It was last call at Casale’s Tavern & Motel last month.
Bartenders served the final round of drinks during a July 22 closing party where long-time customers and friends were invited one final time to raise their thumbs in honor of the family-owned Buffalo Avenue tavern and restaurant and its members-only club, a group of regulars affectionately known as “The Dumschitts.”
While saying goodbye to the place his parents built from the ground up is bittersweet, long-time owner Joe Casale and members of his family did so with a tremendous sense of pride.
They leave knowing they were part of something special: A homegrown business that meant a lot to a lot of people during 75 years of successful operation in the City of Niagara Falls.
“I really miss the customers we had over the years,” Joe Casale said during a recent interview that included his three children and grandson, Dominic. “That’s what I really miss. Everything else that’s going on around the world, I don’t miss that. But I really miss the customers. We had a lot of good times there. A lot, a lot of good times.”
MAKING A CHANGE
Joe’s parents, Frank and Marie Casale, ran a pizzeria on Buffalo Avenue in LaSalle through the 1950s and early ‘60s.
They were forced to move their business when a man named Robert Moses came to the Falls.
In 1962, New York state, using its power of eminent domain, forcibly acquired the couple’s property — Casale’s Pizzeria located at 6515 Buffalo Ave. — to accommodate plans for the parkway Moses built.
The Casales decided to take a chance on building a new building on a vacant lot up the street in the same neighborhood.
It was a plan Joe Casale said his parents struggled to afford.
“What (the state) offered my father, he would have had to file bankruptcy,” he said. “He couldn’t even afford to pay the mortgage. So he bought the lot where we are at now and he went and got a mortgage on it. It used to be a used car lot, and he got a mortgage on that and the house.”
Construction came together over the course of 13 weeks with the help of several other locally owned businesses, including Tricinati Electric, Filicetti Block and Gross Plumbing.
The family later added a six-room motel to the back of the building.
“(My father) said, ‘I’ve got no money and here’s what I want to do,’ “ Joe Casale said. “A handshake was all that it took at that time. There were no contracts then. There was a handshake.”
Building the building was a family affair, with Joe and his brothers, Donald and Frank, and his sisters, Delores Bradley and Marjorie Majka, doing whatever they could to help during construction.
Over the years, they also poured a lot of time and energy into making pizza dough, helping out in the kitchen, serving drinks and making sure customers were satisfied.
“We all did it,” Joe Casale said. “We were all involved in there. My brothers and sisters, we all built that thing.”
“We’re all not afraid to work,” he added. “We were never afraid to work, all of us. We grew up working. That’s what we did.”
‘A LOT OF GOOD TIMES’
In the early years, Joe Casale said his parents continued to sell pizzas using a recipe handed down to his mother by his grandmother. He said his father later decided to shrink the kitchen and expand the bar.
One tradition carried over from the old building to the new one, a due-paying members-only group called “The Dumschitt Club.” Joe Casale said his father formed the club in 1958, adopting a raised thumb as their salute.
“Somebody was sitting at the bar one day and somebody called somebody a dumb s--t and he raised his thumb and that became our logo,” Joe Casale said.
For decades, the “Dumschitts” elected a president and officers and paid membership dues, a whole $4 per year. With the money they raised, they organized annual trips, golf outings, parties and summer picnics.
FAMILY HELPING FAMILY
Joe Casale took charge of the business after his father died in 1981.
Under his management, Casale’s stuck to the tried-and-true ingredients for success his parents embraced for years: Family helping family and customers being treated like family.
Joe, an avid piano player who studied music at Fredonia, held down a second job at Marine Midland and later HSBC Bank where he worked, along with managing the bar and motel, for 13 years before retiring in 1994.
While growing up, Joe’s children — his sons, Joe Jr. and Bill, and his daughter, Maria — all took turns working in the kitchen and cleaning up motel rooms and, when they were old enough, helping out behind the bar.
“They helped out when I needed them,” he said. “They all helped out at some point in their lives. That’s how we lived. It’s how we survived.”
A NEW GENERATION
Casale’s endured shutdowns, limited hours and social distancing of customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the pandemic started to subside, the business got a new manager in Joe’s grandson, Dominic.
