George Peabody

London & South Danvers, 
1851-1869 



Nineteen-year-old Winslow Homer illustrated this lively scene showing George Peabody’s visit to South Danvers, Massachusetts in 1856.1,2 The London-based financier returned to his hometown to see the library he had recently donated. Today, Peabody is widely regarded as the father of modern philanthropy. In addition to his largess, Peabody worked to improve the relationship between the United States and Great Britain which had been in the doldrums since the War of 1812. Charitable giving and diplomatic initiatives naturally lead to banquets, both given and received. And so it comes as no surprise that many of the significant milestones in Peabody’s life were marked by a menu. Seven menus and related ephemera recall the life of a great man whose contributions to society continue to this day.

A Brusque but Genial Guest

Milwaukee, 
1885 

Mark Twain was staying the Plankinton Hotel when this menu appeared in 1885. He was in Milwaukee on tour with Southern author George W. Cable who marveled at Twain’s talent as a standup comedian. Cable, writing to his wife Louise the next day, revealed that Twain “worked & worked incessantly on these programs until he has effected in all of them—there are 3—a gradual growth of both interest & humor so that the audience never has to find anything less, but always more, entertaining than what precedes it. He says, ‘I don’t want them to get tired out laughing before we get to the end.’ The result is we have always a steady crescendo ending in a double climax….his careful, untiring, incessant labors are an education.” The menu, which contains a notice of a reading by the two authors at a local theater that evening, takes us back to time when you could walk down the street after dinner to see Mark Twain perform in person.

Symbols of Abundance

Iowa, Wisconsin & Maine
1855-1858

Menus, which are marketing tools as much as anything, are best taken with a grain of salt. It can be particularly difficult to identify exaggerated claims on old menus far removed in time and place. In the mid-nineteenth century, a large assortment of roasts and boiled meats regularly appeared on table d’hote menus at hotels, where most public dining rooms were then situated. It seems unlikely that all of these items were available on a daily basis, especially at modest hotels in small towns. Four menus provide insights on how we might interpret such documents from the antebellum period. 

American Hospitality

New York, 
1860 

Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Edward, traveled through the United States on a diplomatic tour in the fall of 1860, only weeks before the presidential election that would spark the Civil War. Crossing over from Canada on September 20, the prince and his retinue of British peers visited Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Washington. They dined with President Buchanan at the White House, slipped down to Richmond for a brief look, and resumed their journey northward to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The trip ended at Portland, Maine. The future king, then a month short of his nineteenth birthday, was a welcome distraction from the nation’s political woes. He was enthusiastically feted at each stop, although nowhere more than in New York where the bustling newspapers whipped up a frenzy of excitement. His meals in the Empire State were prepared under the direction of some of the best chefs, hoteliers, and restaurateurs in the country. Five menus from this leg of the trip reveal American hospitality at its finest in the waning days of the antebellum period.

Thomas Frazier

Atlanta, Georgia
1888 

Thomas Frazier was the headwaiter at many fine hotels and resorts in the late nineteenth century. Born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1852, he was well known and much admired. I first became aware of him from a menu from the Kimball House in Atlanta in 1888. Even though he was an African American working in the post-Reconstruction South, snippets about him occasionally appeared in the Atlanta Constitution, indicating he was something of a local celebrity. One notice informed the readers, “Thomas H. Frazier, who enjoys the distinction of being the best headwaiter at any southern hotel, is off from the Kimball on vacation, and is in Florida visiting the various noted hotels of that state.” On another occasion, the newspaper noted that he received a silver cup on his birthday. Frazier was lavishly praised for his handling of the arrangements at the hotel for President Grover Cleveland’s visit to Atlanta in 1887. These reports confirm the evidence on the menu, leaving little doubt that Frazier was held in high esteem. 

Dancing at Reisenweber’s

New York City, 
1912-1915 

Reisenweber’s played an important role in American popular culture during the second decade of the last century. Today, it is mostly remembered as the place where jazz was introduced to a wider audience in 1917. However, Reisenweber’s already made history five years earlier when the dance craze took New York by storm. It was the first restaurant to provide its patrons with space to dance and kept the party going through a steady stream of promotions. The energy and spirit of this early period of rapid social change is conveyed in an audio slideshow showing over ninety invitations, admission tickets, advertising cards, special notices, beverage lists and menus from 1912 to 1915. Although this chronology of ephemera primarily reflects the main location on Eighth Avenue at Columbus Circle, some pieces come from the properties it managed on Coney Island—the Brighton Beach Casino and the Shelburne Hotel—and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1915, which it catered. Even at the Follies, the theater-goers tangoed and turkey-trotted before and after performances and during intermission. 

