Tag Archives: early 20th century

March 27, 2022 · 12:25 pm

Women’s lunch clubs

Lunch clubs for working women appeared in American cities in the 1890s and early 20th century. In a fairly short time they stimulated the development of commercial cafeterias, as well as employee cafeterias in large companies.

Chicago was regarded as a prime incubator of the lunch club idea. In 1891 a group of alumnae of the prestigious Ogontz finishing school near Philadelphia opened a space for women workers on an upper floor of Chicago’s Pontiac Building. At the start the club charged 10 cents a year for membership, and sold sandwiches for 4 cents and milk, tea, or coffee for 2 cents each.

By the end of the nineteenth century, women’s lunch clubs could be found in other major cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, and San Francisco, but not in the South. Some, such as three in NYC, were affiliated with churches. In Indianapolis, temperance supporters – members of the W.C.T.U. — ran a lunch club.

The lunch clubs were meant to provide not only inexpensive noontime meals for working women, but also to give them a place to enjoy a little leisure in “rest rooms” supplied with sofas, rocking chairs and desks, as well as libraries and other amenities. Some offered evening lecture series.

The clubs came at a time when the number of office workers in cities was on the increase. The clubs mainly catered to “business women,” which then meant young white-collar workers in offices and department stores. Although women factory workers had a greater need for restful and inexpensive lunches than did office workers, their shorter lunch breaks and lower pay made it difficult to accommodate them.

The earliest lunch clubs were launched by elite women as philanthropic projects to assist workers with affordable lunches, give them a place to hang out at noon, and to uplift them culturally. The food was not cooked on site, but supplied by other kitchens, such as that at Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago. To avoid the cost of hiring servers, food was set out on counters and diners selected what they wanted, a novel arrangement in the 1890s. [Above: Chicago’s Ursula lunch club, 1891] Prices were meant to cover costs but not to make a profit.

Lunch clubs had to tread a fine line in terms of how philanthropic backers related to the working women. At least one of the philanthropic lunch clubs made its lunchers feel pitied and failed to attract enough women. Those who had stuck with it then took it over as their own co-operative enterprise. Some other lunch clubs were begun as co-operatives. [Above: postcard of a commercial lunch club that admitted men]

A humorous turn-of-the-century story characterized the uneasy feeling of some working women toward philanthropy. In it, a wealthy man approaches a young sales clerk in a department store to say that he is thinking of starting a Noon-Day Rest Club, “where you and the others may come and drink Tea and listen to me read Advice to the Young.” She replies, “That would be lonely Billiards, wouldn’t it? We don’t want to be rounded up and sozzled over. Not on your Leaflards. The Poor Working Girl draws a line on having a kind-hearted Gentleman pull the Weeps on her. I think I can struggle along without having you come around to hold my Hand.”

Despite this obstacle, lunch clubs proliferated. The Klio Club’s Noon-Day Rest expanded its menu, adding dishes such as soup, baked beans, and salmon salad. In 1899 a sample menu in one of Chicago’s six lunch clubs might have looked like this:
Two slices of bread or two rolls, with butter 5c
With jam or cold meat 6c
Extra butter 1c
Tomato soup, beef hash, Spanish stew 5c
Potato salad, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, cottage cheese 5c
Tea or coffee, with cream 5c
With milk 3c
Iced tea, buttermilk 3c
Raspberry ice, lemon ice 5c
Vanilla ice cream, tutti-frutti ice cream 5c

The success of serve-yourself lunch clubs spurred the development of commercial cafeterias. Over time it became harder for lunch clubs to attract large numbers of women patrons. Some began to accept men who, after all, tended to spend more for lunch. For-profit help-yourself businesses proliferated. In one case, a dispute at Klio’s Noon-Day Rest led its caterer, Kate Knox, to leave and start her own self-service lunch club business. [Mrs. Knox’s lunch club pictured above] Another enterprising woman, Mary Dutton, operated four cafeterias by 1915 after beginning with a single lunch club.

But the lunch clubs made an impact, for a time at least. Boston’s original noon-day lunch club closed because it felt it had elevated the standards of common restaurants. And businesses borrowed ideas from the lunch clubs. For example, The Harmony Cafeteria in Chicago, a commercial business, advertised in 1913 that it featured a basement rest area, with a drawing showing two women in rocking chairs reading books.

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Filed under cafeterias, food, Offbeat places, patrons, restaurant prices, women

Tagged as 1890s, Chicago, early 20th century, lunch clubs, philanthropy, women patrons

July 12, 2021 · 11:49 am

Hash house lingo

Odd – often humorous – names for simple restaurant orders were long associated with cheap eating places such as hash houses, beaneries, and lunch wagons. In addition to inexpensive food, patrons got free entertainment, while newspaper reporters never ran out of light copy.

