La Nostra Storia — our story
From the steel mills to a slice of history
Frank and Costanza Aloe married in 1948 in Amantea, on the coast of Calabria, and crossed the ocean to Ambridge, where Frank took a job in the steel mills. When the mills grew unsteady in the mid-1950s, he went looking for something of his own.
He found it in an Italian newspaper: a New York City pizza school offering training and an oven for $600. Frank went, learned the cheese-under-the-sauce pie, and on September 22, 1958 opened Frank's Pizzeria at 618 Duss Avenue. That first night, the pizza was free — he wanted every neighbor to taste it. They came back the next day, and they never stopped.
Frank passed in 2010, but Costanza is still here, making pizza and her famous calzones alongside her sons Bobby and Sal, her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The dough, the sauce, the hand-grated mozzarella — still made fresh, every day, in the same little shop on Duss.
“That night, pizza was free. He just wanted everyone to taste it.”
— The Aloe family, three generations on