Pepe’s Bakery at 55 Broad Street on Amsterdam’s South Side has closed, ending a family tradition of 104 years.

According to Jessica Harding’s story in the Gazette, Paul Pepe cited several reasons for shutting down, including his declining health, increasing flour, wheat and utility costs and the fact that no one in the family’s next generation has an interest in continuing the business. Pepe’s began with the current owners’ great-grandfather, Salvatore Pepe, an Italian immigrant who opened a bakery on River Street.

Salvatore Pepe and his wife Vincenza left Mussomeli in Sicily for Amsterdam and established an Italian import business. Soon, however, Pepe and a friend started a bakery on River Street in 1905.

In those days, dough was mixed by hand and a horse-drawn wagon was used to deliver bread door-to-door. Pepe’s son Ralph, who also had been born in Italy, worked in the business even as a boy. An early 20th century picture shows Ralph and his father each holding one end of a loaf of bread, standing in front of their horse and wagon on Amsterdam’s West Main Street.

In 1924, Ralph Pepe moved the bakery to its current Broad Street location, bought machinery and a Model T Ford to make deliveries. Ralph was married Eva Mancini, one of the daughters of Queen Libby of Fonda, Elizabeth Cassell Mancini. When Ralph and Eva’s first child was born in 1923, Queen Libby flagged down an express train in Fonda so she could make it to St. Mary’s hospital in time for her daughter’s Caesarean section.

Ralph and Eva named their second child Salvatore, in honor of the family patriarch. Young Salvatore Pepe worked in the family bakery as a boy, as did his brothers and sisters.

After World War II service, Salvatore earned a Siena College degree in biology and worked at a General Electric rocket research laboratory before deciding to follow in the family bakery with his wife Geraldine. Brothers Alfonso and Ralph, Junior also worked in the business until 1972.

The Pepe family modernized the bakery. Automatic wrapping and slicing began in 1963.

Two of Salvatore’s sons, Ralph and Paul, operated the bakery until it closed. The brothers baked about 700 loaves of bread and nearly 400 packages of rolls a day. Pepe’s baked goods were sold as far north as Northville and as far west as St. Johnsville.

Their most popular product was the sliced small loaf. They also made “Shorty’s loaf,” a large unsliced loaf originally made for Shorty’s Tavern, also on Broad Street. In addition, Pepe’s Bakery produced sub and round rolls, breadcrumbs, pizza and pizza shells, frozen dough, rye bread, babka, pepper biscuits and friselle.

Pepe’s was part and parcel of the Italian flavor of the South Side. Darlene Gilligan. Gilligan came to Amsterdam in 1952 and she and her husband lived across the street from the bakery.

“I remember when they built the big brick oven,” Gilligan said. “It always seemed like a special day when the truck came with a new load of flour.”

Gilligan said: “On hot summer nights when it was too hot for people to be comfortable, the activity came to life as members of the Pepe family gathered, family by family. A long row of chairs placed across the sidewalk in front of the bakery was a backdrop for their little ones riding back and forth on tricycles or running races. The low chatter of conversation and the squeals of delight by the little ones as candy was passed around often went far into the night.”

Maryann Haskell, who grew up on the South Side, wrote that she remembered the smell of baking bread permeating the neighborhood: “It was difficult to carry the bread home, not because it was hot but because my brother and I would eat it on the way home. This was much to the dismay of our mother who was waiting for the bread for our Sunday meal.”