Marzullo’s Pastry Shop

654-6 Grand Avenue (former)

163 Wallace Street Marzullo’s c. 1950. Photo courtesy of the New Haven Museum.

Interior of 163 Wallace Street, l to r daughter Chiara Marzullo Tolli, Giuseppe Marzullo, wife Agata Marzullo, son Louis Marzullo, and daughter Emilia Marzullo Esposito. Photo courtesy the Marzullo/Esposito family

Founded by Italian immigrant Giuseppe Marzullo in 1906, Marzullo’s Pastry Shop used unwritten recipes Giuseppe learned as a youth in southern Italy and during his apprenticeship in New York prior to moving to New Haven. His sense of artistry and commitment to authentic recipes garnered international attention and won him awards locally as well as in Italy.

In the early years of the business, deliveries were made by bicycle and a borrowed horse-drawn carriage. Later, Giuseppe purchased a building at 163 Wallace Street, where the business acquired more modern equipment, refrigeration, and transportation. (His nephew, also named Giuseppe, and wife, Carmella, ran another Marzullo’s Bakery on Washington Avenue, which opened during the Great Depression and lasted for nearly 40 years.) Marzullo’s remained on Wallace Street for half a century.

By 1962, urban renewal plans forced the business to move. Giuseppe oversaw the construction of a new building at 656 Grand Avenue. After Giuseppe’s death in 1967, his son Louis Marzullo and daughter Emilia Marzullo Esposito continued operating the bakery until 1987, when the iconic New Haven business closed.

Marzullo’s reputation was such that people from all over Connecticut and even neighboring states would come in for their pastries, cookies, cakes, gelato, lemon ice, and holiday pies. The bakery’s wedding cakes were particularly well-known and sought after. Every holiday, customers (some of them second- and third-generation customers) would wait in lines all the way around the building for their turn at the counter.

Some of the original cooking tools and a large copper kettle used in the bakery were donated by the Marzullo family to the Italian American Historical Society of Connecticut, whose archives are located at the Ethnic Heritage Center.

Text sources: Proto, Alphonse, It Was Grand!, Foz LLC, 2019; “The Fine Art of Baking; It takes More Than Just Dough,” The Register Magazine, September 23, 1962, p.3; The Marzullo/Esposito Family documents.