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Window decorator laments lost art
Photo
Pat Pascarella stands outside his store at 5220 Market St. The store is set to close this month..
After nearly 57 years as a decorator, Pat Pascarella is retiring from the business of creating beautiful window displays.
Staff report
BOARDMAN
Pat Pascarella remembers when he used to decorate Youngstown.
Standing behind the counter in his Market Street boutique, the 82-year-old recounts the days he spent dressing department store window displays for names such as Printz Company, Lord Chesterfield and Haber’s Furniture Store.
Those brightly decorated store fronts, like the stores themselves, are gone. Trimming windows, Pascarella said, is a lost art.
“It used to be that anybody who bought anything went window shopping first,” said Pascarella, who also decorated restaurants, banks, homes and weddings. “If you get something bright and flashy in the window, you stop people.”
In an era before malls and chain restaurants dominated city landscapes, Pascarella said he helped local businesses create a certain ambiance for patrons — hanging drapes, coordinating decor, staging props.
When he opened his own retail store, Pat Pascarella Decoration, in 1979, he wanted to give homeowners that same opportunity.
But after nearly 57 years as a decorator, the Youngstown native will soon close his store’s doors, reluctantly retiring from the business of setting beautiful scenes.
“It used to be that a lot of businesses couldn’t really afford decorating,” he said. “So I used to fake a lot. Businesses would never put out plants because they die. So when artificial plants came out, I did this whole town in artificial plants.”
As a decorator decades ago, he would make rounds at all the downtown department stores, luring customers inside with his cheerful displays and handcrafted props.
“The banks used to call me to decorate, too,” he said. “And it didn’t matter what I charged, they’d pay it. Now you walk into a bank and all you see is a little wreath hanging.”
Regular customers still frequent the store, and after decades worth of loyalty, Pascarella said many of them are sad to see him retire.
“Now everybody kisses me before they leave,” he said. “We’re like family because I never push anything on anyone.”
Pascarella, who got his start in decorating as a window dresser for a downtown drugstore, used to import his furniture from Italy until prices forced him to seek items made in China.
Now the shelves at Pat Pascarella Decorations are mostly bare — oriental vases, porcelain ginger jars and a few knickknacks are all that remain.
The store is expected to closed this weekend.
For his part, he’s not looking forward to retirement.
“I’m going to go nuts,” he said. “Golfing? No, I’m not going to go out and hit that ball into the hole.”