In cheap restaurants it was customary through much of the 19th century and early in the 20th for servers to convey orders to the kitchen by shouting them out from the dining area. It’s highly likely that many, maybe most, of the servers as well as the cooks, were unable to read and write.

The colorful stories began to fill papers’ pages in the 1880s. In 1881 U.S. President Chester Arthur was reported to have visited a “coffee and cake saloon” in lower Manhattan – probably Hitchcock’s — where waiters shouted out his order of coffee and rare corned beef to the kitchen in slang.

Judging by how often it was repeated in the press, the public was endlessly amused by the tale of the clever Bowery hash house waiter who bested the patron who tried to confuse him by asking for two poached eggs on toast by adding that he wanted the yolks broken. Without a pause, the waiter shouted out “Adam and Eve on a raft. Wreck ‘em.”

Eggs merited the most jargon of all foods, probably because there are so many ways of preparing them. Two terms remain in almost universal use today and are so commonly used that probably no one suspects they were once regarded as unfamiliar waiter slang. I’m sure you will spot them easily in the list of egg orders.

Many of these terms make no sense at all, and some have more than one reference. Why were they used? Clearly they are not necessarily shorter or easier to yell than if they were straightforward. According to the 1945 article Soda Fountain Lingo, “An exclusive language – racy, picturesque, humorous – understood only by the initiate, adds zest to the monotony. Further, it lends pride to the job and provides an esprit de corps. It gives incentive to the new waiter, mystifies the general public, and furnishes satisfaction to the enlightened professional hasher.”

Eggs
Ham and eggs – Kansas City chicken and Adam and Eve
Scrambled eggs — Adam and Eve shipwrecked; Agitated eggs; Storm tossed eggs; Eggs around the curve; Wreck Noah
Scrambled eggs with chili sauce – Ship wreck in the Red sea
Scrambled eggs on toast – Wreck on a raft
Fried eggs unturned — With eyes open; Sunny side up; Straight up; Two white wings turned down
Fried eggs turned over – In the dark; With a black eye; Over easy; Eyes closed
Fried eggs scalded in hot grease — Blindfold two
Poached eggs – Sleeve buttons
Poached eggs on toast – Two ladies on horseback; Adam and Eve on a raft
Soft boiled eggs – A light on the ocean wave; In the sea/ocean
Hard boiled eggs – A light under the waves; Two in the water like a brick

Meat/fish/main dishes
Dozen oysters stewed plain — Drown a dozen
Dozen oysters in the loaf — One in the coffin
Oyster stew – Two in a bowl; Stew-o-o-oo
Chicken stew — Springer in the mud
Corned beef hash – Brownstone front (can also refer to pancakes); Mystery
Wienerwurst and sauerkraut — A Dutchman’s paradise
Ham and beans – Ham an’
Beef and beans – Beef an’
Beans – Plate of Bostons; Thousand on a plate
Baked beans without the pork — Brass band without the leader
Beefsteak – Patent leather; One sole without a shoe
Mutton chops – Whiskers
Codfish ball – Sinker (also refers to doughnuts and to pancakes)
Spring chicken on toast and boiled potatoes — Foul tip and a hot grounder
Fried catfish (quickly) — Railroad a hot swimmer

Other
Macaroni — A son of Italy; Put up the flag
Buttered toast — Butter the gash
Pancakes — Brownstone front; Brown the wheats; String o’ flats; Stack ‘em up
Pancakes and coffee – Bootleg and sinkers
Buckwheat cakes – Brown the buck
Hot biscuit — Order of the boat heels
Doughnuts – Sinkers; Life preservers; Fried holes
Shredded wheat biscuits and a glass of milk – Couple o’ bales of hay & squeeze the cow
Milk toast – Cemetery stew
Chicken soup – Hen in the bowl
Slice of watermelon — The Red Man
Mince pie with powdered sugar on top — Indigestion in a snowstorm
Pie a la mode – Freeze out; Snow on the open face
No gravy – Make it dry
Keep it hot – In a hot box

Beverages
Hot tea — Cup of China; On the Chinaman
Tea without milk – Hong Kong on crutches
Iced tea — One in the mountains
Cup of coffee — One in the dark; Draw one
Glass of milk — One in the light; Squeeze the cow
Ice water – One Arctic

Customers often contributed to the lingo by inventing their own, both for ordering and asking someone to pass something.
Pass the sugar – Give the sand box a kick down this way
Request for butter – Pass the dope
Milk – Drive the cow down this way
Beans and molasses – Short and sweet
Fried pigs’ feet – A Trilby foot [Trilby was a popular 1894 novel about an artist’s model with beautiful feet]
Coffee and doughnuts – Slop and sinkers
Sandwich with a liberal allowance of ham – One boxing glove with plenty of lining

Hash house lingo died a slow death in the 20th century with the arrival of automated eating places, cafeterias, and other serve-yourself places, and was pretty much gone by the 1930s. It has been artificially revived here and there as a novelty attraction, the former Ed Debevics diners being a prime example.

