The American Menu

Chicago,  1877-1881 The annual game dinner at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago was a nationally-renowned event in the late nineteenth...

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...

New York City,  1912-2011 I recently walked over to 139 West 10th Street in order to see where the Italian restaurant in John Sloan’s ...

Detroit,  1940 In 2011, eighty-three-year old Philip Levine was named Poet Laureate of the United States. A native of Detroit, Levine ...

New York City,  1885 When the English actor Henry Irving completed his highly-acclaimed American tour in April 1885, a group of promi...

Cincinnati, 1853 & 1884 When the Burnet House opened in Cincinnati in 1850, the London Illustrated News called it “the finest ho...

New York City, 1905 While the word “ carnivore” is now used to describe flesh-eaters, modern society may still find use for the obscur...

1873-1894 This essay was published  on Lapham’s Quarterly website in July 2011. T he first populist tea party movement came in ...

Richmond, Virginia 1883 O ne hundred and eighty-nine Union veterans from Newark, New Jersey boarded a train in October 1883 heading fo...