Bill Manfredo's turtle soup brought many visitors to Jeannette.
"I remember standing on the corner as a policeman and people would stop and ask where they could get the turtle soup," said Carl Matt, a 41-year veteran of Jeannette's police department and a former mayor of the city.
William A. Manfredo Jr., 88, of Maple Drive, Edinboro, died Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005, at Edinboro Manor.
Matt said police were seldom called to the Clay Avenue hotel and bar operated by Mr. Manfredo and his brother, Thomas.
"They took care of their own troubles. Tommy was the bartender, and he could handle himself. He was a better boxer than Billy," Matt said. "I never had to break up a fight there in 41 years on the force."
Thomas Manfredo died in 1997.
Jeannette businessman John Busato remembers Manfredo's Hotel from his days growing up on Charles Street.
"That was a real old-fashioned bar. They had the old brass rail to put your feet on," he said.
Bars in those days did not have stools, but that didn't stop patrons from lining up five or six deep when Jeannette's glass factories emptied out during shift changes.
In addition to the hotel, Mr. Manfredo owned Eckert's Jewelry Store in Jeannette.
The jewelry store opened in 1891. The hotel was built next door in 1893.
Mr. Manfredo's niece, Tamara Panoski, started working in the jewelry store when she was 16. She stayed away from the turtle soup, though.
"I never ate the turtle soup. I didn't like it," she said.
The turtles were delivered live and killed and skinned in the hotel's basement, Matt said. Subsequent owners kept the same apparatus to be true to the Manfredo recipe, he said.
"They were huge," Panoski said of the turtles. "Their shells were maybe 20-30 inches in diameter."
Greg Williams bought the hotel from the Manfredo brothers in 1983.
"There's a lot of good memories," he said. "He taught me how to cook."
Mr. Manfredo was an original, Williams said. "He used to open at 7 a.m. to catch third shift in a white shirt and tie," he said.
Williams sold the hotel to Frank Trigona in 1987. Both men kept the turtle soup on their menus.
Trigona said he dropped the soup about six or seven years ago. "Turtles are hard to come by, and cleaning a turtle takes a good hour and a half," he said.
The Manfredo brothers also kept a weight room and a steam room in the basement of their hotel.
Trigona said the brothers had many stories about the bar and its heyday.
During Prohibition, Trigona said, they relined brake shoes and clutch facings in the bar area. "They pulled the bar out and bolted the machines to the floor." he said. "When Prohibition was over, they put the bar back in."
The hotel was always considered "high class," Trigona said, because the streetcar stopped there.
"That was considered the center of town," he said.
Matt said the Manfredos, like restaurateur Sam Felder, and the Gillespie Brothers who owned a department store, were "a big part of the history of the city."
Mr. Manfredo is survived by a stepson, Robert Heiges and his wife, Sheryl, of Waterford; a sister, Grace Kurth, in California; eight nieces and nephews; and a caregiver, Norma Newman, of Edinboro.
Friends may call on Saturday from 2 p.m. until the time of a funeral service at 3:30 p.m. at the Glunt Funeral Home, 210 Erie St., Edinboro. Burial will be Monday in Twin Valley Memorial Park, Delmont. Memorials may be made to the American Heart Association, 615 S. Main St., Greensburg, PA 15601-3018.
Those wishing to send condolences are asked to visit www.icgerie.com .
