Spumoni Gardens

The story

Ludovico Barbati sold spumoni and Italian ice from a horse and wagon before he ever owned a building. That was 1938. A year later he bought a vacant lot on 86th Street in Gravesend, and by the mid-1950s the stand had grown into a full compound: spumoni factory, pizzeria, luncheonette. He had come from Torella dei Lombardi, Italy, in 1917. The Sicilian pizza and ices that emerged from that expansion are what critics like Robert Sietsema now call a Brooklyn must-try, the horse and wagon long gone but the corner still standing.