This year marks the 106th anniversary of the start of Petrillo Stone Corporation. Antonio

Petrillo, known as A. T. founded A.T. Petrillo Company in 1907. He was originally a stone

cutter from Benevento Italy. After working as a young man in Italy, honing his craft, he came

to America and worked as a stone cutter before starting his business. He was very successful

and supplied many of the stone projects in Westchester and the New York City area. His

business was extremely busy and flourished until the Great Depression of the 1930′ s. In 1935,

He took the contract for the cut stone at Keating Hall at Fordham University, which basically

got his business through the depression. During World War Two, there was very little stone

work to produce, most of the economy was geared to War Production and so he leased a part of

his shop (present location) to a company that made airplane parts for the war.

 

After the war, A.T. ‘s sons, August and John ran the business and made it a successful stone

cutting and stone erecting firm during the Post War Boom. Some of the more famous buildings

they produced were some of the jobs at Radio City, the United Nations, Metropolitan Life

Insurance Company Building, Time Life Building, Lincoln Center and many more. The twenty

five years after the war, were very good years for the stone business. The 1970’s were lack

luster years for the industry as a whole. The business survived those trying years and was

poised for a new generation of management and additional product lines.

 

The third generation of management was handed down to Frank, August ( deceased in 2009 )

and Ralph Petrillo, the grandsons of Antonio. These three expanded their business to not only

stone cutting and erecting, but also importing cut to size stone from all over the world.

Although their shop is constantly busy fabricating, they import much more volume on an

average year than they fabricate in their shop. Some of the more famous projects that they did

the stone work for are J.P. Morgan Building, Benjamin Hotel, Barclay Vesey Building at 140

West Street ( after it’s partial destruction on 9/11 ), fabrication of the Corbin Building, 11

Times Square, 330 Madison Avenue, New York Life Insurance Building and many , many

more projects.

 

Ralph Petrillo said,  “Our business is an exciting business, one that in today’s world, very few

people are involved in. I especially like working on buildings that my father and his father

supplied stone to. One of these building was the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building.” In

2002, Petrillo Stone completed a 40,000 square foot lobby, letting his generation to be the 3rd

to do major work at this Building.