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Waterbury Conn.

The Mickey Mouse Watch Is Born in Connecticut

The Mickey Mouse watch put thousands of people to work in Waterbury, Conn., during the depths of the Great Depression.

The employment boomlet resulted from the reluctant marriage of the Disney Company to a floundering clock company. Walt Disney himself didn’t believe the cartoon rodent could sell World War I-era timepieces.

But oh, could Mickey sell watches.

Workers making Ingersoll watches, 1900.

It all started in 1932, when the once-dominant Waterbury Clock Company was struggling. The 10-year-old Disney Company was struggling. A Kansas City advertising man named Herman ‘Kay’ Kamen saved them both.

Disney hired Kamen as his licensing agent. He worked out of a Manhattan office, hiring out Mickey to hawk products.

Kamen suggested a Mickey Mouse watch to Walt Disney, who said, “It’ll never sell.”

Waterbury Clock Co.

Waterbury Clock Company buildings

The Waterbury Clock Company began as a department of Benedict & Burnham, a local brass manufacturer. It made wheels and gears from brass, and spun off as its own company on March 27, 1857. For years the Waterbury Clock Company was one of the biggest makers of clocks in Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley, known as the Switzerland of America.

The company also made cheap pocket watches for the Ingersoll brothers, Robert and Charles, under their brand name. When the United States entered World War I, U.S. artillery gunners needed to read time quickly. The Waterbury Clock Company modified the Ingersoll ladies’ Midget pocket watch to become military wristwatches, with canvas straps and luminescent numbers.

After the war ended, Ingersoll entered bankruptcy protection. The Waterbury Clock Company picked up Ingersoll. By the early 1930s, Waterbury Clock, too, faced financial disaster. Then along came Mickey Mouse.

The Mickey Mouse Watch

On May 22, 1933, the company submitted a patent application for a Mickey Mouse watch.

One of the first Mickey Mouse watches was a boys’ version sold at the Century of Progress in Chicago for $3.25. Its pin lever movement was surplus left over from World War I.

Vintage watch

Ingersoll-Waterbury also made a Mickey Mouse pocket watch. Both Mickey Mouse watches had a picture of Mickey on the dial with his hands telling the minutes and hours. A small dial at the bottom counted the seconds, with three little Mickeys chasing each other.

The cheap cheerful watch was just what the public wanted. During a promotion at Macy’s, 11,000 Mickey Mouse watches sold in one day. In a little over two years, Ingersoll-Waterbury sold more than 2.5 million Mickey Mouse watches at $2.98 apiece. During that time, its workforce grew from 200 to 3,100.

By 1957, the 25 millionth watch was presented to Walt Disney.

In the 1950s, the company took the Mickey Mouse watch off the market and began selling a line of reliable and inexpensive watches. They called them Timex.

The watch returned to the market in 1968, and other companies and designers have sold it since then. Novelist Dan Brown puts a Mickey Mouse watch on Robert Langdon’s wrist as a reminder to stay young at heart.

Images: Vintage Mickey Mouse watch By Joe Haupt from USA – Vintage Mickey Mouse Character Watch By Bradley Time, Swiss Made, Analog (Mechanical – Hand Wind), Measures 30mm x 37mm, Original Black Plastic Band, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69522717. This story was updated in 2022.

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Connecticut’s Ezra Warner Takes the Tin Lid Off

If not for Connecticut’s Ezra Warner, cooks might still be fumbling for a rock and a bayonet to get their dinners.

While the original inventors of canning processes thought a lot about how to keep food safe and fresh in its can, they didn’t think much about how to actually get it out.

Ezra Warner’s Can Opener

A Frenchman, Philippe de Girard, invented the process of canning foods. And an Englishman, Peter Durand, patented it in 1810. But it would take more than 40 years before someone figured out an easy way to get food out of the cans.

Canning was a huge innovation, especially for supplying and feeding soldiers and sailors. But early cans were not what we’re used to today. Assembled with lead solder, the cans could be heavier than the food they held.

Ezra Warner

To open tin cans, soldiers used bayonets. Instructions for civilians read, “Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.”

