Half a Century of Beauty Turns Golden

Saturday afternoons were regularly filled with clients for Nick DeVincenzo, who began working at Continental 109 Salon on Pondfield Road 50 years ago. 

“…They used to have very fancy balls almost every Saturday night,” he says. “They used to come in [and] I remember, I used to be booked from 3 o’clock on just to re-comb their hair on Saturdays before they went to the Siwanoy Country Club…”

Women would wear long gowns and, in the summer, men would don white jackets and bowties, he remembers.

But while the occasions may have changed, DeVincenzo’s presence in the salon has not. It was half a century ago this month—April 1, 1961—that DeVincenzo first started his career in the village.

A former colleague had come to work in Bronxville and a few months later gave him a call.

“They had just opened this salon,” he says. “There were two partners and she was working there as a manicurist, so they needed another hair dresser and they called me up.”

DeVincenzo worked on staff for ten years before getting an offer to buy another salon in the village. He talked it over with his bosses, including Anthony Magnotta, and they soon bought and managed both salons. Then, in 1981, DeVincenzo began running the Continental on his own.

But hairdressing wasn’t DeVincenzo’s first job.

In his native Italy, DeVincenzo went to school to study shoe design and practiced the craft while living with his family in Venezuela. After DeVincenzo arrived in the U.S.—on Thanksgiving Day 1957, he remembers—he took a job working at a Brooklyn shoe factory.

 “At 21, I was the head foreman of 400 people,” he says, explaining that he helped create the new shoe styles.

Before long DeVincenzo was given the opportunity to become a partner in the factory, but he turned it down.

“…I refused because in the meantime, a friend of mine who was working there, he asked me about going to hairdressing school at night,” he says.

While still working at the factory, Nick began taking night classes at a beauty school on 43^rd and Broadway in Manhattan and working at salons on Saturdays.

“I enjoyed the shoe design, but I wanted to try something different,” he says.

The shift into hairdressing was a successful one for DeVincenzo, and the salon has grown over the past five decades. He explains how, in the beginning, there were about five hairdressers on staff and today the full-service hair salon has some 30 people on the payroll, who see hundreds of clients each week.

To what does DeVincenzo attribute the success—especially over so many years—to?

“Hard work. Really.” he says, along with putting in the hours. “I mean, there were never limits [to] what time I would come in in the morning.”

DeVincenzo’s son Mark, who came on board eight years ago, says. “I know that anytime someone opens a store in town, he always tells them, ‘Make sure you’re there. Make sure you’re there.’ You really can’t leave small businesses. You really have to be in touch with it and have a hand on the pulse at all times,” he says.

For DeVincenzo, that includes a dedication to both the clients and the staff.

“…Everybody working in [the salon] is a part of my family,” he says. “I really, really care for all the people that work together,” he says.

Maria Agosto, who has been working at the salon for 20 years, says of the clients that DeVincenzo takes pride in each of the clients that visits the salon. “And the people that leave here feel that and that’s why they keep coming back,” she says. 

With that foundation and Mark bringing what he describes as “a fresh pair of eyes,” to help the business continue to grow, the salon regularly has training and education sessions.

“It’s a great blend of a modern day salon as far as technique and advances go and the type of work we do, but it has the feeling of home in so many ways,” says Mark.

Agosto echoes that sentiment. “[It’s] a feeling of what [DeVincenzo] wanted to achieve for the last 50 years,” she says, “A hometown salon with the feel and the modernness and the technique and advancement of a New York City salon.”

For now, DeVincenzo has slowed down a bit and goes into the salon about three days a week.

And for those just starting out, he offers this advice: “Hard work. And respect for the clients. That’s the most important. And education. Education is very, very important.”