Two New York pizzerias, both alike in dignity, prospered in the Big Apple as coal-fired descendants of the same famed Italian ancestor: Pasquale “Patsy” Lancieri, the inventor of by-the-slice pizza.

Pasquale Scognamillo and his family immigrated from Naples to America in search of a better life. He accomplished this at Patsy's, at an eponymous restaurant he opened in 1944 serving up old world ...