This story starts with a meet-cute at a house party in the Bronx in the early ’60s. Carl was a jeweler’s apprentice from the Bronx; Milly was a hairdresser from Williamsburg; they were both raised in Puerto Rico. He complimented her ring, which by her account was just a plastic bauble — all she could afford. They married, had two daughters and together opened a small jewelry store in the Financial District.

That was 50 years ago — 1976. Now, Greenwich St. Jewelers is run by those same daughters — Jennifer Gandia and Christine Gandia Gambale — who first forged their own path but were each drawn back to the business they grew up with.

The business, which they moved to Tribeca in 2024, is marking 50 years Downtown with a photo exhibition at the store on Reade Street titled “Adornos: Jewelry, Memory, and What We Pass Down,” open to the public in the store.

“We are native Brooklynites.” The three women live blocks apart in Bayridge. They were raised in Marine Park, but when the girls father, Carl, died, their mother. Milly, downsized and moved closer to Christina and her grandchildren. Then Jennifer downsized and moved closer to her mom.

And this is a reflection from Jennifer.

How did the business start? Go back to the beginning…
My parents came from modest backgrounds – really, they were poor. My mother was raised by a single mother and they slept four to a bed. My father’s high school had a trade program and he got into jewelry through a class they offered. He was always very artistic and creative and this was a way to carry that into a skill.

His first roles in the Diamond District were as a model maker at an engagement ring company. He carved the wax models that the molds are made from. He then moved over to a company where he did more bench work –repairs and assembly. Eventually he got his own booth on 47th Street, It’s a labyrinth over there. First you have the arcades on the street level, but then you go upstairs are there are the tiniest little offices where people do contract work and repair work. It’s its own incredible ecosystem up there.

When he and my mother started dating, she was working in a hair salon – neither went to college. They got married in ‘68 and after those first years together, they decided to open their own store.

My father was looking in the papers for a space and he saw a little ad in the New York Times that said there was a jewelry story for sale – “Call Albert,” it said, with a phone number. It was called Albert’s Jewelers at 118a Greenwich Street and he and his wife, Dorothy, ran it together. They were ready to retire and looking for someone to take it over.

That dates it right there — “Call Albert.”
Albert is now a venerated saint in our family. I think they saw something in my parents that reminded them of what they were like when they decided to open up a jewelry story. They sold it for a very very modest price. No one remembers the number now – and sometimes my mother says, “I don’t remember money ever changing hands.”

What’s so beautiful to me — it moves me to tears even now — is Albert and Dorothy stayed on with my parents for a year. They taught them the business and introduced them to all their customers. It was so generous. They became very good friends. And now there are so many Dorothy and Albert-isms — probably the number one is “You always treat your clients like they are guests in your home.” In Latino households it’s the same thing – and that was how my parents ran their business.

They didn’t have money to buy jewelry to put in the store so it was built on service. Anything my father gave my mother she would polish up and put in the window. And little by little they built a business.

How did the neighborhood change over the years they ran the store?
It’s interesting to think about what Downtown was like back then [Jennifer was born in 1974 and remembers it well]. It was predominantly mom and pop stores — small stores, independently owned. It was a real fabric of community, of people who made up the neighborhood.

What made you move to Tribeca after all those years?
That’s one of those things that Tribeca really has maintained so beautifully that most neighborhoods have lost. Maybe I still see that because I look for it. It’s hard for any neighborhood to maintain that these days because of systemically what’s happening with the economy. But here I see Balloon Saloon and Korin and Fernandez and even the new ones – like Words on Warren. The stores look different than they did 50 years ago, but they are still people who want a neighborhood where they can establish an anchor.

That’s why we moved to Tribeca – that’s such a part of our business, to provide service. I tell that to my staff all the time. That’s what’s going to keep us here. We don’t live here [Jennifer, Christina and Milly all live in separate apartments in Bayridge now, since Carl died] but that doesn’t mean we are any less committed to the neighborhood. We also don’t divide Downtown – our roots and our legacy are here, whether its Tribeca or Fidi.

How did you two join the business?
My sister and I joined in the early 2000s. We were not groomed to come into the business. Our parents were never like, “this could all be yours someday.” Our parents did not go to college – my mother was working from 12 years old – so they really wanted us to do the things they didn’t get to do. And we both did different things – I went into fashion and Christina went into finance.

My father at first said no. In their minds, their thought was go out and do what you enjoy – they perceived that you work from 9 to 5 for the man and you get the weekends off and you have a life. You are on all the time owning a business.

But I knew it was going to be really tough to survive after 9/11. They were across from an open pit for years, and while it was loyal to stay, it was very difficult. And I knew I could help them. I had been working in marketing for a few years and we agreed that I would come back for one year.

A year turned into two and then three and my sister and I started talking about all the things we could do – I’m the ideas person and my sister is the one that makes it happen. She joined us too and little by little we made it through those first five years after 9/11. We survived. By then I was at an age where my friends were getting engaged and we started to build a bridal business.

How do I put this delicately: how did the business go from such modest beginnings to the luxury retail it is now?
My mother says all the time that they never would have imagined that what they started could become what we have today. It was truly organic.

The bridal business is what really shifted the business from something so modest to where we are today. But we always maintained a core of what we are, which is a service business. Anyone can walk in with a broken chain or a remodel of an heirloom piece.

Then we started working with independent artists and really unique fine jewelry. We are really proud of that.

What’s the most satisfying part of what you do?
Internally it’s working with our team. They really deliver on the environment that our parents created – welcoming, warm. We want anyone who comes in to feel comfortable and look around. That’s very important to us because of our roots.

It’s been incredibly satisfying to anchor ourselves in a community. There was a decade where we felt really untethered. My parents always had clients who would come in and chat – they were invited to weddings and funerals and bar mitzvahs. And there was a period where that wasn’t the case because of what the area had become.

Now seeing people come in with their dogs and their kids is so rewarding and so important.

Your very favorite item right now?
I am not a favorites person — I like so much — but I love that we launched the Estate Collection. I love vintage and antique jewelry so much and so does my mother, and it’s been so fun. It’s a vibrant collection. It’s like treasure hunting.

And there’s now a younger collector who wants things from the ’80s and ’90s. For them, that’s vintage.

Where do you eat/drink/shop around here?
I really love Max – I eat from there regularly — and I am often going into Clic for gifts. If I need something beautiful I go to Stella – she wraps so beautifully.

We love Artesano and I love going to the Frenchette outpost for bread and pastries for the team. And I adore the restaurant if I can get in. And Odeon? The amount of meals I have had there over the years… and I love that you can walk in and it looks the same as it did in 1991.

I love getting flowers at Elan and even just walking into that space. We’ve done company drinks at Little More and this is a random factoid: we happen to have three women on the team who do burlesque, and they did a show at Little More. I get facials at Heyday, I buy my beauty stuff at Onda. Morgan’s makes a bangin’ bacon egg and cheese.

What does the future hold?
Now that we have settled in – it took time for us to get used to it, it’s much bigger with more staffing – we have set our sights on making more of our own jewelry. We just hired a design director to move that along.

We already have a Ceremony Collection that we started in 2019, and we will revamp and expand that. We have a collection called Chroma of colored gemstone jewelry – something we really love.

We will still work with designers but we are so close to the customer, we know we are in a great position to develop beautifully made high quality pieces that don’t have to be super expensive.