The Emancipation Banquet

St. Paul, Minnesota 
1888  

A group of gentlemen held a dinner at a private club in St. Paul, Minnesota in January 1888 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, a wartime executive order issued by President Lincoln which freed the slaves in the Confederacy. In addition to the bill of fare and list of toasts, the menu featured a remarkable seating chart. In addition to the participants, it included the names of leaders who were there in spirit, being remembered for the role they played in the struggle for freedom.

Mission of Mercy

Budapest, 
1914 

The departure of the steamship on September 12, 1914 was a memorable sight, as 126 American Red Cross nurses stood in their white caps and gray uniforms along the rails where the sea wind blew open their red-lined capes, creating a line of scarlet on the side of the vessel. World War I had erupted a little over a month earlier and now they, along with 30 surgeons and boxes of medical equipment, were sailing from New York on what was called a “mercy mission.” Striving to stay neutral, the United States deployed the American Red Cross to provide medical aid to both sides of the conflict in Europe. Once on board, they were organized into units that would establish military hospitals in seven locations—Paignton, England; Pau, France; Kiev, Russia; Kosel and Gleiwitz, Germany; Vienna, Austria; and Budapest, Hungary.2 A battered menu bears witness to this largely-forgotten expedition that embodied a humanitarian ideal which was ahead of its time. 

Pfaff’s

New York City, 
1866 

The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse 
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet of Broadway…                

—Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman went to Pfaff’s almost every night between 1858 and 1862 when working on the early editions of Leaves of Grass.2 He occasionally read one of his latest poems to the writers and artists who regularly assembled in this underground beer hall. The free-spirited and unconventional group was brought together by Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press and a champion of Whitman’s work. Other habitués included actor Edwin Booth, painter Elihu Vedder, psychedelic drug pioneer Fitz Hugh Ludlow, cartoonist Thomas Nast, and humorist Artemus Ward, now regarded as America’s first stand-up comedian. And since Pfaff’s was one of the few saloons that welcomed women, Clapp’s coterie was diverse for its time. Writer Ada Clare was a charter member of this artistic clique as was Adah Isaacs Menken whose “naked lady” routine made her the highest earning actress of the era. Given the importance of Pfaff’s, I was thrilled when a menu recently came to light. My first impression was how different it looked from those that previously catered to the city’s literati. This was truly a German menu, reflecting the arrival of new attitudes and foods from Europe. Interestingly, it marked a pivotal moment in our creative past. 

A Guest of Honor

New York City, 
1901 

Booker T. Washington signed the cover of this menu from a dinner in his honor at a club in New York called the Aldine Association in January 1901.1 The autograph adds a personal dimension to this memento from what must have been an inspiring affair. It was hosted by The Outlook, a weekly magazine that had recently published autobiographical pieces by Washington. By the time of this occasion, the essays had been rewritten and were about to be published in book form under the title Up from Slavery. In the autobiography, the famed educator recounted his experiences as a slave child during the Civil War, the difficulties he overcame to get an education, and his work establishing vocational schools. Although the book sold well, events would soon show that its appearance did little to soften the lingering racial prejudices of many whites in the South.

A Vermont Breakfast Party

New York City,
1949 

The Limited Editions Club awarded its fifth gold metal at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in November 1949. According to the rules, the award was given to an American author of a book published during the last five years that the judges believed “most likely to attain the stature of a classic.” The previous two winners were Ernest Hemingway for “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in 1941 and E. B. White for “One Man’s Meat” in 1944. While the eight-page booklet from the presentation ceremony in 1949 does not reveal who won that year, it does contain an interesting menu from a talented writer in his own right. 

Echoes of the Jazz Age

 1919-1929 

“The Jazz Age is over,” declared novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1931, nine years after he coined the phrase. The era generally encompassed the years between November 1918, when World War I ended, and the stock market crash in October 1929.1 This period of economic prosperity and cultural transformation marked the birth of modern America. Lifestyles were impacted by automobiles, telephones, motion pictures, radio, and household electricity. For the first time, more than half of the people lived in towns and cities and women could vote. Although these trends had been evolving for decades, they accelerated in the 1920s, sparking a powerful backlash. The conservative counterassault manifested itself in the anti-radical hysteria of the Red Scare, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the ratification of National Prohibition, the passage of stricter immigration quotas, and the rise of Fundamentalism. Fifty menus reveal parts of this vast, complicated story. Some recall forgotten events; others provide unwitting evidence of societal issues that are with us to this day. 

Suprême of Shark

New York City, 
1884 

This illustration fills the interior of a menu from the 1884 banquet of the Ichthyophagous Club.1 Active in New York from 1880 to 1887, this group of socially prominent men met once a year to feast on various types of unpopular seafood, endeavoring “to overcome prejudice directed towards many kinds of fish, which are rarely eaten, because their excellence is unknown.”2, 5 In addition to ichthyologists, who worked in the branch of zoology dealing with fishes, the club comprised naturalists, philanthropists, and gourmets. Indeed, the seal in this cartoon is holding a bottle of Cordon Rouge champagne. 

