Believe it or not, pizza first became a hit in the United States, preceding its widespread popularity in Italy.
Pizza boasts a rich and extensive past. While flatbreads adorned with toppings were enjoyed by ancient civilizations like the Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks (the latter even having a version similar to modern focaccia with herbs and oil), Naples, located in Italy’s Campania region, is widely recognized as the birthplace of modern pizza.
Founded around 600 B.C. as a Greek settlement, Naples flourished as a bustling waterfront city in the 18th and early 19th centuries. As an independent kingdom, it was known for its large population of impoverished working-class citizens, the lazzaroni. According to Carol Helstosky, author of Pizza: A Global History, their population density increased closer to the bay, and they often lived outdoors, sometimes in dwellings that were merely a single room.
These Neapolitans needed affordable and quickly consumed food, a need that pizza fulfilled—flatbreads with diverse toppings, sold by street vendors or in casual eateries and eaten for any meal. Helstosky points out that judgmental Italian writers often considered their eating habits “disgusting.” The early pizzas favored by Naples’ poor were topped with ingredients still popular today, like tomatoes, cheese, oil, anchovies, and garlic.
Following Italy’s unification in 1861, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889. The story goes that the royal couple grew weary of their usual French haute cuisine and requested a selection of pizzas from Pizzeria Brandi, the successor to Da Pietro, established in 1760. The queen particularly enjoyed the pizza mozzarella, a pie featuring soft white cheese, red tomatoes, and green basil. (It’s speculated that her preference was influenced by the pie’s resemblance to the Italian flag.) Consequently, this topping combination became known as pizza Margherita. Despite Queen Margherita’s fondness, pizza remained relatively unknown outside of Naples until the 1940s.
However, across the Atlantic, Neapolitan immigrants in American cities such as New York, Trenton, New Haven, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis were recreating their familiar pizzas. These immigrants, like many other Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, came seeking factory jobs, not specifically to revolutionize cuisine. Nonetheless, the distinctive tastes and aromas of pizza soon captured the attention of those beyond the Neapolitan and Italian communities.
Gennaro Lombardi’s on Spring Street in Manhattan holds the distinction of being one of the earliest documented pizzerias in the United States, receiving a license to sell pizza in 1905. Before this, pizza was primarily made at home or sold by unlicensed vendors. While Lombardi’s remains open today, it has relocated from its original 1905 address and boasts retaining the same oven it used in its early days.
Following World War II, the movement of Italian Americans and their cuisine from urban centers to suburbs and across the country significantly fueled pizza’s rise in popularity within the United States. Pizza transitioned from an “ethnic” novelty to a widely recognized and convenient food option.
This period saw the development of diverse, non-traditional takes on Neapolitan pizza, including the innovative California-style gourmet pizzas with unconventional toppings like barbecued chicken and smoked salmon. Eventually, the popularity of pizza spread back to Italy and other countries, becoming a global phenomenon adopted “just because it was American,” similar to blue jeans and rock and roll.
