CENTRAL'S HISTORY & MISSION
The History of Central Plumbing & Heating Supply and Central Kitchen & Bath Showroom, Schenectady New York…Since 1950
A SOLDIER COMES HOME
The story starts with a young man in an Army uniform.
John J. Sennett Jr. came home from service to a Schenectady, NY still humming with General Electric and the American Locomotive Works, a city where houses were going up faster than anyone could plumb them. He married Ann Pastore, and in 1950 he opened a plumbing and heating supply house in Scotia with a counter, a stock of fittings, and a conviction that has outlasted him by three quarters of a century: sell a contractor the right part, tell him the truth about it, and he’ll come back for thirty years.
He was right. Central Plumbing & Heating Supply Co. was built almost entirely on word of mouth, the currency of a trade where reputations travel from job site to job site faster than any advertisement ever could.
Photo caption: John J. Sennett Jr. and Ann (Pastore) Sennett on their wedding day. The company he founded is now in its third generation.
THE SECOND GENERATION
John Joseph Sennett III grew up inside the business. He graduated from Niskayuna High School in 1971, went on to Western New England College, and came back to the family counter where he worked his way from the floor to the front office and eventually became the proud owner.
Under his leadership the company grew from a neighborhood supply house into one of the largest independent plumbing and heating suppliers in Upstate New York. He was a member of the Schenectady Home Builders Association and the Edison Club, and, being a natural handyman, was rarely without a project of his own.
2007: Building Behind the Building
For more than fifty years, one brick building on Freemans Bridge Road held everything; the trade counter, the showroom, the sales offices. By the early 2000s it simply couldn’t hold any more.
Rather than renovate, the Sennetts made a decision that says a great deal about how this family thinks: they would build an entirely new facility, from the ground up, behind the old one so that not a single day of business would be lost. Contractors kept pulling in. The counter kept ringing. Three years of planning and construction went on in the back lot while the front door stayed open.
In the fall of 2007 the doors opened on the new building. The original was demolished. What emerged was a facility unlike anything else in the region: an expanded parts counter, dramatically increased warehouse capacity, and one of the largest bath showrooms in the Northeast.
THE THIRD GENERATION
The Same Generational Integrity. Built for Today.
The brothers have also brought the company into the present without diluting what it is: a modernized digital presence, an educational approach to customers, and a continuously reinvested facility which is today, a 10,000 s.f. showroom backed by roughly 40,000 square feet of warehouse. The largest in Upstate New York!
Link up with Mark Sennett, President
Central Plumbing & Heating Supply | Central Kitchen and Bath Showroom
141 Freemans Bridge Road, Schenectady, NY 12302 | 518-372-3208
Make A Custom Showroom Appointment
WE KINDLY ASK YOU MAKE A SHOWROOM APPOINTMENT SO WE CAN HELP SERVE YOU BETTER
Servicing: Albany NY, Ballston Spa NY, Schenectady NY, Clifton Park NY, Troy NY, Saratoga Springs NY, Latham NY, Colonie NY