A Spectacle of Horror

New York City, 
1904 

It was a beautiful Wednesday morning on June 15, 1904, when mothers and youngsters from Lower Manhattan’s Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) gathered at the pier adjacent to East River Park. They had arranged for a passenger steamer named the General Slocum to transport them to a picnic ground on Long Island’s North Shore. A thousand tickets were collected at the plank—a number that did not include 300 children under the age of ten. Soon after they departed however, as the ship passed 97th Street, the crew saw puffs of smoke rising through the wooden floorboards. When they tried to put out the blaze, the rotten fire hoses burst. One newspaper described it as “a spectacle of horror beyond words to express—a great vessel all in flames, sweeping forward in the sunlight, within sight of the crowded city, while her helpless, screaming hundreds were roasted alive or swallowed up in waves.” Most of the 1,021 people who died were women and children. A rare menu from the General Slocum, hauntingly dated to the day after the accident, recalls one of the worst disasters in American history. 

O Sweet Grows the Orange

Boston, 
1852 & 1859 

The Burns Club of Boston once held banquet on January 25 each year to commemorate the birth of Robert Burns. When the birthday fell on a Sunday, they celebrated the following day, as shown by this menu from the Stackpole House in 1852, two years after the club was established. 

The Halcyon Days of San Quentin

Marin County, California
1928-1940

One of the most intriguing things about old menus from San Quentin State Prison is that they were saved as mementos. The legendary prison, situated on the north side of San Francisco Bay, was established to hold miscreants during the Gold Rush. Over the years, it has grown large enough to warrant two ZIP codes—one for inmates (94974) and one for Point San Quentin Village (94964), an adjacent community originally built to house the prison’s employees and their families. The menus mostly come from the period between 1928, shortly after the East Block opened (now described as a crumbling, leaky maze) and 1940. A dozen menus and related ephemera take us back to this bygone era when the guards enjoyed the gustatory pleasures of the table.

Welsh’s Times

New York City, 
1847

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; 

— ’Tis a menu and nothing more! 

When Edgar Allan Poe was writing for the New York Evening Mirror in the mid-1840s, he and other newspapermen congregated at a nearby beer cellar and eatery known as Sandy Welsh’s. Situated at 85 Nassau Street, around the corner from P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, the popular hangout was called a “refectory” in the city directories. Poe produced his poem “The Raven” at small intervals during this period, reportedly submitting the stanzas piecemeal for criticism to fellow journalists at Sandy Welsh’s.2 The convivial spirit of this establishment is reflected by a menu dated February 12, 1847, offering a rare glimpse of everyday life that would nevermore be the same. 

Wiltons Revisited

London, 
2005 

In the previous post, a menu from Wiltons in 2001 was shown with reflections by journalist R. W. Apple, Jr. who ranked this upper-class restaurant in London as one of his all-time favorites. Apple believed that some of its finest seafood dishes were those “least messed around with…perfectly simple, simply perfect and entirely sufficient.” He also felt that this venerable establishment served the best English food in England. Certainly, the traditional cuisine, the elegantly-subdued décor, and the female staff uniforms (evocative of a Victorian nanny) all blend together into a harmonious whole, reflecting the epitome of what many of us regard as Englishness. However, back in 2005, if you passed through the swinging doors into the kitchen, you may have heard French being spoken. The dinner menu below from September of that year is signed by then executive chef Jérôme Ponchelle.

Wiltons

London, 
2001 

While cleaning out the attic this weekend, I came across a box of forgotten newspaper  clippings. One of the articles appeared in the New York Times in October 2006. It was written by R. W. Apple, Jr., an associate editor who died earlier that month. Known to friends and colleagues as “Johnny,” the celebrated gourmet recounted his ten favorite restaurants during many years of travel. Reading the piece as if for the first time, I was delighted to see a place that would also be on my short list—Wiltons in London. Excerpts from the article and a menu from the period are shown below. 

The Heroic Age of Aviation

1924-1938

“The American seaplanes are in Calcutta,” the papers in India reported on June 27, 1924. Four U.S. Army planes had arrived at intervals the previous day, each flying low over the Hooghly River crowded with shipping, before making a graceful turn and alighting on an empty stretch of water opposite Prinsep Ghat where people lined the banks to witness their arrival. The aviators were making the first aerial circumnavigation of the world with the help of the U.S. Navy which was providing logistical support. Twelve weeks after taking off from Seattle, they had not yet reached the half way point of their mission.