our story

The Fold at the former Manhattan Shirt Co. is a creation from the soon-to-be married power team of Hoda Mahmoodzadegan and Eric Saltzman, who are so very proud to offer this unique space to our local community after moving to this special city in 2020.

Long admirers of older industrial buildings, we see so much hidden potential in them and had a vision to bring out the best of this historic warehouse with a modern touch and lots of love. We recognized a growing need, not only for elevated, budget-friendly spaces in our area to celebrate and create, but more, as we struggled to plan our own unique DIY wedding, the need for a mid-sized event space that felt intimate and was open to customization with few restrictions – a change of pace from your typical ballroom or banquet setting that allows folks to host an event that feels like a reflection of who they are.

We are delighted to facilitate community, arts, and production at The Fold!

Our entrance to Paterson began in 2020 with our participation in the creation of Prototype 237, a performance hall and arts community space located just two floors above us. As Prototype continues to nurture the creation and performance of interactive, collaborative and improvisational art, we are proud to complement this magical space with a more minimalistic and raw venue, but with the same homegrown community-building spirit.

After meeting and falling in love at Prototype, Hoda and Eric are overjoyed to continue this adventure with their own slice of heaven just a couple flights away! While this project is certainly new territory for this couple, their previous experience has prepared them well to thrive as your humble hosts.

  • Hoda

    Hoda is known by friends and family as a positive force of energy that motivates and enables those around her to be better versions of themselves. Hoda’s grit, ingenuity and affability have been cultivated through an ambitious professional journey that took her from corporate marketing professional to food & beverage entrepreneur, from business consultant to startup founder to real estate whiz.

    Feeling stagnant in the corporate world, Hoda took a leap and invested her all into starting Molly’s Milk Truck, a Hoboken-based mobile food and beverage spot. After blossoming into a successful beverage company, with products sold at over 1,000 stores in the tri-state, Molly’s expanded to a brick and mortar restaurant in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. But after a series of unforeseeable circumstances forced a premature conclusion, Hoda embarked on a consultant path to help entrepreneurs turn their dreams into businesses and eventually co-founded a mental well-being startup. Hoda is incredibly excited to be continuing her adventure in Paterson, the city where she met her soulmate and fell in love.

  • Eric

    Eric’s affinity for community building was shaped in his early 20s as a Peace Corps Volunteer on a tiny island nation in the central Pacific Ocean and later in inner-city Central America. He then spent time in south India’s biggest city and smallest villages working as a researcher and project manager, aiming to develop better insights into rural communities to improve health and finances.

    After returning Stateside, he spent the next several years in Washington DC working to implement communication and marketing strategies at an international non-profit delivering reproductive health and family planning to the developing world and later in support of federal health initiatives at CDC and NIH. Eric next shifted gears to build brands, amplify messaging, and improve the business and communications strategies of local businesses and artists – among them, Prototype 237, which he has to thank for bringing him to Paterson in the first place. He is grateful to Prototype and Paterson for so many reasons, but most of all for introducing him to the love of his life.

History

We named “The Fold” in homage to the original garment company that inhabited our building and to the rich textile history of our city. It was here on River Street that the Manhattan Shirt Company began as a small garment factory in the mid-1850s.

The company was then purchased a decade later by Jacob Levi, a German immigrant who had taken the traditional route of many such immigrants as a peddler. Levi later passed it on to his two sons, whom he named Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln. The Levi family gradually grew the small factory into a sprawling industrial complex and major local employer of predominantly women, continuing to expand through the 1880s to 1910s and remaining in operation in Paterson through the 1950s.

While roughly half of the complex has been razed, including the original factory site and boiler house, this 1910s warehouse building lives on and continues to be nurtured by its loving residents and business owners. Over a century later, we honor the legacy of this once-booming textile mill with the name, The Fold.

We doubt the Levis could have foreseen what the future held for their building, but we have to imagine that Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln would approve.