Tin cans got lighter, which allowed Ezra Warner’s invention to work

The difficulty of opening cans posed the problems of the opener risking injury and the contents splashing about and making a mess. This went on for 40 years.

Enter Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Conn. Warner was already a successful businessman in the 1850s. He held stock in the Waterbury Hook and Eye Company. He held a patent on a “Mode of Fastening Hooks and Eyes upon Cards” he had invented. His invention let manufacturers easily package and ship hooks and eyes.

In 1858 he turned his innovative mind to the process of opening cans. Warner developed a new can opener – the first patented in America – that had a lever and a cutter. That allowed “the operator to cut as fast as he can move his hand,” he explained in the patent for the device.

Maybe Warhol should have done the opener, too

Child’s Play?

“The advantages of my improvement over all other instruments for this purpose consist in the smoothness and rapidity of the cut, as well as the ease with which it is worked,” Warner wrote.

And then he probably oversold the device, claiming, “a child may use it without difficulty, or risk.” Children whose parents let them use Warner’s can opener might find themselves in foster care. Grocery clerks used Warner’s can opener before the can left the store.

Warner further explained the curved cutter of his device could be removed. “So that if one should be injured it may be replaced by another, thus saving all the other portions of the instrument, and consequently much expense, and in that the piercer will perforate the tin without causing the liquid to fly out, as it does in all those which make the perforation by percussion of any kind.”

Storekeepers found Warner’s opener useful to pop open cans and sell the contents to customers. The biggest success for Warner came when the Union Army adopted his can opener during the Civil War.

Bull can opener

In the 1860s, cans of “bully beef” were sold with can openers. Bully beef, probably as alarming as it sounds, consisted of shredded beef in a bouillon or gelatin. The cast-iron openers had the shape of a bull’s head with the handle forming his tail.

A modern can opener

William Lyman of Meriden, Conn., advanced can opener technology further in 1870 with a patent for the first rotary opener. which was widely adopted for home use. The hand crank can opener still in use today replaced Lyman’s rotary opener.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Can opener By MAbW – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80389085. Campbell’s soup can by Warhol Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4268566. Bull can opener By own work – [1], CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16447869. Empty tin can By Sun Ladder – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5746428.

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Pass the Tourtiere, C’est Le Reveillon!

For many, many years, le reveillon was the way Franco-Americans ushered in New Year’s Day in New England’s Little Canadas.

Berlin, N.H., millworkers’ homes. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The reveillon is a long, late dinner preceding a holiday. Tourtiere is central to the meal. The celebrated meat pie, cooked and eaten during the shortest days of winter, often accompanies traditional Franco-American foods such as peas or pea soup, head cheese, croquignoles and ragout.

During the first half of the 19^th century, when the first wave of immigrants arrived, New Year’s Day exceeded Christmas in importance. On January 1, Franco-Americans exchanged small gifts, and children found presents under the tree or near the manger in the parlor. Sometimes their parents told them the presents came from le Pere Noel (a skinny version of Santa Claus) or l’Enfant Jesus.

Family and friends visited each other over the holidays, which stretched from Christmas Eve to January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany or la Fete des Rois. Franco-Americans would go to house parties in their neighborhoods in Nashua, Berlin and on the west side of Manchester, N.H. Other cities with vibrant Franco-American neighborhoods included Lewiston and Biddeford, Maine; Warwick and Woonsocket, R.I.; Fall River and Lowell, Mass.; St. Albans and Burlington, Vt.; and Bristol and Waterbury, Conn.

Historian Yves Roby noted that New Year’s was often a sad day for the Quebecois newcomers who worked in the mills. Because it wasn’t a federal holiday, the reveillon was replaced by a regular work day. Sometime before World War II, a Franco-American millworker complained,

Next Monday (January 1st), while our brothers and other relatives in Canada are celebrating New Year’s Day, we shall be going about our daily occupations.

Holy Day of Obligation

The Roman Catholic parish was central to life in New England’s Little Canadas, and New Year’s Mass was central to the holiday.