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Filed under atmosphere, food, patrons, restaurant customs, waiters/waitresses/servers

Tagged as 19th century, cheap restaurants, early 20th century, server lingo

April 4, 2021 · 4:54 pm

Anatomy of a chef: John Dingle

Although he was English, it was John Dingle’s lifelong ambition to be regarded as a French chef. Ironically, it was while working at a Bronx roadhouse that he attained that recognition when he was dubbed “Monsieur Jean Dingle.” He expected his former co-workers in New York’s Ritz Hotel kitchen to ridicule him about it, but it turned out they were proud of him. [pictured: the roadhouse, ca. 1912]

His few years spent in New York capped what he regarded as on-the-job professional training. To help support his family, he had begun as kitchen boy at the Old Drawbridge Hotel in his home city of Bristol, England, at age 13. At 14, he resolved to become a first-class chef, even though he knew that it was an unusual aspiration for an Englishman. He knuckled down, working 12-hour days and teaching himself French. By the time he came to the U.S. nine years later, in 1911, he had worked in hotel and restaurant kitchens in London and throughout Europe. Despite facing ridicule because he was English — especially in France — he managed to work his way up. [Majestic Hotel, Paris, approx. when he worked there]

He tells his story in the book International Chef: Paris, New York, London, Monte Carlo, Lisbon, Frankfurt (1953).

He was recruited off the streets of London for a kitchen job at the soon-to-open NY Ritz-Carlton by an agent who offered him free passage and a wage of $27.50 a week. This was good pay contrasted with much of Europe where, he had discovered, the more prestigious the kitchen, the lower the wages. At the Ritz he was assigned to make hors d’oeuvres, but soon requested a move up: “I considered that I had already spent longer than was necessary in the cold department of the industry. I made my customary request to be transferred to the main kitchen and I was soon working in the sauce department, which is the most important in any kitchen . . .”

French was the language of the Ritz staff. Soon after he arrived his colleague “Monsieur Robert” showed him how to write out the daily supply requisition. Robert was surprised how well he did it, leading Dingle to reply, “I ought to be able to write it considering I’ve spoken it all my life.” Monsieur Robert (Trudge) was astounded, saying, “Well I’m blown, I thought I was the only English chef living.” Neither of them had ever met an English chef before. Of course, since an English chef had to masquerade as French, they might have been wrong. [pictured: Ritz dining room, ca. 1911]

Dingle decided to move on and, after a few short stints at summer resorts, landed a job at the Woodmansten Inn, on the Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. Adjoining a racetrack in its early years, it also had the distinction of being one of the roadhouses closest to Manhattan.

If everything was in order at the Ritz-Carlton, with its 70 chefs and well-equipped kitchens, that was far from the case at the Woodmansten Inn. Hired as chef, he immediately began correcting problems. He discovered that waiters had quite a few tricks such as substituting cheap wines for good vintages, and getting kickbacks from suppliers who were furnishing inferior foods while charging for higher grades. Refrigeration was supplied by three ice boxes located in the hot kitchen where the ice melted rapidly and dripped on the floor. He moved one to the cool cellar and used the others as storage cabinets. He rescued the inn’s vegetable garden and fruit trees which had been allowed to go wild. He converted abandoned, rundown stables and sheds into chicken houses. Another major coup was his introduction of broccoli onto the menu after he found an Italian neighbor growing it. It was not widely known outside of Italian communities – he referred to it as “green cauliflower.” He guessed that it would be a novelty to guests, who would tell their friends about it. Apparently he was correct because the next proprietor of the inn, well-known NY restaurateur Joe Pani, earned the title “broccoli king” by claiming he had introduced it to the U.S.

After a couple of years in New York, Dingle decided it was time to return to England, to his fiancé and his aging parents. He announced the decision to his boss, a man simply identified as “Mr. Roberts” in the book. Roberts then proposed that Dingle return after his marriage and become a co-proprietor with him. He convinced Dingle to hand over his savings, which amounted to $1,000 – equal to 70% of his annual income. After his return to Bristol, Dingle received urgent messages from Roberts informing him that the owner of the property was about to sell it and was demanding accumulated back rent. Roberts claimed he had paid off the debt and moved to Chicago.

I’ve come to suspect that Dingle was the victim of a scam by Roberts, who knew that the actual property owner – and the restaurant’s proprietor – was planning to sell, and who had no intention of going into business with Dingle. In fact, Roberts was also probably in on the various fiddles that Dingle attributed to the cooks and waiters.

Despite seeing his plans for the future ruined, and having lost his savings, the ever-determined Dingle went on to open two successful restaurants in Bristol.

