Mary Pupillo - 'A true relic of the East Village'

Mary Pupillo was a seamstress who worked for many years with Gino DiGirolamo at the Royal Tailor Shop when it was on Avenue A and 12th Street. She lived directly above the shop.

Mary died on Feb. 23. She was 95.

Her friend of 30 years Cynthia Chaffee called Mary "a true relic of the East Village." Cynthia shared some background about Mary:

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"Mary was the real thing. She lived her entire life on the same corner at 12th Street and Avenue A at 441 E. 12th St. and across the street when she was a child. She would look out her window and always see where she grew up and where her sister died at 19 years old."

[Mary on the bottom left with her family]

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"As a child she played in Tompkins Square Park. She remembers the sound of the horses on the cobblestone streets and selling fruit and vegetables and saying 'ice man.'"

[Mary is in the hat]

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"To the day Mary entered the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on East Fifth Street at Avenue B two years ago, she continued to use the old-fashioned washing board to hand wash her clothes, and the hand-held iron — that you heat on the stove top flame to press her clothes. In the winter, she piled several bricks on her stove top and turned the gas burner on to heat up her apartment. (It worked great.) She sewed all her own clothes, including her hats. Mary was a character, both feisty and fiery."

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"She had deformed feet that prevented her from walking any distance... Later on in her life she had to drag a bag tied to a string around with her on the streets because she was in pain and unable to carry any weight.

"Mary took care of both of her parent's until they died, so she never married. She said that guys didn't ask her out because she had trouble walking and never could go to dances because of her feet."

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"Mary went to Mary Help of Christians as a child and later attended Washington Irving High School on Irving Place and graduated. She was fluent in both French and Sicilian Italian. She loved opera and classical music, and could sing and act out word for word whole scenes from different operas. Her family was from Gange in Palermo, Sicily. She was full of the stories of the Italian neighborhood history."

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"Many East Villagers will remember Mary. She was a fixture in the neighborhood."

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Her funeral mass will be at the Immaculate Conception Church, 414 E. 14th St. near First Avenue tomorrow morning at 10 followed by a private burial.

[Thanks to Cynthia for the photos.]