The American Menu

1881-2023 Everybody loves Italian food. Yet the idea of a single Italian cuisine took time to coalesce, if it ever really has. Even after It...

New York City,  1924-1954    In 1913, Elias and Joseph Kirdahy opened the Kirdahy Brothers’ Oriental Restaurant on Washington Street in Lowe...

1937 The history of takeout food dates back to ancient times, when street vendors sold ready-to-eat meals. Archaeological evidence reveals e...

1920-1930  The Roaring Twenties are remembered in France as les Années folles , “the crazy years,” when Paris was the hub of intellectual li...

1922 After the First World War, Americans travelled to France in ever increasing numbers. Five menus from the steamship Lafayette  in 1922  ...

1904-1931  The advent of the postcard provided the hospitality industry with innovative ways to advertise. One of the unique formats that em...

1842 & 1925 Charles Dickens was enthusiastically fêted when he visited the United States in 1842 and 1867-68.  For many years afterward,...

1864-1938   O ne of the underlying themes of American ephemera is the expansion of the middle and upper classes. Over time, higher incomes a...

Paris, ca. 1928 Willis Morgan was among the several hundred thousand African-American soldiers sent to France during the First World W...

Paris,  1878-1923  French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this portrait of a waitress at one of the Établissements Duval, ...

 1919-1929  “The Jazz Age is over,” declared novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1931, nine years after he coined the phrase. The prosperous era...

Marin County, California 1928-1940 One of the most intriguing things about old menus from San Quentin State Prison is that they were...

1924-19 38 “The American seaplanes are in Calcutta,” the papers in India reported on June 27, 1924. Four U.S. Army planes had arrived a...

Chinese- American Restaurants 1896-1926 Chinese restaurants first opened in the United States during the California Gold Rush. In the e...

Los Angeles,  1938 On a foggy morning in July 1938, a 31-year-old aircraft mechanic named Douglass Corrigan took off in a jerry-built...

San Francisco,  1923  When menus are printed for a small get-together, they often reflect the underlying values of an individual or gr...

San Francisco,  1920-1923 When I first saw this photograph, there was something intriguing about the scene that I couldn’t put my fin...

1939-41  In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt declared that Thanksgiving would be held on the third Thursday of November, instead of th...

New York City,  1885-1986 The 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 2011 was celebrated with the issuance of a “forever” stamp...

New York City,  ca. 1935 The three-story townhouse at 59 Charles Street in Greenwich Village is much the same as it was when it was bu...