When New Yorkers got hold of ice cream, they served it in gardens and saloons, sandwiched it, coned it, custardized, baked, yogurted and super-premiumed it.

Everybody loves ice cream. There’s something about its “mouth feel,” thanks to its round molecules, and the refreshment it delivers on steamy days (we’ve had plenty of those.) Today there are thousands of flavors available, in textures from soft-serve to hard-pack to rolled, baked and even fried. It gets whipped into shakes, sodas, and “concretes,” and mass-produced into “novelties” sold by streetcarts, musical trucks, and your corner bodega. There’s also sorbet, gelato, frozen yogurt and Italian Ices (more on those later.) We have endless opportunities to explore new, unique ice cream experiences. Life is worth living!

Ice cream was not invented in the Big Apple. But like so many other “foreign” foods, once it arrived, the city’s chefs, experimenters and manufacturers refined and re-invented it in countless ways. Served in pleasure gardens, palaces, soda fountains, street corners and today’s artisinal “creameries,” New York has indelibly changed the world’s favorite frozen treat. Like pastrami, pizza, hot dogs and bagels, the city embraced a food from elsewhere, made it its own, then made it famous.

First, let’s untangle ice cream’s convoluted history, and visit the remarkable venues which first served it to Gothamites. Then we’ll taste some of the frozen concoctions invented by New Yorkers. We’ll wind up touring the last of NYC’s old-time ice cream parlors, so bring the kids and grands!   

Breaking the Ice

In order to make ice cream, you need ice. It sounds so simple. But prior to the late 1800s, only nature could make ice. So you had to search for it, harvest it, then figure out a way to keep it frozen as long as possible. It’s hard to imagine ice as a luxury product, but it was a costly, perishable extravagance for many centuries. It also became a huge business known as the Frozen Water Trade (which I’ll cover in the forthcoming chapter NYC Water.)

The Chinese were first to gather ice to preserve food. During the Tang Dynasty the emperors enjoyed a frozen milk-like confection, which, by some accounts, was pretty disgusting (they used fermented buffalo milk.) There’s a story going around that Marco Polo (1254-1324) brought back a Chinese ice cream recipe, but historians argue that he never made it that far east. Polo was a no-show. 

The ancient Greeks and Romans sent laborers up the mountains to gather ice and snow, store it in straw-covered pits, and use it to concoct iced refreshments. Alexander the Great, Catherine de’ Medici, King Henry II, and Louis XIV all could afford frozen confections. In medieval times Arabs, Persians and Turks drank sharaht, or sherbet, flavored with pomegranates and quinces. But it was the Italians who introduced ice cream as we know it today.

Antonio Latini, a kitchen supervisor in Naples, was the first person to write down recipes for making sorbetto in the 1600s. He flavored his milky creation with lemons, strawberries, and chocolate (an unfamiliar ingredient brought from the New World.) In 1686 a Sicilian, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, introduced sorbetto to Paris, and established that country’s first café, called Il Procope...it’s still in business! A forerunner of the ice cream parlor, its frozen treats were enjoyed by Napoleon, Voltaire, and Victor Hugo.

New York gets way cool

You may know that New York City was once the Capital of the United States. But you may not know that our Founding Fathers and Mothers loved them some ice cream. President George Washington indulged in the frosty delights which wife Martha whipped up in their Manhattan home on Cherry Street. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both tasted ice cream as diplomats in France; Jefferson’s handwritten recipe still exists. Both Washington and Jefferson established large ice houses at their estates to make their favorite dessert (or had enslaved people make it for them.) New Yorker Alexander Hamilton also served ice cream, and First Lady Dolley Madison (correct spelling) popularized the frosty delight at her memorable soirées. Her favorite flavor? Oyster!

New Yorkers couldn’t get enough ice cream. Venues had to be created which could make and serve lots of the frozen stuff so regular folks could enjoy it, not just Kings and Presidents. Leave it to the ingenious Gothamites to invent one of the most glorious eras in NYC gastronomic history...  

Pleasure Gardens

Imagine strolling down a major thoroughfare in New York, like Broadway. You pass building after building, crammed together along the hot, crowded pavement next to noisy traffic. Suddenly you’re face-to-face with a vast, green space, open to the sky, filled with trees, flowers, fountains, music, and happy people enjoying ice cream. Are you dreaming? Is it a mirage?

