Faragalli’s Bakery in South Philly will reopen after $34,000 fundraiser to fix oven

It was a strange feeling, watching another man crawl inside his oven, but Phil Faragalli had nowhere else to turn.

Faragalli, 72, had shuttered his family bakery in Passyunk Square in early April after portions of his century-old, firebrick oven collapsed shortly after water department workers drilled into the street just outside. For years, Faragalli’s has baked their distinctive, old-world Italian loaves on flames kindled by South Philly scrapwood.

Now, the oven was cold.

The cavernous hearth, which is about the size of a spacious rowhouse living room, has long been Phil Faragalli’s domain. But the damage was far more extensive — and expensive — than the minor repairs he was accustomed to handle. He feared if he’d ever be able to reopen the venerable bakery, which his father, Anthony, opened in 1945 in the corner shop below the family apartment, and which his son Phil Jr., now planned to take over some day.

But what happened next occurred so quickly — and took on such a life of its own — that it has left Phil Faragalli reeling with gratitude.

In just four days earlier this month, hundreds of Faragalli’s customers, friends, and neighbors donated nearly $34,000 to a GoFundMe campaign called: Operation: Save Faragalli’s. Although still short of the $50,000 goal, the effort, which was started by a Faragalli family friend, has raised enough money for Faragalli to hire a repairman. The oven mechanic told Faragalli he is confident he can mend the ancient kiln. Faragalli now expects to reopen his bakery around August, when repairs can be completed.

“It’s so overwhelming,” Phil Faragalli said, on a recent afternoon. “Everybody and their mother gave. I can’t go nowhere without people coming up to me and saying they want to help. I just want to say thank you to everybody.”

Faragalli said he is also going to take the opportunity to transition the oven, which was built in a Washington Avenue factory before World War I, to gas. The bakery has burned wood since a fateful day in the 1970s when the coal delivery never showed and Anthony Faragalli burned some of the apartment doors to fire his bread. But Faragalli said collecting barrels of construction scraps from neighborhood contractors had become laborious — and that he hears the complaints of neighbors who worry he could be burning wood treated with chemicals (Faragalli says the bakery only ever used untreated wood).

He is not worried the change will affect the dense and chewy taste of his loaves, which are made the old way: no preservatives, with only flour, water, yeast, and a little salt. If anything, he believes the oven’s high-arched roof allows the bread to rise easier.

“The bread tasted the same when we used coal, and then we went to wood, and it tasted the same,” he said. “I know how to make bread.”

But it was more than delicious bread that has long made the bakery a 13th Street mainstay, say those who rushed to save Faragalli’s.

Eric Scola, 37, who grew up with Phil Faragalli’s daughters and works as a waiter at nearby Ristorante Pesto, said he started the GoFundMe after so many in the neighborhood expressed wanting to help.

“They’re just the nicest people,” he said of the family of bakers.

But even he said he was amazed at how quickly the donations poured in. “I couldn’t believe at how much [was donated] in such a short amount of time,” he said. “I just can’t get over it.”

Greg Di Stefano, owner of the Victor Cafe, was one of many local business owners who gave. The restaurant, which opened in 1918, has served Faragalli’s loaves for decades.

“It’s the best bread in Philadelphia,” Di Stefano said.

But more than anything, he added, it was a friend in need.

“We’re both institutions down here,” Di Stefano said. “And when one goes down, we all try to rally around them.”

Faragalli said his lawyers have filed a claim with the city over the damage, but that he has not heard anything back.

Richard Bredbenner, the president of a refractory installation company based in Berks County that Faragalli has hired to mend the oven, said the vibration from the street work likely loosened masonry supporting the top of the oven, causing its fire box and parts of its side wall to collapse. Repairs will run around $44,000, according to his estimate.

“Where you been all these years?” Faragalli had joked with Bredbenner, when he crawled inside the oven on a recent afternoon, the first person to do so beside Faragalli in forever. The veteran repairman said he was awed by the old oven’s craftsmanship.

“It was like stepping into a time capsule,” he said. “Like being exposed to a part of history.”