He was working for Lord Hobo brewer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the time when he started thinking about coming back to the Falls to be closer to friends and family.
“It was something that I always wanted to do,” he said.
A July 2021 telephone call with his grandfather sealed the deal. He moved home that November.
“I called him to wish him a happy birthday and he asked and he said, ‘I don’t know what your plans are and I don’t know if you are interested’ and that was enough for me,” Dominic said.
“The decision was easy to make, especially to be able to come home and work side-by-side with your grandfather and the rest of my family,” he added.
CHANGING TIMES
Members of the family talked about selling the business on and off for years, most seriously after Joe considered retirement following a heart attack in 2017.
They decided to list the property for sale earlier this year and a buyer expressed interest a few months later. The sale is expected to be finalized this month.
“It wasn’t a foreign decision to us,” Joe Casale Jr. said. ‘It just seemed like the right time.”
Changing times impacted the family’s decision.
One of the biggest factors: The rapidly rising costs of running a small business in New York.
“Everything has skyrocketed in the past couple of years,” Dominic said. “Things that were once 20 bucks are now 50, 60 bucks. We were lucky. We didn’t have a mortgage or rent so that helped, but, in a neighborhood place like that, you can only raise your prices so high before people stop coming.”
“Everything changes,” Joe Jr. added. “Things are more expensive. At the grocery stores, they are spending more money there. They don’t have as much money to go out like it used to be. I would say people go out less frequently.”
In an effort to avoid the problems late-night crowds sometimes bring and to allow Dominic to keep more of a family-friendly schedule, Casale’s started closing at midnight instead of 2 a.m.
“That decision cost (Dominic) a lot of revenue, but it was still the responsible neighborhood thing to do,” Bill Casale said.
THE CASALE FAMILY LEGACY
As members of the Casale family look back on 75 years of success, many things come to mind.
They hope customers will remember it the way they do, like television’s “Cheers,” a friendly place where everybody knows your name.
“It was like an extended family,” Joe Casale Jr. said. “Our customers were an extended family.”
“You were comfortable before you walked into the door,” Dominic added. “The bartender knew what you were drinking before you sat down because you were there yesterday and you were there the day before because you just felt comfortable there.”
For Bill Casale, the most impressive thing about Casale’s was its longevity.
“I think the entire story is it was 75 years of success,” Bill Casale said. “It didn’t fail or change because of hardship at all.”
Dominic agreed.
While there are a few Falls businesses that were open longer, he said Casale’s was in rare company having lasted three-quarters of a century.
“There’s not many bars in Niagara Falls that have been open that long,” he said. “There’s not many places that can say we’ve been open for 75 years.”
Maria said she has fond memories of spending holidays like Thanksgiving and Easter inside the building with family, friends and customers. She credits her grandparents, Frank and Marie, with starting a business that meant so much to their family and many others.
“It all started with them,” she said. “It was their dream.”
Joe Casale said he’s most proud of how hard his family — his parents, his brothers and his sisters and his children and, more recently, his grandson — did whatever they needed to do to ensure that Casale’s enjoyed decades-worth of success.
“I’m proud of my family,” Joe Casale said. “I’m proud of what we’ve done in 75 years because they’ve all done well.”
The Casales had many people to thank for their success, with their loyal customers topping the list.
They offered special thanks to Niagara Novelty, a local vending company that provided Casale’s with its pool table, ATM machine and other vending machines and related services for 60 years.
They also wanted to recognize what they described as one of their “go-to” employees, Nikki Siuta, whom they said “did a little bit of everything” for the family and the business for many years.
“She was the best employee I probably ever had at any location I’ve ever worked,” Dominic said. “I would not have been able to do that without her here.”
GONE, NOT FORGOTTEN
The sale of the building is wrapping up.
The new owners of the building paid for the property only, not the family name.
That means the location will never be “Casale’s Tavern & Motel’ again.
While the family business may be gone, Bill Casale said he’s confident it will never be forgotten.
“No matter what that building ever becomes, to the locals, that building is always going to be known as Casale’s,” he said.
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