The man on a mission to save South Philadelphia’s iconic doors

Tony Trov recently awoke to a pressing message: someone was throwing away a Tofani door.

For Trov, cofounder of the T-shirt shop and lifestyle brand South Fellini, trashing one of the distinctive, mid-century doors with starburst glass windows patterned in keyhole, heart, and diamond shapes is akin to discarding a rare piece of art. To him, Tofani doors are fading jewels of South Philly Atomic Age design.

Grabbing a handcart, Trov rushed to beat the trash collector.

“It’s beautiful,” Trov said in an Instagram video, showing off his sidewalk find, broken glass and all.

Tofani doors have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, thanks in no small part to Trov and his South Fellini partner, Johnny Zito, who early on recognized Tofani doors as eye-catching examples of South Philly industry and iconography. Since opening in 2016, they’ve displayed their Tofani door artwork on T-shirts, prints, pins, and even a towering billboard on Passyunk Avenue. Manufactured in a bygone South Philly mill, Tofani doors once embellished many rowhouses in the neighborhood, but are now harder to come by in a changing South Philly. Transplants scour salvage yards and pay as much as $5,000 for refurbished Tofani doors — or designer knockoffs — seeking the stylish South Philly authenticity they lend.

Trov, a lifelong South Philadelphian and avid Philly ephemera hunter, has been collecting Tofani doors for nearly a decade, salvaging nine neighborhood doors. Not to sell, mind you. But to preserve as prized pieces of local history.

“It’s iconic to the city,” Trov said of the Tofani door. “A Philadelphia Tofani door only looks like a Philadelphia Tofani door. It’s the only place it comes from. To me, it’s as much as Philadelphia as the Liberty Bell.”

Instead of a trash heap, Tofani doors belong in a museum, he said.

And now one soon might.

As it returns to public view with a new exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the city’s Atwater Kent Collection has contacted Trov about securing one of his Tofani doors for its historical archive. Trov says he’s happy to donate one.

“Tofani doors are a staple of South Philadelphia architecture,” said Michael Shepherd, assistant director of the Atwater Kent Collection. “And they’ve had such a resurgence in the last few years. It’s an important part of Philadelphia history and we don’t have one.”

Shuttered in 2018, the Atwater Kent Collection is now displaying highlights from the Philadelphia historical archive for the first time since being placed under the stewardship of Drexel University two years ago.

“Tofani doors are something that really resonate with people,” Shepherd said. He will work with Trov to select which door will be donated. “We have really important objects in our collection, but the things that are most important are the things we see every day and use every day. Philadelphians love their history. But they love their hyperlocal history. They want to know about their neighborhoods.”

Born in Italy, Arthur Tofani opened the Arthur Tofani Lumber & Millwork Co. on the 1400 block of South Eighth Street, near Dickinson, sometime in the 1920s. The family lived above the shop, with the kids helping out. The modest neighborhood mill didn’t need to deploy door-to-door salesmen to hawk their ubiquitous doors. South Philly became Tofani’s catalog. In the early years, Tofani designed his heavy-duty doors in a more colonial style with the elegantly etched starburst glass produced by the H. Perilstein Glass Co. near South Street.

Liberata Tofani took over the mill when her husband died from pneumonia in 1937, and soon rebuilt it after a fire. Under her watch, the company designed the sleeker, groovier Atomic Age-style doors. The Tofanis moved the mill out of the neighborhood in the 1980s, and eventually shuttered it (Arthur Tofani’s name still graces the old South Philly factory).

“The family is definitely proud of the work we did for Philadelphia,” said Arthur Tofani III, who resides in Malvern. “We really appreciate that people still respect the work we did so many years ago.”

Trov and his wife, Joanna, who is originally from Cherry Hill, first started taking note of Tofani doors around 10 years ago, during their strolls around South Philly. Both fans of Atomic Age design, defined by its vibrant colors, bold shapes, and futuristic appeal, they quickly became obsessed.

“We would take pictures of them and started making little notes about where they all were in the neighborhood,” Trov said. “There’s probably a couple thousand of them out there. And every time one ends up in the trash, there’s one less.”

A family friend named Lumpy Pinto gave Trov his first Tofani door in 2016. Pinto, who was selling his house, figured he’d trash his old Tofani door, a battered, mid-century beaut with a triangle bottle glass window.

“He was like, ‘Who would want this old South Philly door?’ and I was like, ‘I’ll take it,’” said Trov.

Soon, Trov’s backyard and basement were crowded with junked Tofani doors. Among his nine doors are older ones with porthole and circle windows, and later models with wolverine claw style designs and metal kickplates. Trov and his wife make original Tofani door artwork in a block printing studio in their home.

Trov said he admires the craftsmanship of the doors, some of which were built more than a century ago. But it also just comes down to South Philly pride, he said.

“It’s iconic Philadelphia culture,” he said, showing off his doors on a recent afternoon. “If these were made in New York they would be in a museum.”

Thanks to him, one soon could be.