Round The Square:

RTS for Wednesday, April 23, 2008

ALLEGRETTE’S: The headline read “Candy Store Closing Ends Era.”

On April 19, 1958, the Era paid tribute to Allegrette’s Confectionery Shop at 38 Mechanic St., closing after six decades.

“Shades of a colorful era, before the days of chain stores and bottled pop machines, still linger in the empty, sweet-smelling Allegrette’s Confectionary Shop,” the article begins.

Then-owner Ernestine Allegrette had closed up the family business that was once an old-time, gas-lit ice cream parlor.  Ernestine’s father, Peter, began the store back in 1892, soon after he arrived from Italy.

“The dim interior today still is strongly reminiscent of the past,” the story read. “The huge mirrors, framed in heavy, carved dark moldings, once gave back reflections of Bradfordians stopping in for house specialties like homemade ice cream or homemade pop served at a long marble counter.

“Candy jars, now empty, were once filled with hand-made confections. And the round, marble-topped tables with their curlicue chairs, were crowded with customers in the dress of another day.”

Saturday night was the night when the farmers came to town.  Holidays were also special — especially Christmas.  That was when the store featured Carmen Allegrette’s hand-made, wafer-thin ribbon candy.

“We would hang it on hooks like taffy,” Ernestine recalled. “Carmen wore powdered gloves to handle it, and he’d keep it warm with gas jets to manipulate it.”

Another Allegrette specialty was colored candy beads used for Christmas tree decorations. Peter Belli, an uncle, helped with hand-dipped chocolate mounds, coconut kisses and European mints.

Time changed all that. “Large companies manufactured ice cream, so we stopped making it here in 1920,” Ernestine said. “We ordered it from Buffalo in big, wooden tubs, packed in salt and ice. Now ice cream is a chain store item.

“Automobiles made a difference, too. People no longer strolled through Bradford streets, but were driving around in cars. By the early 1930s, we made only Christmas candles.”

Peter Allegrette died in 1921, at which time Ernestine took over, along with her mother and her brother Joseph.

Ernestine, along with her dog, Trixie — who even accompanied her to church — continued to live above the shop in family rooms where she and her siblings had been born.

“And in a still back room, remain marble slabs for cooling candles and a few huge kettles, reminders of another time.”

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