Sealey's Lunch, which closed a year ago this month after
many years on Cypress Street, was a neighborhood
institution beloved by generations of area residents and
students and staff at Brookline High School.
News stories at the time of the closing followed local
lore in reporting that Sealey's had been around for just
under a century, founded as Sealey's Ice Cream by a man
named Sealey in 1914.
I set out to learn more. Research showed that, in fact,
there never was a Mr. Sealey and that the history of the
little luncheonette didn't go back quite as far as the
stories assumed.
But the real story of Sealey's — uncovered via town records, newspaper accounts, and interviews
with the children and grandchildren of early owners — reveals a colorful past and one basic
truth: the characteristics that made Sealey's a local institution up until the end — a warm
atmosphere and proprietors who knew and cared about their customers — persisted across
seven decades and several changes of ownership.
Saying Goodbye
It was big news locally
when Sophie and Tony Vessiropoulos announced the closing of Sealey's
Lunch, on Cypress Street just off Route 9, at the end of March 2013.
Longtime customers turned up to say goodbye. The
Tab, the
Globe, and
WCVB-TV all covered the news — in words, pictures, and video. Social media carried fond farewells.
Why would the departure of a small local eatery garner so much attention?
It says something, of
course, about the importance of local institutions to community and sense of place. It says
something, as well, about local history: for even in a town with as rich and varied a past as
Brookline's it's the little stories that really tell it like it was for the people who lived here.
But what
was the history of Sealey's? It took a good bit of digging, but here is some of what I
found.
Sealey's Beginnings
 |
| The brick commercial building at Boylston and Cypress Streets as seen in a 1919 atlas and as it looked last year. |
The block of stores that rounds the southwest corner of Boylston and
Cypress Streets was built between 1913 and 1914. The first occupant of
147 Cypress, the storefront that would become Sealey's, was the Boylston
Bakery, run by a Bavarian immigrant named Jacob Umscheid.
 |
| Boston Globe help wanted ads for Boylston Bakery, 1920 & 1921 |
 |
Lloyd Seaman before he opened
Sealey's Ice Cream in Brookline
(Photo courtesy of Vicky Hubbard) |
Sealey's—then known as Sealey's Ice Cream—first occupied the space
in 1936. The founders were Lloyd and Rhoda Seaman.
Lloyd
Seaman was a former stunt pilot, one of many young men who took up
flying in the wake of Charles Lindbergh's historic 1927 solo flight
across the Atlantic. He ran an air taxi service between Boston Airport
(later Logan Airport) and the Islands until his plane, and his
livelihood, were lost in an accident.
His wife Rhoda,
the former Rhoda Page, was the daughter of the longtime gardener of the
Charles Sprague Sargent estate in Brookline and a 1928 graduate of
Brookline High School.
After the loss of his plane,
Seaman worked for a time at the Neapolitan Ice Cream factory in
Cambridge before opening Sealey's in Brookline in June 1936.
The
opening included an offer of a free sherbet cone for every child
accompanied by an adult. It was announced with an article and an
advertisement in the
Brookline Citizen.
 |
| Advertisement in the June 26, 1936 Brookline Citizen |
The
Citizen described the "unique arrangements" at the new ice cream specialty shop.
Customers
may watch all the stages of preparation, which includes the use of
cream high in butter fat content, and the use of fresh fruit flavors in
season. The black and white motif of the booths and tables is followed
throughout the shop and gives an air of cleanliness to the whole store.
The
Citizen
also noted that Rhoda Seaman was in charge of booth and counter service
and that "Every package of this distinctive ice cream that is sent out
is packed in an insulated bag to insure proper condition at the time of
serving."
 |
| Rhoda and Lloyd Seaman in their flying days (Photo courtesy of Vicky Hubbard) |
But if there was no Mr. Sealey where did
the name Sealey’s come from? The Seamans’ daughter, Vicky Hubbard,
solved the mystery. Her father, she told me, made up the name as a
combination of his own last name and that of his best friend Fred
Beardsley.
