The man attributed with bringing the first pizza to Washington DC is Luigi Calvi. Since 1943, Luigi’s has been located at 1132-19th St NW offering pizza and authentic Italian food to generations of Washingtonians. But it was pizza that made Luigi’s “Famous Luigi’s.” As the seat of government absent an industrial-based economy, pizza came to Washington later than to other large Eastern seaboard cities.

At the turn of the last century, the factory work in cities such as New York, New Haven, Boston and Trenton attracted large populations of poorly educated southern Italian immigrants who had learned to make pizza by watching their relatives make it at home. In 1905, Gennaro Lombardi applied for a license to make and sell pizza at his grocery store on Spring Street in a thriving Italian-American neighborhood in New York City. He is credited with opening the first pizzeria. Many who had worked at Lombardi’s left to open their own establishments.

The first American cookbook to offer a recipe for pizza was the Specialita Culinarie Italiane, 137 Tested Recipes of Famous Italian Foods published in Boston in 1936 as a fund-raiser. The recipe for Neapolitan pie or Pizza alla Napolitana instructed cooks to hand-stretch the dough until it was ¼ inch thick. The dough was then topped with salt, pepper, Scamozza cheese, tomatoes, grated parmesan cheese, and olive oil in that order. Readers were not given a recipe for the dough, rather, told to go to any Italian bake shop. There were few innovations in the art of pizza-making until the deep-dish pizza was invented when Ike Sewell opened Uno’s in Chicago in 1943. Sewell added large quantities of quality meats, cheeses, and vegetables to the traditional recipe making the pizza a meal rather than just a snack.

The dish was further popularized nationwide by American GIs returning from duty in Italy during WWII. One of those returning soldiers, Ira Nevin, built the first gas-fired Bakers Pride pizza oven so pizza could then be baked quickly and economically. In 1948, the first commercial pizza-pie mix, “Roman Pizza Mix”, was produced in Worcester, Massachusetts by Frank A. Fiorello. Between 1945 and 1960, pizzerias were all over the country and provided an inexpensive and satisfying meal to be shared by countless Americans.

For those of us in DC, we are grateful for the pioneering efforts of Luigi Calvi. Over the years, Luigi has continually improved and expanded its menu. Today, still under family ownership, it features fresh homemade pastas, veal, chicken and seafood dishes as well as the old standby, pizza. Experience a little bit of history and good food at the same time from Mon-Sat 11:00 AM-12:00 AM and Sun 12:00PM-12:00 AM at Luigi’s.