An Early Chidren's Menu

Boston, 

1885 

Menus that were composed, designed, and printed exclusively for children first appeared in the 1920s. They were initially adopted by department stores and railroad dining cars and eventually became common in restaurants after the Second World War. A hand-written menu from a seven-year-old birthday party in February of 1885 reveals what children’s menus might have looked like had they existed in public dining spaces in the late nineteenth century.