Patsy's Pizzeria
2287 1st Avenue | East Harlem | built 1900
Open on the map5 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1933
Pasquale Lancieri opens Patsy's Pizzeria on First Avenue
Pasquale "Patsy" Lancieri, who had learned to make pizza at Lombardi's, opened his pizzeria on First Avenue at 117th Street in 1933, when East Harlem was still heavily Italian. It may have been the first place in New York to sell pizza by the slice. Its brick coal-fired oven is kept burning even when the restaurant is closed, because letting it cool would change how the pies char.
Source: theclio.com
- 1991
Carmela Lancieri sells Patsy's to Kosovo-born Frank Brija
Decades after her husband's death, Pasquale Lancieri's widow Carmela sold the pizzeria in 1991 to Frank Brija, an Albanian immigrant from Kosovo. Brija kept the original First Avenue shop and its coal oven and expanded Patsy's to several more locations in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.
Source: theclio.com
- 1998
The New York Times lists East Harlem's Patsy's among a few surviving pizza landmarks
A 1998 New York Times pizza survey named Patsy's of East Harlem, John's on Bleecker Street and Totonno's in Coney Island among the few landmarks that had kept the classic pizza alive. The critic placed the original storefront at 2287-91 First Avenue, in what remained of an Italian neighborhood, and judged the pizza good but the crust short on snap and the flavors short on liveliness.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2003
A Boston Globe travel writer ends a New York pizza tour at Patsy's, which sells by the slice
In 2003 a Boston Globe travel writer made Patsy's the last stop on a New York pizza tour. Unlike the other old coal-oven pizzerias, it sold pizza by the slice, and it claimed to have originated the idea. The writer noted that it had operated at the same address since 1933 and called it the city's oldest pizzeria, though perhaps not its first.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2019
A waiter returns a customer's forgotten $424,000 check
After Karen Vinacour and her daughter left no tip, waiter Armando Markaj found a cashier's check for nearly $424,000 on their table, her life savings meant for a condo down payment. He turned down her offer of a belated tip, and Patsy's owner Frank Brija helped track her down through the New York Daily News to return it.
Source: today.com
Further reading
- Patsy's PizzeriaWikipedia
Nearby
- Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel473 East 115th Street | 6 entries
- Rao's265 Pleasant Avenue | 6 entries
- Benjamin Franklin High School (Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics)260 Pleasant Avenue | 10 entries
- East River Plaza517 East 117th Street | 4 entries
- Richard Webber Harlem Packing House207 East 119th Street | 4 entries
- Church of Our Lady Queen of Angels228 East 113th Street | 2 entries