The fate of a pair of 88-year-old brick ovens at 290 Elizabeth Street in Manhattan, the heart of Little Italy, has been something of an open mystery in the neighborhood for years. The vintage coal ovens, each roughly 14 feet deep and ten feet wide, sit dormant behind a wall of white glazed brick in what was once, beginning in 1933, an Italian American bakery.

More recently, Parisi Bakery, the beloved Italian hero shop, ran its wholesale bread production out of the space. But when Parisi moved out in 2021, the question wasn’t simply who would move in. What would they do with those iconic ovens?