" was the most decadent of all, a tall dessert for the tall guy at the little play table: a round ball of vanilla and chocolate gelato with cherry-cinnamon-almond center, encased in a hard, dark chocolate shell, served in a tall, oversized goblet.

His gushing comments: "It was big. It was delicious. It looked fabulous. And that hard chocolate shell ... what more could you ask for?"

All that from a guy who just told us, just moments before, that he could "take or leave" desserts, generally.

A wonderful evening out for four of us came to $84 before leaving a well-deserved tip for Ron.

On the subject of Ron, he seemed to be an absolute natural as a server. I'm sure he received good training from Amy, too. A great career in the hospitality trade awaits him.

And I know some people are weird about sharing food. But that's all we did all night long. Too many good tastes that all needed to be experienced.

A few more things you need to know, and I'll let you go.

There's a large parking lot behind the building with a rear entrance to the restaurant. There's a lighted display case just inside the door, filled with assorted sweets available for takeout (grab the chocolate Christmas trees, if there are still some left). Scones, biscotti and cookies are made fresh daily. And Amy plans to serve wine and beer in the near future.

You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Cocoa Cafe

527 Coffeen St.

Watertown, NY

777-4407

www.cocoacafe.biz

In the former Chocolate Cottage location, serving great decadent desserts as well as a dozen fresh and delicious non-dessert items.

HOURS: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Wednesday

10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday

(check Web site for special New Year's weekend hours)

OUR PICKS:

From the savory side of the menu: Tomato basil soup, cream of broccoli soup, chicken bruschetta, mixed greens salad, grilled chicken panini.

From the sweets side of the menu: Every dessert we sampled was great — personal cheesecake, chocolate mousse in a white chocolate cup, flute limoncello and most decadent of all, the gelato-filled "bomba."

RATING: 4 and one-half forks