Although some industrial production of pasta took place prior to the industrial revolution, the introduction of steam-powered machines during the nineteenth century enabled the mass production of pasta and marginalized the artisanal production of the staple in Italy.
Throughout the first decades of the nineteenth century, Italian innovators developed machines capable of mixing and kneading vast amounts of dough and shaping it into pasta. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the availability of this machinery and railroads required to move it allowed for the proliferation of factories devoted to the manufacture of pasta throughout the Italian peninsula.
The prevalence of pasta and the industrialization of its production in the United States coincided with the rise of mass immigration from Italy during the second half of the nineteenth century. As Italian immigrants spread through the Northeast, Italian foodways gained popularity and a foothold in the market.
The first successful pasta factory in the United States was opened in 1848 by French immigrant Antoine Zerega in Brooklyn, New York. Located on the waterfront, the operation used a single horse in the basement to power the machinery and dried the fresh spaghetti strands on the roof in the sun.
The construction of new factories accelerated in the decades that followed. The predecessor to today’s National Pasta Association was formed in 1904 as the National Association of Macaroni and Noodle Manufacturers of America, soon renamed National Macaroni Manufacturers Association; dues were $5.
By 1925, nearly 350 pasta factories operated in the United States, with over one hundred of these operating in New York State. The first industry trade magazine, The New Macaroni Journal, began publishing in 1919. Four years later it took the name The Macaroni Journal (1924-1984), and in 1985 became Pasta Journal. The publication was discontinued in 2000.
New York’s Pasta Factories
The typical pasta factory constructed around the turn of the twentieth century bore a general resemblance to the era’s ordinary industrial mills. Pasta factories required open floor plans for dough processing and regular fenestration for maximum natural light and air circulation on floors given over to drying.
These factories were often constructed from brick with fireproof features, few stylistic details, and flat roofs. Mixing, kneading, rolling, cutting, and shaping required far less space than drying, and thus could be entirely relegated to the bottom floor.
Cut pasta must be dried to preserve it for the length of time required to bring it to market at scale, and prior to the middle of the twentieth century, few manufacturers had access to the innovative drying machines being developed in Italy.
This process was usually based on seasonal conditions and therefore required space in proportion to the output of the factory.
For example, as its output increased, the Dunkirk Macaroni & Supply Company in Chautauqua, NY, faced a bottleneck based on the space available for drying included in the original 1908 factory design, and two additional stories were added in 1912 to make up for the shortage of drying space. By the time it ceased to function as a pasta factory in 1943, the Dunkirk Company building had three floors and a rear addition solely devoted to drying.
Before 1914, Italian immigrants in America preferred imported pasta from Italy. When World War One limited trade with Europe, the massive demand for macaroni was left unfulfilled. Dozens of domestic pasta companies suddenly emerged across New York, especially in Brooklyn, to fill the supply void. Small operations quickly scaled into industrial factories.
The industry’s boom relied heavily on Brooklyn-based innovation. Sicilian engineer Ignazio De Francisci patented a revolutionary automatic pasta-making machine in Gowanus in 1914, which dramatically sped up production and sanitary drying times.
The De Francisci family’s Consolidated Macaroni Machine Corporation (DEMACO, located at 156-166 Sixth Street in Brooklyn) revolutionized how processed pasta was produced. In 1929 the company’s hydraulic press drastically increased production speed, and product consistency.
The Automatic Short Pasta Drying Unit, patented in 1932, cut drying times down from two full days of hanging to just a few hours inside a sanitary, temperature-controlled chamber. This allowed factories to move pasta from press to package without having to be handled by humans.
At its peak, the borough of Brooklyn was home to several iconic brands, including Zerega, V. La Rosa and Sons, Refined Macaroni Company, and Santoro.
Around the mid-twentieth century, U.S. food production industries underwent a major shift toward consolidated enterprise as larger corporations acquired smaller companies or forced them out of production.
These larger companies centralized, synchronized, and standardized production in larger, cheaper facilities in New Jersey and further west. Zerga, Brooklyn’s original pasta makers, moved to Fair Lawn, NJ, in the 1950s.
By 1960, most production was moved out of smaller factories and into larger plants with state-of-the-art equipment for all processes, including drying and packaging.
Over the course of the twentieth century, the number of pasta manufacturers fell from a high of around four hundred to a few dozen, and the number of factories declined as the scale of those in operation rose.
Read more about New York’s Culinary History.
This essay was drawn from the Dunkirk Macaroni & Supply Company Building National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, located here.
Illustrations, from above: A worker for Atlantic Macaroni Company hangs spaghetti to dry at a factory in Long Island City, New York, 1943; A spaghetti spreader at work, ca. 1915; Automatic Short Pasta Drying Unit produced by the Consolidated Macaroni Machine Co of Brooklyn; and a Brooklyn Macaroni Company Delivery Truck.
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