De Luxe Cleaners, opened in Great Depression, closing after 81 years

In the throes of the Great Depression, Joseph and Audrey Bertolani defied the logic of the time.

They borrowed some money from a local business owner in 1935 to open De Luxe Cleaners on McHenry Avenue. Initially, they were strictly a backroom wholesale operation that catered to businesses. But they realized that wouldn’t be enough to sustain it. So a year later, they built a room onto the front and expanded to include the retail side of what blossomed into a family business that would span three generations. There won’t be a fourth.

After 81 years, great friendships and tons of memories, the cleaners will close its doors for good Saturday at 1 p.m., owner Carl Gagliardi said.

It is a time, he said, that the family knew would come after his wife of 61 years, Charleen, died in 2014. The Gagliardis took over the business from the Bertolanis – Charleen’s parents – 52 years ago, and then running it together since 1994 with son Jim Gagliardi and daughter Pam Munthe.

“We started talking about it two years ago,” Gagliardi said. “My heart wasn’t in it without (Charleen). I talked to the kids and they felt the same. I’m middle-aged (85) and I still have a few good years in me to travel and do things with the grandkids.”

To this day, their business maintains the kind of customer service reminiscent of the 1950s and ’60s. They’ve continued to pick up and drop off orders long after the era of milkmen and doctors’ house calls faded away, relegated to TVLand reruns from the days of black-and-white shows.

“I used to pick up Dr. Cooper’s suits in the 1950s,” Gagliardi said. “He lived at Magnolia and Needham, and I had a key to the house. I’d pick out five or six suits that needed cleaning, and take them. In fact, I had the keys to several homes or gates in town.”

In fact, when it came time to close, the family didn’t sell the business as a whole – only their pickup/delivery routes, to Superior Cleaners.

“I’ll stay with them for a couple of weeks until they learn the routes,” Gagliardi said.

In March 2014, Bee columnist Jeff Jardine featured De Luxe as the Gagliardis and Munthe tried to reunite six wedding dresses – all cleaned and packed and abandoned by owners from as far back as the 1950s – with the owners who left what most would consider heirlooms and never returned to get them.

“We found most of (the families),” Gagliardi said.

The two dresses whose owners they couldn’t find went to Marissa’s Closet in Ripon, a nonprofit that provided prom formals and wedding dresses to girls and women who otherwise could not afford them. The nonprofit closed in May after a seven-year run.

And Saturday, De Luxe Cleaners will close as well, Gagliardi said.

“It’s time.”

This story was originally published December 27, 2016 at 4:55 PM with the headline "De Luxe Cleaners, opened in Great Depression, closing after 81 years."