HAWORTH—Many people of the Northern Valley will remember Pero’s, the restaurant on Hardenburgh Avenue, with its red-and-white-checked tablecloths and the best pizza around. Since the 1990s the restaurant has been called Andiamo, and it’s going strong.
Operating in three centuries and across many owners, there has always been a restaurant in this location since Fredericks Hotel opened in 1885.
The late Haworth historian Mary Lou Boyd wrote the following: “Older than the borough, the Fredericks Hotel was built in 1885 and was owned by the grandfather of Mrs. Mildred Taufer of Harrison Street. She remembers riding horse-drawn sleighs through snow-covered roads. She proudly recalls that it was horses owned by her father, Frederick Bender, which drove the borough’s first fire engine in 1908.”
From the 1920s until it became Pero’s in the 1970s, the place operated as The Antlers, a restaurant, hotel, and dance hall—as well as a speakeasy. By day, The Antlers hosted meetings and luncheons for many local organizations, from sports clubs to religious groups. It was a popular spot for communion breakfasts. Yet, if century-old news articles are to be believed, the scene was much different when the sun went down.
In the mid-1920s, neighbors described it as a road house, where a raucous jazz band disturbed the peace late into the night and there were drunken brawls that bordered on riots. One neighbor said the sound coming from Antlers Hotel was more like “someone beating on a dish pan” than actual music. They complained of people using foul language and couples parked in front of nearby houses for “petting parties.”
In September 1925, the Haworth Mayor and Council ordered the proprietors of The Antlers to shut things down by 12:30 sharp each night. In general, the ownership tried to comply. Some patrons objected to this, and there was a case in which a group of men, who had arrived to find the place closed, broke the windows and started firing off their pistols on the front lawn.
In 1927, a stag party was broken up when county detectives raided The Antlers. Five female performers were fined $5 each for indecent behavior and ordered out of Bergen County. A man was fined $25 for his role in the event, which was the telling of questionable stories. Police seized two pints of liquor and arrested Antlers proprietor Gustav Loveland. Tickets for the event had sold for $4 each, and the men had been promised a show like nothing they had ever seen.
Liquor raids continued at The Antlers into the 1930s. In October 1932, Bergen County detectives and state troopers descended on the place and attempted to send a strong message. In addition to seizing the liquor and arresting the owner and barkeep, they stripped the place of furnishings. The authorities took the bar, tables, chairs, rugs, a refrigerator, piano, the cash register, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down.
In the following year, the 21st Amendment marked the repeal of Prohibition, and things seem to have quieted down at the restaurant.
In the 1940s and 1950s the Gattone family (Peter, Annette, and Peter Jr.) operated The Antlers. Fred and Ernesta Battiston followed in the 1960s, and then Rose and Jack Pero, who bought the business in 1971.
The Peros sold to Don and Linda Dickstein in 1990, and Andiamo was born.