On the last Sunday of the year, the local church auctioned off unrented pews and parishioners elected new churchwardens, known as marguilliers.

St. Ann’s Church in Woonsocket, R.I.

Catholics celebrate the ‘Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God’ as a Holy Day of Obligation on New Year’s Day. At the end of the New Year’s Mass, the outgoing officer, along with an altar boy or the sexton holding a lighted candle, led his successor to the marguilliers’ pew.

Sometimes parishioners made a special door-to-door collection for the poor on New Year’s Day.

Many Franco-American families gathered before the reveillon for a solemn and emotional moment. They came to the home of the grandparents or parents, and the oldest son asked for the blessing. In The French-Canadian Heritage in New England, Gerard Breault wrote in 1986,

Everyone knelt before the grandfather who gave a benediction similar to that of the priest at the end of mass. As he made the sign of the cross over everyone, or each individual, he said: “Que Dieu vous benisse au nom du Pere et du Fils et du Saint Esprit. Amen.”

Always the tourtiere.

Then, wrote Breault, the blessing was followed by the classic Franco-American New Year’s wish: Je vous souhaite une bonne et heureuse annee, une bonne sante, et le paradis a la fin de vos jours! , or

I wish you a prosperous and happy New Year, good health, and eternal bliss when you pass on.

After the blessing, everyone stood up, kissed or shook hands and wished each other good fortune.

The Reveillon

Not quite a reveillon: Franco-American potato farmer and his family eat dinner in Wallagrass, Maine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Le reveillon, translated, means ‘the awakening.’ For some, that signifies a religious awakening. For others it means staying up all night for neighborhood house parties during the holiday season.

In the early 20^th century, Franco-American families in Winooski, Vt.., celebrated New Year’s with le reveillon. They ate tourtiere, head cheese, pea soup, pickled beets, roast beef and dumplings boiled in maple syrup. For dessert, they had pies and fudge. But always the tourtiere.

“Reveillon had to have tourtiere. That was a must,” Claire Chase, 91, told the Burlington Free Press in 2011.

Then came the late-night parties, called veillees.

There were sets carres – traditional dances — often accompanied by a fiddler, an accordionist, or maybe a piano, a mandolin, or a mouth organ. Family and friends would sing traditional songs like Minuit Chretien and Alouette. Maybe they’d have a glass of dandelion wine.

The traditional reveillon began to vanish after World War II. Today, even the last vestiges are disappearing.

With thanks to The French-Canadian Heritage in New England by Gerard J. Brault and Franco-Americans of New England: Dreams and Realities by Yves Roby. Tourtiere by Mack Male. This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Franco-American flag By Robert Couturier (image JPG), Ec.Domnowall (modifications & vectorisation SVG) – francoamericanarchives.org, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15705488. St. Ann’s By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18819427

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How Portuguese Immigrants Came to New England

In 1915, four Madeiran men organized a feast at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in New Bedford, Mass. They did it to celebrate the safe arrival of Portuguese immigrants after a stormy journey.

The festival mimicked the traditional religious feast observed in their village on Madeira Island. It included a celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass, a grand procession, traditional food and folk dancing.

Celebrating the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament in the 1910s. Photo courtesy Museum of Madeiran History.

Portuguese immigrants celebrating the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament in the 1960s. Photo courtesy Museum of Madeiran History.

Today, the 104-year-old Feast of the Blessed Sacrament is the largest Portuguese festival in the world. It reflects both the size and the identity of the Portuguese-American population in New England.

Two great waves of Portuguese immigration gave Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island the densest concentration of people with ancestry from Portugal, including the Azores and Cape Verde.

They made their mark with restaurants and bakeries, with fishing fleets, with Roman Catholic churches and with the Boston Red Sox. Dustin Pedroia, Jonny Gomes and Shane Victorino all have Portuguese ancestry. So do actor Tom Hanks, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry.

