The Marble Hill International Unisex Salon celebrated it’s 50th year in the community on Saturday by honoring longtime owner and barber Roosevelt Spivey.
Mr. Spivey, known in Marble Hill as simply, “Rosey,” opened his business in 1962, purchasing the shop for $800. As a 24-year-old black man opening a salon in a predominantly Jewish, Irish and Italian neighborhood, Mr. Spivey did not think his business would last three months.
Fifty years later, Mr. Spivey is still cutting hair in Marble Hill.
“When I saw the shop, it had the most beautiful and modern décor I had ever seen. They told me it all came from a Perry Como television set. But as beautiful as it was, I had no expectation that the shop was going to survive; not with a black man in a white community,” Mr. Spivey, 73, said in a release about the event.
Mr. Spivey, who was profiled in The Press in 2010, said he’s cutting the hair of the fourth generation of some families in Marble Hill.
In 2009, the Marble Hill Reunion and Development Committee awarded Mr. Spivey a lifetime achievement award for his contributions as a business owner in the neighborhood.
Marble Hill residents honored Mr. Spivey on Saturday at the American Legion Hall on Corlear Avenue. At the event, younger salon staffers cut children’s hair for $1.
