What’s That Building? Ferrara Bakery
The shop has been owned by the same family for more than a century and is just one part of Chicago’s rich history of candy production.
What’s That Building? Ferrara Bakery
The shop has been owned by the same family for more than a century and is just one part of Chicago’s rich history of candy production.
By Dennis RodkinThe sweet aroma coming from the Blommer Chocolate Factory in River West — a familiar smell to many Loop commuters — is just one morsel of Chicago’s rich candy history.
Snickers Bars, M&Ms, Cracker Jacks, Tootsie Rolls, Lemonheads and Wrigley spearmint gum all have history here.
And in 2024 there have already been two candy-related pieces of news. One is Mars Wrigley’s opening of a new “chocolate innovation hub” on Goose Island. The announcement came a year after the company said it would close a factory it has operated in Galewood since the 1920s. And much to the dismay of Chicagoans with a sweet tooth, the candy department at Macy’s State Street store closed last month.
The sweet — and bittersweet — news made it a good time for WBEZ’s Reset to visit a Chicago candy landmark — a sometimes overlooked feature of Chicago’s heyday as one of the nation’s candy capitals that has been owned by the same family for more than a century.
Ferrara Bakery at 2210 W. Taylor St. is a two-story red brick warehouse building from 1920, but the family’s business dates back to 1908. The venture started as a Little Italy bakery making wedding cakes and the “confetti” — or sugar-coated — almonds for Italian weddings. The company later invented two of the best movie theater candies, Lemonheads and Red Hots, and also makes Nerds, Sweetarts and, as of November, Jelly Belly — the jelly beans that President Ronald Reagan made famous.
The candy giant left the family’s hands over a decade ago, but the bakery stayed and is now run by the third generation — Nella Ferrara Davy and her husband, Bill Davy, and their son, Nello Davy.
“It all goes back to my grandfather in 1908,” 70-year-old Nella Davy told Reset, taking a break from serving eggplant parmesan sandwiches, cannoli and other Italian classics at the bakery where she’s worked since the 1970s.
Italian immigrants Salvatore Ferrara and Salvatore Lezza started a bakery in 1908 at 772 W. Taylor St. Lezza would later split off and start the spumoni company now based in Bellwood, but he was around long enough that the building at 2210 W. Taylor St. has the names Ferrara and Lezza carved over the door. Salvatore Ferrara married his wife Serafina in 1917 and, according to their granddaughter, that’s the partnership that made the business possible.
Nella said her grandfather “started making Jordan almonds, which is the confetti we use for weddings, and he was getting many, many orders in the Midwest out of the bakery. Along with the pastries, cookies and cakes, he was having a hard time having room to make all the confetti. So he then in 1920 built [the 2210 W. Taylor St. building]. … He left my grandmother at the bakery and he started the candy here.”
Salvatore invented Red Hots here. The company was called Ferrara Pan Candy (and in some early iterations, Ferrara Panned Candy) because the products were made in big revolving, heated pans, or more accurately, tubs.
Nella said that in the late 1950s “they outgrew this building and bought out in Forest Park off the Harlem exit of the Expressway.” In 1962, the second generation, Nello Ferrara — Nella’s father — invented Lemon Heads in the new factory.
The 2210 W. Taylor St. building sat unused for a while, until “the city of Chicago had the idea of University of Illinois and expanding the expressway and all of that and so the Italian community was basically forced out,” Nella said.
Her father, Nello, suggested Serafina move the family’s bakery into the 2210 building. “That was in the late 50s and now it’s 2024 and we’re still here,” Nella said.
Wedding cakes and the sweet tables and confetti that go with them were a mainstay until the early 2000s, Nella said, but as that business faded she converted the bakery to a restaurant serving Italian standards like pasta dishes, Caprese salads and pasta fagioli soup. They still make the almond “confetti,” and although the candy company is now just a distant cousin (and owned by the similarly named Ferrero North America), Ferrara Bakery sells Nerds, Lemonheads and other Ferrara candy brands.
Nello Davy, the fourth generation of the family to work in the bakery, is one of Nella’s three sons. He got a law degree at Loyola, but after passing the bar exam instead continued working with his parents on Taylor Street.
“There’s a lot of history here, especially in the city of Chicago where there’s such a rich history of candy,” Nello said. “It’s certainly really interesting to see that the candy company started from these little almonds. The real roots of it were established in this building that I’ve been coming to my whole life.”
Dennis Rodkin is the residential real estate reporter for Crain’s Chicago Business and Reset’s “What’s That Building?” contributor. Follow him @Dennis_Rodkin.
K’Von Jackson is the freelance photojournalist for Reset’s “What’s That Building?” Follow him @true_chicago.