Portugal also produced John Philip Sousa, who composed that most American march, Stars and Stripes Forever. And Emma Lazarus, who came from Portugal, wrote the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

The First Portuguese Immigrants

The first Portuguese sailor, Miguel Corte-Real, may have come to Massachusetts as far back as the early 16^th century. A 40-ton boulder now in Dighton Rock State Park is inscribed with writing that Brown professor Edmund B. Delabarre believed was written by Corte-Real.

In 1912, Delabarre wrote that the inscription on the Dighton Rock said, “I, Miguel Cortereal, 1511. In this place, by the will of God, I became a chief of the Indians.” (Well, maybe.)

Dighton Rock in 1893

During the Colonial period, a small number of Portuguese immigrants came to the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

Jewish Portuguese immigrants came early to America to escape persecution. Wealthy merchant Aaron Lopez and his associates brought the sperm oil industry to Newport, R.I. They also built the Touro Synagogue in the 18^th century .

Until about 1870, whaling drew Portuguese sailors from the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. Poverty and military service sent them. They signed on for low-paying, dangerous work on whale ships. Then they settled in whaling communities in New England, California and Hawaii.

Easy To Get In

Portuguese families started to come to the United States in larger numbers around 1870 just as the whaling industry began to decline. They worked in New England’s booming textile mills, in whaling and fishing. And the women worked as seamstresses in garment shops.

In 1914, immigrants from Brava, Cape Verde, looking ashore from the Savoia as the await the disembarkation process to be finished. Photo courtesy New Bedford Standard-Times.

In 1914, immigrants from Brava, Cape Verde, looking ashore from the Savoia as they await the disembarkation process to be finished. Photo courtesy New Bedford Standard-Times.

In the late 19th century, many Portuguese, mainly Azorean and Madeiran, settled in Providence, Bristol and Pawtucket in Rhode Island. They also settled in New Bedford, Taunton, Fall River, Gloucester and Provincetown in Massachusetts. And they moved to Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut.

“It was easy to get into this country in those early days,” wrote Portuguese immigrant Lawrence Oliver in his autobiography. “America was a free port. To get in, all you needed was a little money in your pocket, so that the authorities could be sure you wouldn’t be destitute and on relief right away.”

Portuguese dory fisherman gossiping in the sun, Provincetown 1942. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Opportunity

Even during the Great Depression, Portuguese immigrants found opportunity in America. As Capt. Joseph Captiva, a Provincetown fisherman, told a government interviewer in 1938,

…it’s a good place to live. Good money an’ chances for th’ young people. They say it’s bad times now, but we ain’ never seen bad times here like in ol’ country. (Read the whole interview here.)

The newcomers began to form fraternal benefit societies. They also printed their own newspapers, such as A civilizacao luso-americano in Boston. They maintained strong ties to the Roman Catholic Church, and formed committees of festeiros to stage the religious festivals that survive today. The religious festivals subsequently helped Portuguese immigrants retain their sense of community and identity.

Evening recreation of the "Young Holy Ghosters" – Ages 15–25, average is 18 – all mill workers – all Portuguese. Whole House on George Street. Great need of leadership. Location: Fall River, Massachusetts. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, 21 June 1916. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Evening recreation of the “Young Holy Ghosters” – Ages 15–25, average is 18 – all mill workers – all Portuguese immigrants. Location: Fall River, Massachusetts. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, 21 June 1916. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, Portuguese-Americans hold religious festivals in the summer. They include the Feast of St. Anthony’s in Pawtucket, West Warwick and Portsmouth, R.I.

In Massachusetts, they celebrate the Festa do Divino Espirito Santo in East Taunton, The Feast of the Holy Ghost in Fall River and the Provincetown Portuguese Festival and Blessing of the Fleet.

In Connecticut, a Portuguese Day Festival is held every year in Danbury. Festa De Sao Joao is held in Waterbury. Portuguese-American residents of Stonington, Conn., also hold an annual Feast of the Holy Ghost.

Portuguese immigration peaked between 1910 and 1920, then slowed considerably. Literacy was low in Portugal, and many Portuguese immigrants couldn’t get in after the U.S. government instituted a literacy test in 1917. Then the government followed with a quota system that further reduced the numbers of Portuguese immigrants.