No, it’s a Pleasure Garden, one of the long-lost treasures of past city life. Based on a British concept, they began appearing in Manhattan after the Revolutionary War, and reached their zenith in the early 1800s. In an overcrowded downtown with no public parks to escape the heat, their big draw was cool breezes, cold refreshments and frozen desserts, along with dazzling entertainments.

The first and most famous of these outdoor oases was Vauxhall Garden, established in 1767 by Samuel Fraunces (operator of the famous tavern.) Its position on a prominence overlooking the Hudson River ensured a delightful setting. Soon it had a competitor: Ranelagh Gardens, a larger attraction nearby, boasting regular band concerts. Both offered excellent ice creams, and appear on a 1767 map of New York (see below.)

As the city expanded, open land became scarce. Vauxhall moved several times, first to Broome Street, then in to a location near today’s Astor Place in 1805. When John Jacob Astor bought the area, he rammed Lafayette Street straight through the garden, and built the Astor Library (now The Public Theater) and ritzy apartments called LaGrange Terrace (a.k.a. Colonnade Row). The street was instantly the wealthiest residential district in the city, and Vauxhall Gardens dwindled.

By all accounts, the ice creams offered in the Pleasure Gardens were remarkable. Already famed for his confectionery, Joseph Corée established his Mount Vernon Garden (1800) on Broadway and Leonard Street. John Contoit, who owned an ice house, opened the New York Garden (1806) on Greenwich Street in today’s Tribeca, serving his cold treats in a narrow, leafy plot between two buildings. Famous for his Italian-style ice cream, Fedinand Palmo operated Palmo’s Garden (1808) on Broadway and Reade Street. Charles Barnard’s United States Garden (1808) offered desserts by ice cream impresario Charles Collet, including lemon, raspberry and pineapple flavors. Perhaps the most infamous ice cream eatery was Niblo’s Garden on Prince Street and Broadway, north of the city (in the heart of today’s Soho.) It included a hotel, a saloon, and a 3,000-seat opera house! 

These Pleasure Gardens shared the joy of ice cream with New Yorkers both day and night, along with fireworks, orchestras, dancing, theater productions, magic shows, hot air balloon rides and tableaux vivants, all amongst tree-lined paths illuminated by colored lanterns. I wish they were still around! But New York was becoming the fastest-growing city on Earth; Pleasure Gardens would have to find a place indoors. A new era of frozen confections was dawning.

Ice Cream Saloons

By the 1850s several changes had taken place. A.T. Stewart opened the world’s first department store on lower Broadway, inaugurating the Ladies’ Mile, attracting thousands of upper-class women shoppers. They needed to take refreshments without the traditional required male escort. Venues were invented to allow for such a thing, requiring men to have a female escort! These lavishly appointed eateries, known as Ice Cream Saloons, were a colossal success.

The two largest ice creameries were Taylor’s and Thompson’s, both near Stewart’s store. More like ice cream palaces than saloons, these huge, opulent gathering places were decorated to attract the ladies: vaulted ceilings, frescoes, gilded mirrors, marble floors, chandeliers and extravagant flowers created a “safe space” for women to relax. Each could serve 3,000 ice cream lovers a day.

James Thompson was first, erecting a lavish, million-dollar ice cream saloon at 359 Broadway in 1852. Nearby, John Taylor established a 7,500 square foot ice cream emporium, with ornate sugar sculptures and an enormous cut-glass fountain. The New York Herald dubbed it “the restaurant of the age.” The ladies visited both in droves, and the rivalry between Thompson’s and Taylor’s became legendary. 

Unlike noisy mens’ saloons, women wanted dark, quiet places. One visitor described the ice cream palaces as “redolent with the perfume of orange blossoms, musical with the sound of trickling water, with whispered orders entrusted confidentially to the waiters.” However, surface respectability belied a stealthy undercurrent: ice cream saloons spelled SEX.

Although men were not admitted without a female escort, there was no guarantee that these couplings were entirely proper. A pair may appear to be man and wife, but in actuality not each other’s. The ice creameries were located in the bustling business/shopping district, which provided perfect cover for commuting Wall Streeters and Ladies’ Milers to meet up, far from the watchful eyes of home. Despite their wholesome appearance, ice cream palaces became a trysting ground for all sorts of illicit rendezvous. Both morality and frozen desserts were heading for the 20th century.

