Hundreds of thousands of southern Italians — mostly from Naples, Sicily, and Campania — arrive in New York City and settle in Lower Manhattan, particularly in the neighborhoods around Mulberry Street and what became known as Little Italy. They bring their food with them, including the flatbreads and tomato pies of their home regions. Pizza, as they knew it, was humble street food — sold by vendors in the streets of Naples, topped simply with oil, garlic, and tomato.

Gennaro Lombardi opens a grocery store at 53½ Spring Street in Little Italy that begins selling tomato pies — whole pizzas wrapped in paper, tied with string, and sold to the factory workers of the neighborhood. By 1905 it's operating as a full pizzeria, the first in the United States. The coal oven, the San Marzano tomatoes, the fresh mozzarella — it's all there from the start. Lombardi's is still open today, now at 32 Spring Street, with the same coal oven tradition intact.

Anthony Pero, who came to America from Napoli in 1903 and worked briefly at Lombardi's, opens Totonno's Pizzeria Napolitano on Neptune Avenue in Coney Island. It becomes one of the defining coal-oven operations in the city, cash only and whole pies only — rules that remain in force a century later. The Pero family still runs it today.

John Sasso opens John's Pizzeria on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village with a coal oven and a strict no-slices policy that it has never abandoned. The original booths, the handwritten orders on the walls, and the same oven are all still there — one of the most unchanged restaurant interiors in the city.

Pasquale "Patsy" Lancieri opens Patsy's Pizzeria on First Avenue in East Harlem, in the heart of what was then a densely Italian neighborhood. Patsy's becomes one of the first pizzerias to sell pizza by the slice — a New York innovation that would change how the whole city eats. Frank Sinatra was a regular.

Carlo Denino opens a tavern in Port Richmond, Staten Island that begins serving pizza — thin, crispy, tavern-style pies that become the template for the Staten Island bar pie. "In crust we trust" becomes the unofficial motto. Nearly 90 years later it's still one of the borough's most beloved institutions.

As Italian-American families move out of Manhattan to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, pizza follows. Neighborhood pizzerias open on what seems like every other block in areas like Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Astoria, Arthur Avenue, and Gravesend. These are not destination restaurants — they are community institutions. The regulars know the owner by name, the owner knows what you're ordering before you say it.

Ludovico Barbati, who had been selling pizza from a horse-drawn cart since the late 1930s, establishes L&B Spumoni Gardens at 86th Street in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The upside-down Sicilian square — cheese on the bottom against the crust, sauce on top — becomes L&B's signature and one of the most imitated styles in the borough.

Domenico DeMarco arrives from the province of Caserta in Italy and opens Di Fara Pizza on Avenue J in Midwood, Brooklyn. For decades it's a neighborhood spot. Then food writers discover it, and it becomes a pilgrimage — people lining up for hours for a pie that DeMarco makes himself, snipping fresh basil over each one with scissors, right up until his death in 2022. The family continues the tradition.

Pino "Joe" Pozzuoli opens Joe's Pizza on Carmine Street with a simple premise: one style of pizza, done perfectly, at a fair price. No tables, no delivery, no complications. Just a counter, an oven, and a classic New York slice. It becomes the most consensus-picked answer to the question "what is the best pizza in New York City."

A wave of wood-fired Neapolitan pizzerias opens across the city, led by spots like Lucali in Carroll Gardens (2006), Roberta's in Bushwick (2008), and Una Pizza Napoletana. These places treat pizza as a craft — long fermentation, strict sourcing, DOP-certified ingredients. They attract a new generation of food writers and make Brooklyn a global pizza destination.

The grandma slice — a style that Italian-American home cooks had been making for generations, baked in an oiled square pan with a crispy bottom — gets its national moment. Best Pizza in Williamsburg, L'Industrie, and a handful of other Brooklyn spots elevate what was always a home-cooking style into a sought-after product. Food media follows and the grandma slice becomes one of the defining pizzas of the decade.

New York pizza in 2026 is the most diverse and technically accomplished it has ever been. Coal-oven institutions that have been operating for a century sit alongside wood-fired Neapolitan spots, sourdough fermentation experiments, New Haven-style apizza shops, and grandma-slice specialists — all within the same city. The argument about who makes the best slice has never been more interesting, and there has never been a better time to do the research yourself.