Riverhead's longtime cobbler, Fred Ruvolo, set to kick up his heels after 53 years

Fred Ruvolo revels in the art of repair. Eyeing a mountain of shoes piled up on his shelves that need his delicate touch, he reaches for his tools of the trade: hammers, awls and polishes.

From his Village Cobbler Shoppe in downtown Riverhead, Ruvolo, 72, gives new life to treasured items, from weathered shoes and pocketbooks to belts and baseball gloves. He shapes, stitches and shines them on a 1940s finishing machine that whirs over Frank Sinatra’s croon, crackling over a cassette tape.

But after 53 years of specializing in making things last longer, Ruvolo, of Smithtown, is getting ready to retire and close his Griffing Avenue shop June 29. He opened his store in 1971, a time when cobblers were plentiful. Today, he is the last of his kind on the East End, a quick Google Maps scan shows. 

“Sometimes, I save soles,” he said with a grin. “And sometimes I give last rites.” 

Ruvolo honed his skills apprenticing for a friend’s uncle as a 14-year-old in Seaford.

“The salary was a mystery. He paid me what he thought I was worth for the day,” Ruvolo recalled.

A 'fixture' in downtown Riverhead

At 19, he opened his store on Roanoke Avenue in Riverhead and moved it to Griffing Avenue in 1976. He remembers three other cobblers in town at the time. Now, customers come from as far as Montauk and by ferry from Shelter Island, bringing with them anything in need of repair while running errands in Riverhead. 

There are a handful of cobblers farther west in Suffolk, the nearest one 20 miles away in Miller Place.

But Ruvolo's shop has been a “fixture” in downtown, said Riverhead Chamber of Commerce President Connie Lassandro.

"It’s always sad when we lose somebody that has been there for so long," she said. "It’s going to be a real void."

Ruvolo’s shelves are crammed with shoes that tell the story of the East End community, sometimes spanning generations.

A pair of Ferragamo ballet flats embellished with a bow sit alongside a well-traveled pair of combat boots. A farmer’s beat-up work boots rest next to a pair of Oxfords a lawyer swears are a lucky charm.

'A top-shelf craftsman'

Since announcing his retirement, a steady stream of patrons have stopped in for last-chance repairs and to simply say goodbye or thank Ruvolo — known as Freddy to loyal customers — for his decades of service. 

Former Greenport Mayor Dave Kapell was among them. He estimates Ruvolo has been resoling his leather shoes for nearly 30 years.

“I ran right up here with three of my best pairs of shoes before it’s too late,” Kapell, 75, said. “He’s a top-shelf craftsman and it’s a dying craft, what he does.”

Ruvolo assesses each repair as a challenge to spare something from a landfill. Some have faded, cracked leather, broken heels or worn soles.

Dipping a brush into his glue pot, a heaping volcano of hardened adhesive, to apply a protective outsole, he points out a pair of sneakers with lifts he attached to help even out the wearer’s uneven legs.

“This is to keep the hips straight,” he explains. “Fixing shoes is like putting a puzzle together. Everything depends on the foundation.”

In an age where shoes are easily replaced in a big box store or at the tap of a button, Ruvolo says the skill is becoming obsolete.

“At one time shoes were a major expenditure for somebody,” he said. “Our consumerism has changed.”

From shoes to horse bridles

A 2023 report from the National Bureau of Labor Statistics found there are about 7,230 people employed in the shoe repair industry nationwide, a 40% decrease from the 12,210 people in the business in 2000. 

Elizabeth Newman, of Baiting Hollow, said she and her late boyfriend, Eric Suddueth, relied on Ruvolo to fix shoes and horse bridles. Newman, 60, brought bridles for repairs while Suddueth, a Montauk fisherman, had zippers replaced on his fishing skins.

“He’d say, ‘Oh no, no I don’t think so … but let me see.’ Then you’d leave it, and he would fix it,” Newman recalled. “I think he liked the challenge.”

Without a young apprentice to leave the shop to, Ruvolo said the time is right to retire. His outlook shifted during the pandemic, when he said  he was forced to shut his business for several months and got a taste of what retirement could be.

Ruvolo is eager to spend more time with Natalie, his wife of 40 years, and work on his classic XK150 Jaguar.

He’ll miss the daily grind, familiar faces and earthy leather air in his shop, saying Riverhead “has been good” to him.