Soda Fountains

In the 1830s, New Yorker John Matthews invented a machine which carbonated water on demand. “Soda water” was thought to have medicinal attributes, so the first “fountains” were installed in pharmacies. Druggists figured out that adding flavored syrups, or even ice cream, boosted sales. Soon fancy marble soda fountains took center stage at drug stores, manned by a new employee called a “soda jerk.” It wasn’t long before candy stores installed them. By the turn of the 20th century, soda fountains outnumbered saloons. And when Prohibition hit in 1920, many NYC bars and breweries transformed into soda and ice cream purveyors.

Soda Jerks invented all kinds of dreamy drinks to attract thirsty customers. This is when the first egg cream was created on the Lower East Side (so popular that it earned its own chapter.) But it was ice cream sodas which became a local and national craze, like the “black cow” (vanilla ice cream, root beer and chocolate syrup) and the “purple cow” (ginger ale, ice cream and grape juice.) With advent of mechanical blenders, milk shakes and malteds appeared.

In some places, “blue laws” banned the sale of ice cream sodas on Sundays, because they were considered too effervescently frivolous to be consumed on the Sabbath. So people ordered just the ice cream in a dish, sauced with fruit or syrup. The ice cream sundae was born (purposely misspelled to avoid the wrath of God.) The decadent treat took the country by storm. It was a major offering at Schrafft’s, the New York restaurant chain which served a mainly female clientele. Sundaes were soon super-sized into the popular banana split. 

Besides creating memorable venues where folks could enjoy their frigid refreshments, New Yorkers invented many unique methods of making and selling ice cream, introducing new treats across the country and around the world. Here are just a few:

Ice Cream Sandwich

In the late 1800s, street vendors supplied ice cream for the many New Yorkers who couldn’t afford pleasure gardens or palaces. Bowery pushcarts offered something called “hokey pokey,” a thin, adulterated version of ice cream, sometimes made with “swill milk” from diseased cows. For a penny, a kid would be handed a cup or just a spoon, from which he would lick the stuff. The next kid would use the same unwashed utensil. Yuck!

Parental outcries resulted in a more sanitary vending method: ice cream was served in a thin block sandwiched between wax paper, to be eaten by hand. It was the first ice cream “novelty.” The paper was soon replaced by two thin cakes, then supplanted by sturdier cookies. The ice cream sandwich we know and still love today was born on the Bowery! 

In 1978 two New Yorkers, Richard LaMotta and Sam Metzger introduced the Chipwich, using two chocolate chip cookies. They trained sixty students to hawk them from pushcarts, which became a common sight across the city. NYC street vendors and ice cream novelties are a natural pairing!

Ice Cream Cone

28-year old Italian immigrant Italo Marcioni was an ice cream peddler on Wall Street in the 1890s. Unlike the Bowery’s cheap hokey-pokey hawkers, Marcioni served his treats in glass dishes, which unfortunately broke or were carried away by his customers. He spent nights in his family kitchen, experimenting with creating edible serving vessels to replace the glass ones. He found that by rolling waffles into a cone shape while warm, they would retain their shape when cooled. Ice cream in cones were such a big New York hit that Marciono couldn’t keep up with them, so he invented a contraption which could bake and roll ten cones at a time. He received a U.S. Patent for his new cone-making marvel in 1903. This patent disproves the long-standing belief that the cone was invented at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Sorry, St. Louis, but the Big Apple is the actual birthplace of the ice cream cone. In fact, New York’s Museum of Modern Art displayed a waffle cone in its “Humble Masterpieces” exhibit.

Frozen Custard

In the early 20th century, the Kohr Brothers (Archie, Clair and Elton) were growing tired of delivering homemade ice cream door-to-door via a horse-drawn wagon, and wanted to branch out. Their Uncle Sylvester told them about a machine which produced a continuous flow of ice cream. The Kohr boys bought one, dismantled it, changed some parts, and ran a new recipe through it. Voila! A silky, creamy new product was born.

Uncle Sylvester advised the boys to take their new machine to the seashore during the summer. So they set up shop in Coney Island in 1919, introducing their new treat called “Frozen Dessert.” On their very first weekend, the Kohrs sold 18,000 cones at a nickel each! The only problem was that the salty ocean air caused the dessert to melt quickly. So they added eggs to the mix, producing a sturdier, velvety treat that melted slowly. They renamed their product Frozen Custard. It was such a hit they eventually expanded to 48 stores up and down the mid-Atlantic coast (some still exist today, especially along the Jersey shore.)

