Quick, Timely Reads
On the Waterfront
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Bay Rat Sweet Tooth Embraces
Neighborhood Candy Makers
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Dr. David Frew, a prolific writer, author, and speaker grew up on Erie's lower west side as a proud "Bay Rat," joining neighborhood kids playing and marauding along the west bayfront. He has written for years about his beloved Presque Isle and his adventures on the Great Lakes. In this series, the JES Scholar-in-Residence takes note of life in and around the water.
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Prior to the questionable creation of the Downtown Transit-Way Mall, the Pulakos State Street address had become a part of the product branding: “Pulakos 926 Candies.” |
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One of the best features of Downtown Erie during the 1950s was candy making. There were two amazing stores on State Street, Pulakos and Chacona’s, and both featured unbelievable window displays. Both candymakers decorated their storefront windows with huge chocolate sculptures each year at Christmas. Detailed castles surrounded by dozens of figures, all hand-sculpted from chocolate, graced display windows each year. The combination of the nearby Boston Store windows with the new Pulakos and Chacona’s displays would bring crowds of people downtown just to look. We could not wait to see what the candymakers would come up with each holiday season.
Many downtown stores sold candy, but Pulakos and Chacona’s were different. They were specialty candy stores and sometimes when the wind was just right you would smell the seductive chocolate while exiting the bus from blocks away. While the specialty candy store offerings were pricey, both stores seemed to appeal to casual customers like us kids by offering sample bags sold by the pound so that we could get a taste of chocolate for a few cents. We may not have been connoisseurs but it was easy to detect the difference between run-of-the-mill candy bars that we purchased regularly and the fresh chocolate at either Pulakos or Chacona’s.
While we were not clear about ethnic food specialties, we knew that both the Pulakos and Chacona families were Greek, which made us wonder if chocolate making was somehow exclusively connected to that country (later we would learn that Italians from our own neighborhood were also amazing chocolate makers). The downtown candy stores did offer additional items, including baked goods and ice cream, but we wondered if Greece was a nation where everyone ate candy all of the time. What a wonderful place it must have been: a nation filled with castles and chocolates. Willie Wonka on steroids!
Both of Erie’s downtown master candymakers were born in Greece during the late 1800s. They followed slightly different paths of immigration, which led them to Erie’s State Street. George Chacona came here in 1893 after a brief stop in Philadelphia and Gus Pulakos arrived in 1903 from Milwaukee. Chacona began at 810 State Street and moved to 816 a few years later. Pulakos, who famously built his business at 926 State Street, actually began at 1108 State Street and moved to 825 before settling at the long-familiar store in the 900 block. Two generations of Chacona’s (George and Hercules) operated the State Street candy business successfully for more than 70 years before closing their doors in the late 1960s. When he finally retired, George Chacona was celebrated as the dean of Erie’s Downtown business community and “the grand old man of chocolate.” A founder of the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church (now on West Lake Road), Chacona had 12 children and lived to the ripe old age of 97.
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Gus Pulakos became famous for fighting Erie’s Transit-Way Mall from the mid-1960s until he finally gave up and moved to East 26th and Parade streets in 1971. The pedestrian mall, built in response to an exodus of downtown retailers, cut off all non-emergency vehicular traffic on State Street from 10th to Sixth streets, which prompted widespread opposition from the remaining retailers. Pulakos’ legal battle, which went all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court before it was dismissed, was largely based upon his argument that he had integrated his 926 State Street address into the name of his candies. During his protracted fight he warned that the Transit-Way Mall would not work, and that it would inevitably be the death of many of Erie’s remaining downtown anchor businesses. Those warnings proved prophetic.
Four generations of Pulakos family members operated the business until 2009 when it was sold to local entrepreneur Joseph Hilbert. Over the years. the business diversified and spread out, offering new products such as specialty ice cream. It also added several locations, including the Millcreek Mall.
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Romolo and Elizabeth Stefanelli |
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Meanwhile, back in the 1950s, candy making was alive and well right in our neighborhood. Romolo Stefanelli and his wife, Elizabeth, were operating a candy business between West Fourth and Fifth streets on Raspberry Street. They were right on our way to school. Hand-crafted candy was not the exclusive domain of Greek people, and it wasn’t all the way downtown, either!
