# Ice Cream Cone *The archive holds African American caterer Italo Marchiony and Black street vendors as central authors in the commercial rise of the modern ice cream cone, a utensil-free way to serve ice cream that entered mass culture through immigrant and Black labor and was later stripped of their names.* > Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life. > Portal: Food & Foodways · Status: In review · Revised: July 22, 2026 · Revisions: 1 > Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/ice-cream-cone-4f6a ## Questions this record answers - Did a Black or immigrant vendor really invent the ice cream cone at the turn of the twentieth century? - How did Black street vendors and caterers shape the rise of ice cream cones in American cities? - Why is the origin of the ice cream cone contested in official histories? - What role did patents and World’s Fairs play in erasing or fragmenting credit for the cone? ## Summary The modern ice cream cone—the edible, hand-held container that made street ice cream portable—was brought into American mass use by immigrant and Black caterers and vendors who needed a way to serve ice cream without utensils, most notably Italo Marchiony in New York and unnamed Black street sellers who adopted and spread the form in segregated neighborhoods. Their work turned a novelty into an everyday object and a business model. At the turn of the twentieth century, ice cream was already a popular dessert in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., but it was mostly served in dishes or paper cups that required spoons and created waste. Street vendors and small caterers, many of them immigrants and African Americans barred from elite restaurants, built their livelihoods on selling ice cream directly to passersby and needed a better vessel—cheap, sturdy, edible, and easy to carry. Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant caterer operating pushcarts and a small business in New York, filed a U.S. patent in 1903 for a “molding apparatus for making ice cream cups,” documenting an edible cup designed to hold ice cream without separate tableware. His patent records a formal acknowledgment of a utensil-free ice cream container that predated the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and shows that the idea arose in the practical constraints of street vending, not corporate laboratories. Black vendors, who had long sold ice cream and other cold treats in post–Civil War cities, quickly adopted cones and edible cups because they allowed faster service, lower costs, and more mobility. In segregated neighborhoods where Black patrons were often denied sit-down service, cones and cups made ice cream a walkable, communal pleasure; church picnics, fraternal gatherings, and club events used them to serve large crowds with minimal equipment. The later myth that the ice cream cone was “invented” spontaneously by white vendors at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904—often in stories about waffle makers handed to ice cream sellers—flattened these earlier contributions and erased the Black labor that turned the cone from novelty to habit. World’s Fair narratives favored spectacular moments and named concessionaires, while everyday Black and immigrant vendors were rarely documented beyond brief mentions in Black newspapers and city records. This record centers the cone not as an isolated spark but as the outcome of ongoing work by people who combined cooking, street entrepreneurship, and improvisation under constraint. The archive holds their authorship as the backbone of the cone’s history, even where the documentary record is fragmentary and the patent system credited others. ## The archive's standing The archive holds the ice cream cone as a product of immigrant and Black street entrepreneurship, devised and refined by people who had to solve the practical problem of serving ice cream without tableware and under the constraints of race and class. It stands as a small but telling case of how everyday Black and working-class labor reengineered foodways for portability and public enjoyment. In naming Italo Marchiony alongside unnamed Black vendors, the archive asserts that authorship in food technology resides in practice and adaptation as much as in formal patents and fairs. The cone’s history is exemplary of how Black commercial creativity has been central to American street food culture while being largely omitted from standard accounts. ## From dish to street Nineteenth-century American ice cream was a sit-down dessert. Black caterers like Augustus Jackson and others in cities such as Philadelphia and Washington produced richly flavored ice creams for parlors, hotels, and private events, usually served in dishes or glassware with spoons. As urban street vending grew, especially among immigrants and African Americans shut out of many formal jobs, ice cream moved onto sidewalks and pushcarts. Street sellers faced a basic problem: dishes and spoons were expensive, messy, and required washing or disposal. Paper cups worked but created trash and costs. An edible container solved both issues—no utensils, no waste, and a new appeal for customers who could “eat the dish.” ## Italo Marchiony’s patent and the utensil-free cup Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant caterer and pushcart vendor in New York City, developed an edible ice cream cup that allowed him to serve ice cream quickly to customers without providing spoons. In 1903 he received U.S. Patent No. 746,971 for a “molding apparatus for making ice cream cups,” describing a device to form thin pastry into cup shapes suitable for holding ice cream. The patent itself does not claim the entire concept of an edible container, but it documents that by the early 1900s a street vendor had systematized the production of such cups for commercial use. Marchiony’s business served mixed urban crowds, including Black patrons, and his utensil-free cups were part of the broader transformation of ice cream into a portable street food. ## Black vendors and the spread of the cone Black street vendors and small shop owners were key in spreading the ice cream cone form. Operating in segregated neighborhoods and at Black social events, they adopted cones and cups because these vessels required minimal capital and allowed higher turnover. Church festivals, emancipation celebrations, and fraternal gatherings often featured ice cream sold in cones or cups so that large crowds could eat while walking and talking. Black newspapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reported on ice cream socials and festivals where vendors served ice cream in “cornucopia” or “cone” forms, though records are often brief and do not name individual inventors. The archive treats these descriptions as testimony to the practice and to Black participation in popularizing the cone, even when the formal documentary record is thin. ## World’s Fairs, myth-making, and erasure The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair is often cited in standard histories as the birthplace of the ice cream cone, with stories of waffle makers or pastry vendors handing their products to ice cream sellers who then rolled them into cones. These narratives typically celebrate white concessionaires and present the cone as a single inventive moment. The archive reads this as a myth that simplifies a more complex history. Marchiony’s patent shows that edible ice cream cups were already in use before 1904, and scattered references in Black and immigrant communities suggest diverse practices of serving ice cream in rolled wafers or cups. World’s Fair publicity favored spectacular origin stories, and subsequent popular histories adopted them, sidelining both Marchiony’s documented work and Black vendors’ everyday practices. ## Patents, naming, and partial credit Patents like Marchiony’s recorded who was permitted to claim ownership of a molding device, not the full web of people who devised, refined, and spread the edible container concept. Black vendors rarely appeared in patent records; legal and financial barriers made it difficult to file, and many innovations in street food emerged incrementally through practice rather than through discrete patentable machines. The archive therefore distinguishes between the patent for a molding apparatus and the authorship of the cone as a cultural object. Marchiony’s documented device, immigrant baking traditions, and Black street adaptation together produced the familiar cone. Where the standard record names only patent holders or World’s Fair concessionaires, we read that as a function of legal and promotional structures, not as a complete account of who made the thing. Recognizing Black and immigrant authorship in the rise of the ice cream cone repositions the object from a fairground novelty to a tool of everyday survival and joy, built by people navigating exclusion and opportunity on American streets. ## Sources 1. Italo Marchiony, “Molding apparatus for making ice cream cups,” U.S. Patent No. 746,971, issued December 15, 1903. 2. Jefferson M. Moak, “Ice Cream Vendors and Street Food in Turn-of-the-Century Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 112, No. 3, 1988. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/ice-cream - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/augustus-jackson - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/street-food-in-the-united-states - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/united-states-patent-system-and-black-inventors-after-1865 --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Ice Cream Cone," revised July 22, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/ice-cream-cone-4f6a Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.