Lucibello’s Pastry Shop

935 Grand Avenue

Chapel Street interior 1959 with Frank Faggio. Photo courtesy of Peter Faggio.

474 Chapel location. Photo courtesy of Peter Faggio

Francisco Ciccio, the bakery’s founder, was born in Amalfi, Italy, in 1897. He excelled in school through the eighth grade before becoming an apprentice for his two uncles in a department store. In 1908, a powerful earthquake in Sicily and southern Italy nearly destroyed the city of Messina and killed much of the area’s population, including Ciccio’s uncles. Ciccio arrived in New York in 1920 with little money before moving to live with family in New Haven. He went back to New York for employment opportunities and there discovered his love for baking. After becoming an American citizen and marrying Filomena Proto, he changed his name to Frank Lucibello, a surname taken from other members of his extended New Haven family.

He traveled and learned different techniques before starting his own business in New Haven: Lucibello’s French-Italian Pastry Shop on Chapel Street, which opened in 1929. Specializing in French as well as Italian pastries and cakes, Lucibello’s soon became very popular. Andrew Faggio was a close childhood friend of Lucibello and asked Lucibello to give a job at the bakery to his ten-year-old son. Andrew’s son Frank Faggio started working at Lucibello’s and continued there until he purchased the bakery from Lucibello in 1959. When urban renewal arrived a few years later, Lucibello’s was forced to relocate to its present location at the corner of Grand Avenue and Olive Street, where it continues to operate under the management of Frank Faggio’s son Peter. Today many of the bakery’s patrons are second-, third-, even fourth-generation customers who come from all over the region to pick up Lucibello’s delicious cakes and pastries.

Text sources: Interview with Peter Faggio conducted by Rhoda Zahler Samuel; Lucibello, Mary and Barbieri, Norma, “The Story of Frank Lucibello.” La Storia, publication of the Italian-American Historical Society of Connecticut, Volume 13, Number 4, 2004.