Many of us first became familiar with Stefanelli Candy through St Andrew School, where our classes sponsored holiday sales contests, particularly at Easter. Schoolchildren would be asked to sell Stefanelli chocolates, including all sizes of chocolate Easter bunnies as well as filled chocolate eggs. Promotional programs used the sales of these treats to help fund school projects, including curriculum improvements and textbooks.
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Foggia, Puglia, is a beautiful cliffside city on the eastern coast of Southern Italy,
opposite the Province of Calabria.
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Romolo Stefanelli, Erie’s Italian candymaker emigrated at age 14 from Foggia, Italy to New York City, where he apprenticed as a chocolate maker. After he learned the craft, Romolo moved to Erie’s lower westside, where he entered the candy business with his wife, Elizabeth, in 1929. Stefanelli’s Candy thrived for more than 90 years and still has a store on West Eighth Street. Tony Stefanelli, third generation candy maker, learned the craft from his grandfather, father, and uncle and worked with them until the original family business was sold to outside interests in 1993. Later he made the decision to open his own chocolate venue and began a long and extensive planning process. Naming the new store Romolo’s as a tribute to his grandfather, he built on a large plot of land on West Eighth Street. Romolo’s is just south of Frontier Park’s Lake Erie Arboretum (L.E.A.F.) adjacent to Cascade Creek. Tony Stefanelli’s beautiful vision for Erie opened in 2003. |
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Tony Stefanelli (center right) poses with his family, who have joined him in the new venture. |
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When the new Romolo’s was being built observers commented that it seemed to be too big – too large for an Erie chocolate shop. But Tony Stefanelli knew better. Locating the business near the Bayfront Parkway and breezeway to Interstate 79 proved to be successful from the start. According to Pennsylvania Department of Transportation traffic volume studies, a combination of the volume from I-79 and the geometric traffic increases on the Bayfront Parkway have increased the flow in front of the new Romolo store by a factor of almost 10. In adition to increased roadway traffic on West Eighth Street, the arboretum just across the street began to bustle with foot traffic as it developed. In addition to Frontier Park and arboretum visitors there were constant adjunct activities in the park, including famers markets, kids soccer, and music festivals.
Somehow Tony Stefanelli is not just a talented candymaker. He is also the business genius who anticipated unbelievable traffic growth on West Eighth Street. His new Romolo’s was not to be a simple candy store in the tradition of previous downtown icons, Pulokos and Chaconas. The new Romolo’s houses the large kitchen and assembly areas needed to produce the volume of candy needed to fulfill local demad, a contemprary coffee shop, and a cafe. And there is much more there than candy. In addition to selling the candies that his family made famous, Romolo’s offers ice cream, baked goods, and more. And as an added bonus, it is a popular jazz venue in season.
Romolo’s has brightened Erie’s westside. Its beautiful Italian style building has made a former rundown corner come to life turning a rundown area into a neighborhood jewel. Romolo’s is now a destination for locals as well as tourists, not to mention the place to get sponge candy.
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One of Erie’s iconic specialty foods is Grampa Romolo’s sponge candy. |
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Accidental Paradise Available at TRECF!
Accidental Paradise
by Dr. David Frew and Jerry Skrypzak
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The beautiful book on Presque Isle published by authors David Frew and Jerry Skrypzak – “Accidental Paradise: 13,000-Year History of Presque Isle” – is on sale at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center’s gift shop and through a special website, AccidentalParadise.com.
The book, priced at $35 plus tax and shipping, can be ordered now through the website sponsored by the TREC Foundation, AccidentalParadise.com.
Presque Isle Gallery and Gifts on the main floor of TREC, located at 301 Peninsula Drive, Suite #2, Erie, PA 16505 will also handle sales daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information, send an email to aperino@TRECF.org.
To watch "Accidental Paradise: Stories Behind The Stories" click here.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Historian and author David Frew, Ph.D., is a Scholar-in-Residence at the JES. An emeritus professor at Gannon University, he held a variety of administrative positions during a 33-year career. He is also emeritus director of the Erie County Historical Society/Hagen History Center and is president of his own management consulting business. Frew has written or co-written 35 books and more than 100 articles, cases, and papers.
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