PARSIPPANY − From their vantage point along Route 46, the Cerbo family has not only witnessed the exponential growth of their hometown, but supplied much of the material that transformed it into the largest municipality in Morris County.
"We helped to build a lot of Parsippany," said Cathy Cerbo, who closed her family business, Cerbo's Lumber and Hardware, on Tuesday after 76 years and three generations.
From 1950 - two years after S. Cerbo and Sons opened to the public - to 1970, Parsippany-Troy Hills grew from about 15,000 residents to more than 55,000 and became the crossroads of North Jersey commerce, a home to Fortune 500 corporation headquarters in its many office complexes.
Now, many of those vacant offices are giving way to demolition and redevelopment. And with that transition also comes the conclusion of a business that connected homeowners and contractors with the lumber, hardware and other products they needed to fuel the post-World War II building boom in suburban New Jersey.
"Back then, it was houses," said Pat Cooper, who married into the Cerbo family and worked there for more than 20 years. "A lot of the farms were being sold and made into developments."
Decades later, with little developable land left in town, Cerbo said the business flexed with the times and "found its niche."
"Commercial work, municipal work, apartments, schools, remodeling, additions," Cerbo said.
Why sell now?
The Cerbo family outlasted generations of competition, including a Channel Lumber location right down the road that later became a Rickel Home Center. And despite fierce competition today from big-box retailers like Home Depot, business was still good, Cerbo said.
Cerbo and Cooper chuckled about years of false rumors they were planning to close and sell their 4-acre property with coveted highway frontage. "It is a very good location," Cerbo said. "We always knew we would get an offer worth accepting."
She declined to reveal the terms of the purchase agreement, stating only that the buyer was "a local developer."
"It was the right offer at the right time by the right developer," she said. "The plans are yet to be determined."
Italian immigrants planted roots
Cathy's grandfather, Salvatore Cerbo, came to the United States in 1910, one year after his brother, Antonio, planted his roots in the Parsippany area. A farmer by trade, Antonio started with pushcart produce sales in 1913. Some of the 26 acres of what became known as the Cerbo Greenhouse and Garden Center on Littleton Road were claimed by the construction of Route 80 in the 1970s. But that business is still there, recognized as the town's oldest after 112 years.
"My grandfather worked there for a time, became a citizen first and then went to fight in World War I," Cerbo said.
When he returned, Salvatore turned to the building trade and eventually bought a house on his future business property that is still there. Surrounded by fig trees, the Dutch Colonial house was occupied by Cerbo family members until about 1990. It is used mostly for storage now.
Prior to opening the lumber yard on the property in 1948, Salvatore opened a roadside stand and lodge-style tavern there in the late 1930s.
The Cerbos expanded the lumber business in the 1950s, acquiring additional property and expanding the main building to add the familiar two-story storefront visible to motorists passing by.
Salvatore's sons, Rocco and Cathy's father, Nick, represented the second generation of the family business. So did Cathy's aunt Fil, but "Back then, the women didn't get any credit," Cathy said, nodding to a vintage "S. Cerbo and Sons" sign on the wall.
Nick went on to become a revered elder member of the community, a go-to local historian and champion of heart transplants after receiving his own transplant in 1996, with the surgery performed by Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Pat Cooper has worked both sides of the extended family business, starting in the lumber yard from 1976 to 1982. He married Cathy's cousin, Cindy, on the greenhouse side of the family and went to work there before coming back to the lumber yard in 2007.
At age 68, he plans to retire and work on his golf game, frequently at the municipally owned Knoll Golf Club. Cerbo said her future is still to be determined, but stay tuned. "I plan to be a productive member of society," she said.
She also extended warm wishes to the many people employed there over the years.
"They are like family to us," she said. "They helped to make this business possible."