Lloyd Seaman, on the right in the photo at left, and his
friend Fred Beardsley in later years. A combination of their last names
gave Sealey's Ice Cream, later Sealey's Lunch, its name.
(Photo courtesy
of Vicky Hubbard)
Sealey's stayed under the
proprietorship of the Seamans for only a short time. Not long after
founding the store Lloyd Seaman, perhaps driven by the same restless
spirit with which he took to the air, left Brookline and Sealey's for
Panama. His family followed soon after, and for a dozen years the
Seamans made and served ice cream for the crews of thousands of ships
passing through the Canal Zone.
Italian Ice Cream
The
second owner of Sealey's, starting in 1937, was an Italian immigrant
named James (born Giacomo) Malerbi. Malerbi was the youngest of 13
children. In March 1915, four months before his 17th birthday and two
months before Italy entered the First World War, his family sent him to
the United States to avoid the draft.
Malerbi lived at
first with his sister Orlinda and her husband Dante Baldi in Boston.
Baldi was an ice cream maker, working for the C.C. Whittemore catering
company in Boston. Malerbi, too, went into the ice cream business and
worked for a time for the same Neapolitan Ice Cream factory in Cambridge
where Lloyd Seaman had worked. It’s uncertain if they knew each other,
but Malerbi took over Sealey’s after Seaman left for Panama. He owned
the store for more than 20 years.
Advertisement (right) in the Brookline Citizen, July 1937. The “Former C.C. Whittemore Foreman” referred to was most likely James Malerbi’s brother-in-law, Dante Baldi.
James
Malerbi’s grandson Robert Malerbi lived with his family at 126 Cypress
Street, across Boylston Street, in the 1950s. He remembers his
grandfather running across the street to the shop to bring back ice
cream for dessert after family dinners. But most of what he knows about
Sealey’s comes from stories his father Robert would tell.
My
father said they did a tremendous business with the wealthy people
making ice cream cakes. He also used to tell stories about high school
kids hanging out at the store during the war. They couldn’t always make
ice cream during the war [because of shortages], but the kids would hang
out there anyway.
A Neighborhood Institution
 |
| Sealey’s regularly took out ads in the Murivian, the Brookline High School yearbook, including this one from the 1940s |
James Malerbi sold the store in 1958. The new owners
were Louis and Rose Tanzi. The Tanzis had owned the Mobil station on the
northeast corner of Cypress and Boylston Streets — where Audy Mobil is
today — before moving across the street and into a very different kind
of business.
The former owner gave them a hand. “Mr.
Malerbi worked with my parents when they first took over,” says Carol
Ross, the Tanzis’ daughter. “He stayed on with them to help for a while.
He taught my father how to make ice cream.”
Under her
parents’ stewardship Sealey’s was open for breakfast and lunch, in
addition to serving homemade ice cream. Two of her aunts also worked at
the store, says Ross, and she herself worked there each summer.
In
those days, a lot of the big homes around there were rooming houses,
[she recalls]. There were people who came in and had breakfast every
morning.
Some of them, she noted, asked if
they could pay on Friday, which was payday, and her father said “Sure”
and didn’t even write down an amount. (A customer told a similar story
about the Vessiropoulos family when Sealey’s closed last year.)
The last big group he got was the high school kids getting out of school. He would close around 4 in the afternoon.
Sealey’s
was also popular with town workers. “I remember many a day,” says Ross,
“when there were snowstorms and my father had a cot” — the Tanzis lived
in Jamaica Plain — “and he would sleep there and open early for the
people who worked all night clearing snow.”
“My parents
loved Brookline. A good part of their lives focused on Brookline. They
made many friendships that lasted long after they left.”
Rose
& Louis Tanzi (above) with the cake presented to them at a
farewell party thrown by customers
after their retirement from Sealey’s
in 1970 (Photo courtesy of Carol Ross)
Renamed
Sealeys Lunch, the business passed through several more owners between
the Tanzis and the Vessiropoulos family, the last owners. It’s gone now,
but holds a special place in local memory and in the history of the
neighborhood it served for more than 75 years.
(This article originally appeared in the members' newsletter of the Brookline Historical Society)
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