A Short History Of Jovino's
John Jovino Co. was an actual retail gun shop in lower Manhattan, approximately two blocks from New York's neighborhood of Little Italy. Believe it or not, it was one of several FFL gun shops which were all lined up in a row, behind the old Police Headquarters found at 240 Centre St. The tiny street behind the old NYPD Police HQ, which was more like an alley, was Centre Market Place; it was only a block long, but if I recall correctly it had at one point no less than 4, possibly 5 FFL gun shops in operation. (By 1995 there were only 2 left on the street, with SILE being possibly a third.) The Centre Market Pl. back entrance to NYPD HQ was also where the previous nights' catch of perps would be paraded into the lower level of the building for booking. A famous NYC photographer of the period named Weegee (aka Arthur Felling) lived above 6 Centre Market Pl., the address of Frank Lava Gun Shop (whom also had large revolver shaped sign hung outside the shop, as did every other FFL open on that street). So on one side of Centre Market Pl. was the back of NYPD Headquarters, and on the other side were a line of gun shops. When you walk the streets of Manhattan today and you see the ubiquitous soft hipster-ish boutiques abound, you might appreciate how alien a row of gun shops in Manhattan might be.
In the OP's post, note the address found on the ceramic souvenir ashtray: 5 Centre Market Place, which was the original address for John Jovino's. In the very early 2000's, around 2003 or thereabouts, Jovino's moved down the street and around the corner to 183 Grand St. This was a pivotal event in the history of the store, because it was at this point that Jovino's really ceased to exist. The FFL bound book for 5 Centre Market was closed and surrendered to the ATF, and a new bound book was opened for the new Grand St. location.
The vast majority of the articles and pictures circulating the internet which are most commonly found with a quick web search (including the photo of the storefront in the OP's first post) are stories and photos focusing on the building located at 183 Grand, but the real Jovino location where your Effectors were born was in the basement of 5 Centre Market Pl. The original location since 1911, very few photos seem to exist of Jovino's at 5 Centre Market Pl.; but it was a fairly short and unassuming building with two wide glass windows flanking the entrance door and they actually had pistols displayed in those windows up to at least 1995.
Fig. A: Above, a shot of 5 Centre Market Pl. from the 1940's,
from this website.
The storefront façade remained for the most part unchanged up through the 1980's, so this is the store you would have walked into in order to buy your Effector in person.
Fig. B: John Jovino Co. at 5 Centre Market Pl. year circa 2000
Fig. C: Above, the namesake of the store: Mr. Jovino, himself.
Mr. John Jovino is but a name, a figurehead. By the 1980's, when your Effectors were being made, the heart and soul of the business was Lou Imperato, who married into the Jovino family, later to buy out and take over the business. And by all accounts, Mr. Jovino’s son-in-law was an
exceptionally savvy, enterprising and a highly successful businessman. So what does this have to do with Effectors? Stay with me here...
You have to understand that over the decades, this tiny storefront in New York City's lower Manhattan, bordering both Chinatown as well as Little Italy, moved A LOT of product.
A LOT of product (Fig. D). Under the direction of Lou Imperato, Jovino's became one of the top Smith and Wesson and Colt dealers in the United States, not just for one year, but for many, many, many consecutive years through the late 70's, early 80's and into the 90's. Lou Imperato was just an
extraordinary businessman, and Jovino's would go on to delve into other very successful firearms related ventures, well beyond the scope of this post, but in order to facilitate the continued ability to offer these quality products, he also "imported" some very old world, old school gunsmiths, mostly from Italy, and one of those gentlemen, built your gun.
Fig. D: Above, Smith & Wesson recognition of John Jovino Co.
I'm told (by the gunsmith that built the Effectors) there was a point in time, around the mid 1980’s, when Smith & Wesson could not sell 6 and 8 inch barreled N-Frames in any significant quantity; they just weren't that popular. This was particularly true of the Model 25 which was chambered in .45 Long Colt and later .45 ACP. These factory long barreled revolvers simply weren’t popular enough to garner sales and Smith & Wesson soon found themselves with a languishing inventory of Model 25's that continued to pile up.
Though it would be but just one example among the many imaginative and lucrative business deals in his career, Lou Imperato would be instrumental in securing a large quantity of these stagnant Model 25’s from Smith & Wesson.
As a top selling dealer, Lou Imperato struck a deal with Smith and Wesson whereby he would acquire a significant quantity of Model 25’s at considerable discount. These revolvers weren't moving anyway, and Lou would be doing S&W a favor. Once they arrived at the John Jovino shop at 5 Centre Market Place, the big bore revolvers were then modified by the in-house gunsmith (to be clear, this was
not Mr. John Jovino), each one by hand and each one individually; a total of some three-thousand Effectors eventually being made, collectively.
And wouldn’t you know it, they sold like hotcakes.
How well did these guns sell, you ask? Well enough that Smith & Wesson would eventually serve Jovino’s with a Cease-and-Desist order. (It seems that S&W had taken issue with the fact that these guns were re-stamped with the Smith & Wesson logo on the barrel; or at least that's one of the reasons they gave, in the letter.)
Jovino's became the "exclusive dealer" of this Effector model. Other FFL’s wanting to purchase an Effector would need to pad the order with additional lesser firearms; in order to get a hold of this John Jovino Co. exclusive, a dealer might have to add three cr@ppy .38Spl Model 10’s to the invoice before you include one Effector in the order.
Eventually when they ran out of Model 25's from the original batch, they modified Model 29's, 57's, 686's and Astra Terminators. As far as I know, the gunsmith did not convert any Model 27's or 28's.
Understand also, that this is the era of the wheel gun, and the main sidearm of every NYPD beat cop at the time was the Model 10, with a popular Police Department backup sidearm being the J frame Model 36. Countless S&W's had come through Jovino's workshop in some form or another, and the gunsmith in Mr. Imperatos' employ worked on these Smith & Wessons
FOR DECADES. You could not find a more expert set of hands to build you a Smith & Wesson wheelgun.
Today, a big bore snubnose revolver is easily ordered from the factory, NIB; but these revolvers come off an assembly line by the hundreds, each a clone of the next. The Jovino Effector was a hand-made creation of a revolver you could not get from the factory during that period, worked on by a gunsmith who was a master of Smith & Wesson (and Colt!!) revolvers.
That gunsmith is still around today; I watched him build mine:
I do hope more folks contribute to this thread with personal examples they own.
Effectors are truly one-off custom creations, originating from a gun dealer in the heart of New York City, hand made by a lifelong New York City gunsmith with a lifetime of experience in Smith and Wesson actions. What makes Jovino Effectors so cool? Knowing the provenance of the guns, the question practically answers itself.
