Saturday, December 21, 2019

An Era of Prosperity

Christmas,
1878-1882



Emerging from a deep economic depression, the United States entered a period of rapid industrial growth in 1878. Over the next five years, Thomas Edison patented the light bulb; John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Trust; and the railroad magnates added thousands of miles of new track, transforming a myriad of lines into a national network. The ranks of the middle and upper classes expanded once again, enabling more people than ever to dine at hotels on the holidays. Twelve Christmas menus from 1878 to 1882 reveal the food customs of the era that became known as the Gilded Age.

City Hotel – New Orleans 
City Hotel was one of the finest hostelries in New Orleans. Located on the corner of Camp and Common Streets, it was in a league with the Verandah, the St. Louis, and even the famous St. Charles. While regional influences were generally muted on hotel menus in the nineteenth century, the example below from a lavish Christmas dinner in 1878 reflects French and Creole influences and the abundance of local seafood. The wide range of dishes includes baked sheepshead à la Boudro (named after the local antebellum chef Lucien Bourdo), snipe pate à la Tallyrand, and Kentucky possum with sweet potatoes, a dish that symbolized the Old South. 






National Soldiers Home – Dayton, Ohio 
Eleven veterans’ homes would be established to provide care for disabled Union soldiers who served in the Civil War. One of the largest facilities was located in Dayton, Ohio where the campus covered 627 acres. The institution printed menus in 1878 for its Christmas dinner that featured roast venison with cranberry sauce. 



West End Hotel – Philadelphia 
This hotel on Chestnut Street offered its guests the option of the European Plan under which meals were charged separately. However, on Christmas day in 1879, the hotel hosted a special table d’hôte dinner where the oysters were served on “silver salvers,” the soup in “silver bowls,” and the entrées on “silver dishes.” The fish course arrived in chafing dishes of no particular distinction. Interestingly, the fifteen entrées are individually numbered, perhaps to ease the confusion of a large event.






Sheridan House – Bismarck, Dakota Territory 
Homesteaders poured into the Dakota Territory to claim 160 acres of government land under the Homestead Act after the last Sioux War ended in 1877. It was during that year that the Sheridan House opened in Bismarck. Built on land owned by the Northern Pacific Railway, the hotel also operated as a railroad passenger station. On Christmas in 1880, a local letterpress printer employed a variety of typeface designs and quirky ornaments to make its small menu look more “artistic.” 



The bill of fare offers more than eighty dishes, including local game like buffalo and elk. Many of the other foods, such as oysters, fresh cod, and Florida oranges, were shipped in by rail. 



East End Hotel – Pittsburgh 
The rich East End neighborhood was home to Pittsburgh’s wealthy industrialists. In 1901, this hotel hosted a formal dinner that augured the formation of United States Steel. Over 89 millionaires assembled in one room for that event, something that had never occurred before. This relatively-modest menu from Christmas in 1881 features such entrées as broiled quail on toast, pheasant à la Tartare, and mountain oysters with Italian sauce.  




Louisville Hotel – Louisville, Kentucky 
The cuisine on this extensive menu seems to fall somewhat short for a luxury hotel. The slump may have been caused by the departure of its Swiss-born chef de cuisine, Frank Xavier Mivelaz, who left earlier in 1881 to open a restaurant in Little Rock. Still, there are many game dishes, including one called braised leg of squirrel au chasseur. 








Hibbard House – Jackson, Michigan 

Jackson was an important transportation hub that boasted four separate depots before the railroad lines were consolidated at Union Station. In 1881, there were six main hotels in town. Dishes such as California trout and Philadelphia ice cream reflect advances in refrigerated rail cars. 






St. Nicholas Hotel – New York City 
The St. Nicholas was one of nineteen fine hotels that opened on Broadway in the five years from 1850 to 1854. Renowned for its luxurious décor, comfort, and services, this vast hotel was home to many permanent boarders until the housing situation began to change in the late 1870s when the first apartment buildings were built on Eighteenth Street. “By 1881 the hotels had lost most of their permanent residents,” recount historians Michael and Ariane Batterberry. “Hotels still tried to retain something of a family atmosphere, and put themselves out, particularly during the holiday season, to center the activity of the city within their walls. Christmas dinners were sumptuous, and featured menu cards ingenious and marvelous to behold.” 

The lavish menu below from 1881 was made by the society stationer Dempsey & Carroll. The card is covered with a swath of blue silk with an illustration of the St. Nicholas, whose white marble façade dominated the west side of Broadway between Broome and Spring Streets, and of the American Hotel, a summer resort in Richfield Springs, New York.




The bill of fare includes dishes with festive names like potatoes à la Santa Claus. It was to no avail. The St. Nicholas closed in 1884 when it was just thirty years old, a victim of the new apartment buildings and the inexorable march to more fashionable neighborhoods further uptown. 


Clifton Hotel – Ottawa, Illinois 
Situated 80 miles southwest of Chicago, the town of Ottawa had a population of about 8,000 people in 1881. Baked navy beans with salt pork appears in a separate spot on this menu and on the Christmas menu from the following year, suggesting it was a house specialty. 




The holiday dinner in 1892 opened with Saddle Rock oysters, by then a generic marketing term that referred to a rock formation in New York’s East River where exceptionally large oysters were discovered in 1827. Every Christmas, thousands of barrels labeled Saddle Rock and Blue Point were shipped to towns and cities across the country.



 

Richardson Hotel – Dover, Delaware 
Alden Richardson and James Robbins opened a cannery in 1855 that would supply food for the Union Army during the Civil War. Fifteen years later, they established a larger plant to meet rising consumer demand for canned fruits and vegetables
from the surrounding farmland in Kent County. Three weeks before Christmas in 1882, Alden Richardson opened his eponymous hotel at the intersection of State Street and Kings Highway where the first cannery had been located. The 68-room hotel boasted steam heat, gaslight, and bathrooms on every floor. It was hailed as the finest hotel on the Chesapeake Peninsula. 



The cuisine at the Richardson was distinguished by the local game birds such as the wild goose a L’ Aberdeen [sic.] and braised bucks à la Provencale on this menu from 1882.  As if to compensate for the fact that wine and spirits were not allowed on the premises, the bill of fare offers a large number of pastries and desserts, suggesting the temperance movement may have contributed to the steady increase of sugar in the American diet. 




Arlington Hotel – Seattle, Washington Territory 
The Arlington Hotel was housed in a multi-story, 
wood-frame building with a false front. It was located on the waterfront section of Commercial Street, near the Jackson Street Wharf, Bow’s Livery Stable, City Hall, and a Gothic Revival Catholic Church. 


The menu below from Christmas in 1882 shows the course headings in French, which was unusual at the time, and features an extensive wine list. 





The holiday dinner in Seattle was similar to the ones in other parts of the country. Dining in the quasi-public spaces of hotels and restaurants offered few surprises in
 the late nineteenth century. The American table d’hôte menu offered a typical array of standard dishes derived from English and French cuisines and that featured wild game dishes on special occasions. And the burgeoning railroad network insured that the same ingredients were broadly available. In that sense, the Christmas menus were cultural expressions of the bounty and industrial progress of the nation.

1 comment:

Gene H. said...

It's always interesting to read the names and descriptions of specific dishes, and the context you provide in your notes. In this group of menus, however, some of the art work and graphics are really well done, especially the covers of the menus from Sheridan House, Hibbard House, and the illustrations on the front and back covers from Clifton Hotel.
Thanks, and Happy New Year.