Three Sorosis Luncheons

New York City, 
1906 

The Waldorf Hotel was built with women in mind. Proprietor George Bolt’s wife, Louise, was herself a hôtelière who supervised its interior design, adding homey touches she thought would appeal to women. Astonishingly, when the Waldorf Hotel opened in 1893, it did not have a bar, then a male sanctuary at such establishments. The hostelry finally acquired one in 1897 when it was connected to the Astor Hotel and renamed the Waldorf-Astoria. One of the most popular features of the enormous hotel was its crystalline Palm Garden which proved to be an ideal setting for the latest customs of “lunching out” and having “afternoon tea”. What is more, the management tried to create a hospitable environment for women. In addition to employing the standard rule that the customer is always right, the staff was instructed to “never speak abruptly to a woman guest nor be indifferent to her complaints.”1 An account book from the social season of 1905-1906 shows the hotel was successful in attracting all manner of women’s groups, including Sorosis, the first professional women’s club in the United States. A look at three of their luncheons reveals the degree to which the hotel wanted to retain the business of this prestigious association. 

Property of Mr. Oscar

New York City,
1906

This manuscript account book, bearing a typed label reading “Property of Mr. Oscar,” recently came into the collection. The 300-page volume is written in the hand of Oscar Tschirky, the famed maître ďhôtel at the Waldorf-Astoria. It contains the particulars of private events at the hotel from mid-December 1905 to mid-May 1906, including the date, organization, number of guests, bill of fare, and cost. The manner in which the name is expressed on the cover and its worn condition indicates the culinary staff may have referred to it as part of their daily routine. My first step in processing this wealth of social information was to compare the entries for two dinners with menus already in the collection. 

No There There

Oakland, 
ca. 1880

Novelist Gertrude Stein returned to the United States in 1934 after a 30-year absence. While crisscrossing the country on a speaking tour, the celebrated Parisian expatriate visited Oakland to see the farm she grew up on and the house where she once lived. After learning that her childhood home had been razed and the farmland developed, Stein famously wrote “there is no there there.” The significant places in California that helped define her no longer existed. The Stein family had moved to Oakland in 1880, when she was six, and lived for the first year at the Tubbs Hotel. Situated just east of Lake Merritt, the 200-room hostelry had some prominent guests in its day.1 Former president Ulysses S. Grant and his wife dined there in 1879 while on the final leg of their trip around the world. And author Robert Louis Stevenson stayed at the Tubbs Hotel from March to April 1880, the same year the Stein family was in residence. Nevertheless, a table d’hôte menu from the period reveals that it was a middling establishment where the meals were basically the same as those at other hotels in its class. Indeed, there was “no there” in the dining rooms of American hotels where the standardized cuisine reflected few regional influences. 

Willis Morgan

Paris,
ca. 1928

Willis Morgan was among the several hundred thousand African-American soldiers sent to France during the First World War. Born in Marshall, Texas in 1877, Morgan worked as a chef in railroad dining cars and Harvey House restaurants prior to becoming a mess sergeant in the U.S. Army. He served in the Philippines, on the Mexico border, and finally on the Western Front. After the Armistice, Morgan settled in Paris as part of the small but steady stream of Black Americans attracted by wartime memories of French racial tolerance. He opened the Chicago Inn at 31 Avenue Bourdonnais in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Later renamed the Chicago-Texas Inn, the restaurant was a popular tourist destination in the Jazz Age. A scarce menu from the late 1920s reveals the down-home American cuisine at this welcoming restaurant where Morgan’s French-born wife worked the cash register while their pet cat looked on from his favorite spot nearby. 

The Waitress at Duval

Paris, 
1878-1923 

French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this portrait of a waitress at one of the Établissements Duval, a small chain of low-cost Parisian restaurants. The first location opened in 1854 when a butcher named Pierre Louis Duval started using meat scraps to make broths.1 The Établissements Duval were often called “Bouillons Duval” or “Établissements de Bouillon” in reference to this signature dish. However, the restaurants were best known for their women servers who wore black dresses, half hidden by aprons and snow-white bibs, and caps.2 In 1881, the Baedeker guidebook advised travelers that the servers were “soberly garbed, and not unlike sisters of charity.” Similarly, a journalist at the New York Times noted the “neat, nun-like uniforms” reminded him of what the cooks wore in the kitchen of the House of Commons.3,4 Three menus recall these restaurants that were once an integral part of the Parisian scene.

Breakfast on the Mississippi

Steamer James Montgomery
ca. 1858 

Steamboats played a major role in transporting passengers and freight on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. By the 1830s, it was common to see more than 150 steamboats at the St. Louis levee at one time. The James Montgomery was one such paddle steamer. Built in 1856 at New Albany, Indiana (on the Ohio River opposite Louisville), this wood-hull, side-wheel steamboat was 270 feet long and powered by six boilers. A menu from about 1858 shows that large breakfasts were among the joys of being a cabin passenger on this antebellum riverboat.

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.

The Hump

Kunming, China
Christmas 1943 

The eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains was called “The Hump” by pilots who flew transport aircraft between India and China during the Second World War. The military airlift over the treacherous Himalayas supplied the Allies in China, including advance units of the U.S. Army. The missions were dangerous. In addition to the notable absence of airfields, there were no reliable navigation charts or radio aids and the weather was often  bad. The logistical challenge of operating this aerial pipeline is reflected by a non-traditional dinner at Army headquarters in Kunming, China on Christmas in 1943. Undoubtedly, the most appreciated item was a beverage not shown on the menu. 

The Charitable George Peabody

London & Peabody, 
1851-1869 



Nineteen-year-old Winslow Homer illustrated this lively scene showing the celebration for London-based financier George Peabody in South Danvers, Massachusetts in 1856.1,2 Peabody  returned to his hometown to dedicate the library he had recently donated. Besides his philanthropy, Peabody played a role in improving the relationship between the United States and Great Britain, which had been in the doldrums since the War of 1812. His charitable giving and diplomatic efforts naturally lead to banquets, both in his honor and as gestures of appreciation. A selection of menus recalls key moments in the public life of this great man, whose philanthropic legacy continues to benefit society.

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 stand-up comedian. Writing to his wife Louise the next day, Cable 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 includes a notice of a reading by the two authors at a local theater that evening, transports us back to a time when, after dinner, you could walk down the street to see Mark Twain perform in person.