Unlike the air-filled “soft-serve” from Dairy Queen and McDonald’s, frozen custard is richer and denser, with more butterfat and much less “overrun” (air). In fact, the Food and Drug Administration requires that any product marketed as frozen custard must contain 10 percent milkfat and 1.4 percent egg yolk solids. This costly mandate, along with the expensive custard machinery, prevents most ice cream shops from offering fro-cus.

Does this mean you have to take a trip to the shore to enjoy frozen custard? Heck, no...just head to your nearest Shake Shack! In 2001, when restaurateur Danny Meyer was planning his first Shake Shack for Madison Square Park, he asked his pastry chef Nicole Kaplan to develop a frozen custard recipe for the stand’s cones and milkshakes. Using higher-quality ingredients than the Kohrs could have ever imagined, Shake Shack’s custard is a massive success, helping the chain expand to over 400 locations worldwide.

Carvel

What about non-eggy soft-serve ice cream? Here’s the scoop: Greek immigrant Athanassios Karvelas’ first jobs in America were as a drummer in a Dixieland band and a test driver for Studebaker. To earn some extra cash he drove an ice cream truck on weekends, selling traditional hard-pack treats. On Memorial Day weekend in 1934, the truck broke down in a store parking lot in Hartsdale, just north of NYC. He had to sell all his ice cream before it melted to passing drivers…and he did! Tom Carvel (his Americanized name) discovered that people enjoyed soft, partially melted ice cream. First he rented space in the parking lot from the store’s owner, then he bought the store. It became the first Carvel location.

Tom and his brother invented a soft-serve machine and patented it. In time, Carvel would hold over 300 ice cream patents. He began franchising the business in 1947, and by the 1980s there were over 400 Carvel locations along the East Coast. To train the new owners, Tom established the “Carvel College of Ice Cream Knowledge” (a.k.a “Sundae School.”) “Students” were trained in creating Carvel’s famous ice cream cakes, such as Fudgy the Whale and Cookie Puss. Many remember Tom’s home-made TV ads starring his own gravelly voice (“I couldn’t find an announcer cheaper than me,” he explained.) The Carvel chain became the third-largest ice cream seller, behind Dairy Queen and Häagen-Dazs.

Baked Alaska

When New York’s famed Delmonico’s Restaurant hired French immigrant Charles Ranhofer as their chef de cuisine in 1862, little did they know he would invent some of the world’s most influential recipes, such as Eggs Benedict and Lobster Newburg. His remarkable 1894 book, The Epicurean, spans 1,183 pages and contains over 3,500 recipes. Intended more for chefs than for homemakers, Ranhofer’s cookbook single-handedly set the standard of French cuisine around the globe.

One of Ranhofer’s Epicurean recipes was Baked Alaska. When the U.S. purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867, Ranhofer celebrated by repurposing an old French recipe for baking cake and ice cream under an insulating meringue. At first he called it “Alaska, Florida,” but he soon changed the name to Baked Alaska, and it became wildly popular. His version used banana ice cream (bananas were a rare, exotic treat then) with walnut spice cake and torched meringue. Delmonico’s still serves it today.

This specialty dessert has always been associated with glamour and fine dining. In 1987 the famous Rainbow Room reintroduced it as Flaming Baked Alaska, brought to the table in full conflagration. Modern versions include brownies, oreos, even peanut butter. If you see it on a menu, I suggest you go for it!

Super Premium Ice Cream

One of New York’s most influential ice cream innovations occurred in the Bronx. It was here that Reuben and Rose Mattus, a Polish Jewish couple, began marketing an ice cream classified as “super premium,” containing 15 to 16 percent butterfat and only 20 percent overrun (added air.) To brand it, Reuben sat at his kitchen table for hours inventing nonsensical Scandinavian-sounding names for his creation, until he came up with Häagen-Dazs, adding the meaningless umlaut to the a. They put a map of Denmark on the carton, to honor that country’s haven for Jews during the Holocaust.

Launched in 1961, the original flavors, made in Teaneck, NJ, were chocolate, vanilla and coffee. It took them six more years to develop their fourth favor, strawberry. Sales grew very slowly throughout the 60s. It wasn’t until 1976 that the Mattuses’ daughter Doris opened the first Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop on Montague Street in Brooklyn. When Häagen-Dazs began to outsell major market brands, competitors soon entered the super premium market, most notably Ben and Jerry’s. Mattus sold Häagen-Dazs to Pillsbury in 1983.