The 2nd Wave of Portuguese Immigrants

A series of volcanic eruptions in the Azores from 1957-58 spurred the second wave of Portuguese immigration to the United States. The Capelinhos volcano, on the coast of the Azorean island of Faial, erupted on Sept. 27, 1957. And it didn’t stop until Oct. 24, 1958.

No one was killed, but the volcanic activity covered the island with ash. It also destroyed homes and forced several thousand residents to leave. As a result, Congress in September 1958 passed the Azorean Refugee Act allowing 4,800 Azoreans to immigrate.

Portuguese-American Girl Scout, New Bedford, 1942. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Then seven years later, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system, spurring a new wave of Portuguese immigration. Portuguese then began to enter the United States at the rate of 11,000 to 12,000 per year. Consequently, 44.5 percent of all Portuguese immigration to the United States took place between 1961 and 1990.

By the Numbers

People of Portuguese descent make up only four-tenths of one percent (0.4 percent) of the entire U.S. population. But in Rhode Island, they make up 9.7 percent of the population. As a result, that’s the densest concentration of Portuguese in the country.

Massachusetts has the second densest concentration of Portuguese-Americans, with 6.2 percent. Connecticut ranks fourth, with 1.3 percent, mostly concentrated in the Hartford-West Hartford-Willimantic area.

But the majority of Portuguese-Americans in New England cluster in Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Forty-one percent of East Providence residents claim Portuguese ancestry. So do at least one in five residents of Bristol, Warren and Tiverton.

Though Rhode Island has the densest Portuguese population, it only has the third largest. Massachusetts has more Portuguese residents with ancestry from Portugal than any other state in the country. About 320,000 now live in the Bay State, according to estimates of the 2010 Census. Fall River, Mass., has the densest concentration of Portuguese- Americans in the United States — 43.9 percent. And Portuguese Americans make up at least a third of the population of North and South Dartmouth, New Bedford, Dighton and Somerset.

California also has a large number of residents with ancestry from Portugal.

Madeira Wine

Hence the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament in early August attracts tens of thousands to New Bedford from nearby. They come for folk dancing, pop music, soccer and, most of all, traditional Madeiran food. They’ll feast on carne de espeto, bacalhau, linguica, ceviche, bifana sandwiches and milho frito. (For a description of these foods, click here.)

The beverage of choice? Madeira wine, of course.

The festival then ends with a parade. It follows a route marked by 70 arches of bayberry leaves, illuminated by twinkling lights.

The next festival will begin on Aug, 3, 2023.

You may also enjoy this story about how Portuguese farmers made Falmouth strawberries famous here. This story about Portuguese immigrants was updated in 2023.

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The Birth of New Haven’s Famous White Clam Apizza

A peasant meal brought from 19^th century Italy evolved into New Haven’s famous white clam apizza, praised as an ‘intoxicating combination of romano cheese, fresh garlic, olive oil, parsley, and clams atop the chewy and charred oblong pies.’

The legend of the white clam apizza’s founder, Frank Pepe, was celebrated with a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in 2004 called Pepe’s New Haven pizzeria a ‘thriving community treasure.’

Origins

It started in the 1920s, when Italian immigrants sold their wares from carts at an open-air market in New Haven. The vendors were hungry and, in the winter, cold. Frank Pepe made four or five flatbread pizzas and carried them on his head through the streets. When he reached the market, he put the pizzas down on a box. The hungry vendors bought the hot pizza.

Frank Pepe couldn’t read, though, and had a hard time keeping accounts. Born April 15, 1893 on the Amalfi coast in Italy, he immigrated to New Haven in 1909. He spoke no English. Like many poor Italian immigrants, he settled in New Haven’s Wooster Square because it offered jobs. As many as 5,000 people worked in Wooster Square’s shirt and dress factories. Other immigrants opened small shops in the district’s once-grand old homes.

Frank Pepe got a job in a bakery, making apizza from old bread and selling it at the open-air market on his own time.

