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Our History
It all started in the Spring of
1944 after Albert Pierri, my father, came home from the Army. Dad and
Frank Jorden opened the Glen Way Tavern (which got it's name because it
was located on the way to the Watkins Glen Speedway). Dad built a small
food business at the Glen Way, but the business was mostly liquor. It was
more of a night club than a restaurant.
The summer of 1956 Dad took over the Hotel Central which was located at
306 Baker Street, just across the street from the Glen Way Tavern.
The Hotel Central was built in the early 1900 by the Crowely Family, which
ran the hotel for twenty to twenty five years. At this time, there was a
chain of old Central Rail Road Hotels & Restaurants throughout the United
States. The buildings would sleep 20 people at a time. In the early years
the crews would work around the clock. The train crews would sleep over at
the hotel until their trains were re-assigned to depart.
Sometime in the 1930's the Schutt family started running the Hotel
Central. Prohibition was over and the Schutt family made the Hotel Central
into a night club. They took out the lobby and ten sleeping rooms on the
first floor. This is where they put in a bar and dance floor. The Schutt
family ran the bar until Joseph Gois bought them out in the 1940's. Joseph
Gois ran the Hotel until Albert Pierri took over in 1956.
I remember it as if it were yesterday, Dad would sit me on the end of the
bar and tell me not to move. Dad and his brothers where tearing out the
restaurant which was located in the cellar in the beginning. Before Dad
moved in, he moved the restaurant up to the dance floor area. Dad took the
night club look out of the Hotel and started what is the neighborhood
family type restaurant it is today.
In 1970 Dad had taken ill and close the restaurant for almost a year.
Francis Pierri, my brother, was working at Corning Inc. as a Electrical
Engineer. I was overseas in the Navy serving on the USS Point Defiance LSD
31 off the coast of Vietnam.
Francis bought Dad out in 1971 and left Corning Inc. In 1972 I returned
home from the Navy and worked for New York Electric & Gas Co. as a First
Class Lineman. Francis worked the family business until 1980. Later in
1980, Francis sold the business to an outside concern. It did not work out,
and this is when Diane & I bought the Hotel Central.
We worked the family business for 5 years trying to get it back in shape.
We tried softball, rock-and-roll, band fest, and many other things. Things
just couldn't click. This is when we decided to add the small dinning room
over the front porch. This was the beginning of the business we enjoy
today. We finished with the construction in July of 1987. This is also the
year we lost Dad to Cancer.
In 1988 our business started to grow with the popular Thursday
Spaghetti and Friday Fish Fry, so we built the dinning room on the back of
the building. We started to refer to the business as a hotel and not a
restaurant, because we still had people living upstairs. This is also the
year Diane & I closed down the hotel and focused on building the business
as a family restaurant. We had just started the new era with the business
and along with it a new name, Pierri's Central Restaurant.
Diane & I worked the family business on Baker Street until April of 1992.
The State of New York Department of Transportation took over our building
for the highway 17 bypass. But we were not ready to end the business we
had worked so hard to continue and developed. We moved our restaurant to
Painted Post, NY to start a new phase in the Old Hotel Central.
The building we bought was the old Poster Bar & Restaurant. We also
purchased the insurance company next door. My cousin David Pierri was the
contractor, and I supervised the whole project. The project took 9 weeks
to remodel both buildings. We reopened as Pierri's Central Family
Restaurant of Painted Post, NY in February 1993.
The new restaurant seats 127 people, 27 more then Baker Street. The
business grew in leaps and bounds from 1992 to 1996. In 1996 Diane & I
felt we should build a large foyer to accommodate the growing business. We
hired Pierri Construction once again to assist with the project. One thing
led to another and we ended up with a new dinning room that seats an
additional 50 people, and a banquet room that seats 42 complete with bar
upstairs.
The New Central Restaurant at 104 Village Square in Painted Post has
become the meeting place for the Southern Tier of New York. Our restaurant
now seats 210 people, 160 downstairs, and 50 upstairs. We would like the
opportunity to thank all the relatives and friends that helped Diane and I
get here today. A special thanks to my father, Albert Pierri for giving me
the drive I have. And to my wife, Diane, for standing behind me in all the
ups and downs of this long road that we have been on for the past 18
years. |
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