Frozen Yogurt

Another Bronx success story is Dannon Yogurt, brought over from Spain by Daniel Carasso in 1942, when few Americans had ever heard of yogurt, no less tasted the stuff. For years Dannon remained a hand-produced business, making a few hundred cups a day in their one-room shop, mainly for European immigrants. When Daniel finally added fruit, sales increased, and by the 1950s Dannon moved to a larger facility in Long Island City.       

Their blockbuster invention was frozen yogurt, first sold over the counter in Bloomingdale’s Department Store in the early 1970s. It caught on big time, becoming the trendiest food item the city had ever seen. In 1975 Dannon opened up the first frozen yogurt shop on East 86th Street. In that year the entire country went “fro-yo” mad, spawning countless imitators. One fast food executive proclaimed, “It’s the biggest thing since hamburgers!” It was for a while, then it wasn’t, like all food fads. Dannon still makes their popular yogurt in White Plains.

Italian Ice

New Yorkers and Jerseyites simply love this sweet frozen delight. It’s derived from Sicilian granita, which was made for centuries from snow gathered on Mount Etna. Unlike Philadelphia’s slushy “water ice,” the New York/Jersey version is smoother, and (to me) more luscious. Italian Ice started out as a street food, then in the 1940s some Italian families established brick-and-mortar ice shops. One of the first was Staten Islander Ralph Silverstro, whose Ralph’s Famous brand now has dozens of locations throughout the tri-state area, serving over 150 flavors.

Peter Benfaremo, son of a famous ice maker, opened a shop near the 1964 World’s Fair, and became “The Lemon Ice King of Corona.” His competitor inside the Fair was Marinos Vourderis, whose Mariano’s Italian Ice can be found in most grocery stores. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, Gino Broncanelli found a lucrative trade by supplying his Gino’s Ices to pizzerias across New York City. Uncle Louis G’s, founded in 1999, has 45 franchises in seven states...but that’s nothing compared to Rita’s Ice, which now boats 550 locations across 30 states.

And let’s not forget the many NYC street vendors selling piraguas: a Puerto Rican delicacy of shaved ice soaked with your choice of colorful fruit syrup.

So Let’s Celebrate Ice Cream!

Today’s trendy, artisinal ice cream shops offer up exotic flavors like ash (I overheard one purchaser remark, “It tastes just like ash!”) I prefer normal flavors, especially in a fun, old-time ice cream parlor or soda fountain. If you do too, here are some of the New York area’s fantabulous ice cream shops, sure to bring back childhood memories:    

Eddie’s Sweet Shop is the oldest surviving ice cream parlor in the city, featuring its original soda fountain and mountainous sundaes. 105-29 Metropolitan Avenue, Queens.

Hildebrandt’s was slated for closure, until it was rescued in 2022 by a long-time customer. Hooray! Its exterior is gorgeous; its interior unchanged. 84 Hillside Avenue, Williston Park, Long Island.

The last surviving Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor will certainly evoke your youth. They still have those fake Tiffany lamps and offer the mammoth “Kitchen Sink” sundae. 81-04 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens.

You may first be tempted by the wall of candies at the vintage Sweet Shop on the Upper East Side, but you have to try their ice cream, served in Chinese take-out containers. Yummy! 404 East 73rd Street. 

Another East Side classic is Lexington Candy Shop which, despite its name, turns out excellent ice cream sodas, shakes and sundaes at its elbow-worn counter. 1226 Lexington Avenue.

A restored beauty of a classic soda fountain is at Brooklyn Farmacy, a 1920’s winner with excellent young “soda jerks” who will dish out your favorites. 513 Henry Street, Brooklyn.

Nothing beats the extravaganza which is Serendipity III, an over-the-top treat for the child in all of us. Their Frozen Hot Chocolate is a must! Bring the kids; they won’t get over it. 225 East 60th Street.

Two other unusual shops are the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory (65 Bayard Street) with flavors like lychee, taro and sesame. Big Gay Ice Cream (61 Grove Street) is a delicious hoot, and a shrine to TV’s “Golden Girls.”

I’m sure I’ve left out some favorites. Please let me know yours! I can’t even begin to cover all of the available ice cream novelties, from Eskimo Pies, Popsicles and Dippin’ Dots to today’s dairy-free and Mochi ice creams. And although they’re not NYC-based, I haven’t forgotten the city’s Good Humor and Mr. Softee trucks that thrilled us all as kids. There’s simply no end to this ice cream story...and that’s a good thing!