Apizza Arrives

He eventually started his own bakery, delivering bread from a cart. His lack of education made it hard for him to account for his income and expenses. Two crucial decisions led to the eventual birth of the white clam apizza: He married the literate, English-speaking Filomena, and he focused on the apizza business, where his customers came to him.

In 1925, Frank and Filomena began making two kinds of apizza (pronounced ‘ah-beets’). One was a simple charred flat bread with a cooked sauce of hand-crushed tomatoes – the Original Tomato Pie. The other had anchovies.

White clam apizza

For 12 years they sold apizza from 157 Wooster St. with a small crew of family members. Frank’s contributions to the community during the Great Depression earned him the nickname ‘Old Reliable.’

In 1937, Filomena and Frank Pepe bought the building next door at 163 Wooster St. and moved to the apartment above it with their two daughters, Elizabeth and Serafina. Today, that building is still home to Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletena.

Modern Apizza opened nearby three years earlier, and in 1938, Frank Pepe’s nephew Sal Consiglio started his own pizzeria two blocks away. That family feud spilled out into the streets of New Haven and beyond. People argue over which has the best apizza. Frank Sinatra, for example, liked Sal’s, while Ronald Reagan preferred Pepe’s.

Sally’s Apizza rounded out the ‘Big Three,’ which, along with the term ‘apizza,’ define New Haven style pizza.

What Defines New Haven Apizza?

Eater calls it ‘a hotter, crispier, and dirtier descendant of Neapolitan style pie.’ New Haven apizza is left in intensely hot ovens longer than most pies, which blisters and chars the crust. Refrigerated dough is allowed to ferment overnight and then warmed to room temperature. That gives it a more nuanced flavor and chewier crust than most other pizzas.

Exactly how Frank Pepe invented the white clam pizza is unclear, though it is certain he invented it. “It was most likely an organic inspiration,” reads the website. Pepe’s also served raw littleneck clams on the half shell from Rhode Island as an appetizer , and some time in the mid 1960s they ended up on top of white pizzas.

Houses in the Wooster Square Historic District.

Fans and critics say there’s nothing like it.

Success spawned more pizzerias, in Fairfield, Waterbury, West Hartford, Manchester and Danbury, Conn., at the Mohegan Sun Casino and in Yonkers, N.Y. They’ve also opened in Warwick, R.I., and in the Massachusetts cities of Burlington, Chestnut Hill and Watertown,

Another Local Favorite

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana serves another vintage homegrown favorite: Foxon Park sodas. They are still made the way they were in 1922, when Matteo Naclerio founded the company in East Haven. Conn. Real cane sugar is used instead of the high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens most sodas. Foxon Park, still in the Naclerio family, attributes its early success to home delivery and unusual, varied flavors such as White Birch Beer, Gassosa and Iron Brew.

Frank Pepe died Sept. 6, 1969. The business remains in the family.

Excitement and Loyalty

On June 24, 2005, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro honored Frank and Filomena Pepe by entering comments in the Congressional Record:

With hard work, countless hours, and dedication the Pepes created a successful business that carried themselves and their extended family through the Great Depression … Pepe’s popularity grew outside the Italian-American community of Wooster Street and for four generations enthusiastic customers have returned with their own families. The excitement and loyalty of their customers has never waned — a truth that is reflected in the long lines of anxious patrons that are a constant on Wooster Street…

Four generations later, the business is still run by family and the walls are still adorned with family photos as well as those of Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, and Matthew Broderick–just a few of the stars who have dined at Pepe’s in the past… It is not just the pizza that makes’ Pepe’s such a special part of our community. It is the history and community spirit of Frank Pepe and his family that has made it a New Haven landmark.

Wooster Square has come up in the world since Frank Pepe delivered bread from a cart. The Wooster Square Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places. To see historic photos of Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletena, click here.

With thanks to The Italian-American Experience in New Haven by Anthony V. Riccio and The Definitive Guide to New Haven Pizza by Eater. Exterior of Pepe’s By Krista – frank pepe exterior, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640336.White clam pizza By Krista – frank pepe clam pie, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640270. This story was updated in 2021.

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