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Filed under chefs, proprietors & careers, roadside restaurants

Tagged as Bronx, chef's career, continental training, early 20th century, French chefs, International Chef, John Dingle, restaurant kitchens, Woodmansten Inn

May 31, 2020 · 6:57 pm

Dining on a roof

Roof-garden restaurants have had something of a vogue in recent years and may see many more visitors this summer. Their history goes back at least to 1879 when St. Louis restaurant owner Tony Faust created a terrace adorned with boxed shrubs and flowers and lit by gaslights. It was a roof garden of sorts, but on a low roof incapable of giving diners a magnificent view. The terrace remained in operation until at least the mid-1880s, and was commemorated in the ca. 1906 postcard shown here.

In the 1890s, a few places of entertainment in New York City added roof gardens atop tall buildings, primarily as sites for drinking, dancing, and listening to music. The Casino built a garden around 1890, with lanterns, palm trees, and a small stage. Another appeared atop Madison Square Garden [shown here, 1894], then at Koster & Bial’s. These did not serve dinner, but it soon appeared there was a demand for that and it was added to the attractions.

By 1905, New York had dozens of rooftop restaurants during the summer, mostly on hotel roofs. But some restaurants joined in, such as Clyde’s on Broadway and 75th street, famed for its “beefsteak dungeon” which transitioned to the roof in warm weather. Delmonico had a rooftop restaurant in 1920, a few years before it closed for good. Jack Delaney’s ca. 1940 garden appears in a postcard to be rather cramped and lacking a view of the city but it was at least outdoors.

One of the most impressive earlier rooftop restaurants was the one set to open in 1905 on top of New York’s Astor Hotel which was designed to resemble a Tuscan garden. Unlike some others furnished by hotels it was entirely in the open air, with a pergola running down the center that was adorned with moonflowers that only opened after dark.

Other New York hotels that opened roof garden restaurants in the early 1900s included the Hoffman House, The Vendome, the Belle Claire, the Majestic, and the Hotel Bossert in Brooklyn. The Waldorf-Astoria had a roof garden but according to a 1905 account only salads and desserts were served there.

Rooftop restaurants in hotels were not limited to New York. They could be found all over the country – at the Grunewald in New Orleans, the St. Anthony in San Antonio, the Hotel Nortonia in Portland OR, the Bingham in Philadelphia, and the McKenzie Hotel which was intended to “boost Bismarck and North Dakota.” Philadelphia had a number of hotel roof gardens, including an unusual-looking one at the Continental Hotel [shown above].

In researching this topic it was often difficult to figure out exactly what was meant by a rooftop restaurant. It might be entirely in the open-air, as was true of the famous Astor roof, or it might be partially or entirely enclosed, occupying part of a roof or the entire roof in which case it was actually the top floor. The Continental’s garden restaurant appeared to be at least partially under a roof, as did the one at Hotel Breakers in Lynn MA shown here.

Most outdoor rooftops opened at the beginning of June, advertising “cool breezes.” Not surprisingly, rooftop restaurants were in vogue mainly before air conditioning came into use in the 1930s. After World War II, when it became more common, it seems the number of open-air rooftops declined.

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Filed under Offbeat places, outdoor restaurants, restaurant decor

Tagged as 19th century, early 20th century, hotels, roof gardens, rooftop restaurants

January 8, 2017 · 5:57 pm

Restaurant wear

Although affluent women of the upper classes patronized restaurants in the 19th century, they usually did not do so unless they had a male escort, preferably a brother, father, or husband. Respectable women were not supposed to appear too much in public view, and only in select eating places such as the dining rooms of leading hotels.

But as the century ended the situation began to change. Dining and entertaining in restaurants became fashionable and women appeared in public during the daytime without an escort, whether at lunch or afternoon tea. And they wanted to be seen.

The idea that there was a certain type of clothing right for these occasions began to take hold. Around 1900 the terms restaurant wear, restaurant gown, and restaurant frock proliferated in newspaper stories that reported on what stylish women were seen wearing in Paris restaurants.

It was a sign that restaurant-going had truly arrived. It no longer inevitably carried the stigma of vice and moral peril. Even though the majority of American women, especially those living in small towns and rural areas, might never see the inside of a swank tea room or café, those reading the society pages could imagine all eyes on them as they entered an elegant restaurant dressed in the latest style.

In 1903 women of Tacoma WA who followed their paper’s “Fashion Hints from the Shops” learned that black silk costumes for restaurant going were “quite the thing.” The prettiest gowns had skirts with flouncy semi-trains and a pleated top with velvet bows in front worn with a long fringed silk scarf.

Top tea rooms and restaurants became stages for virtual fashion shows. Clever dressmakers were said to “haunt” tea rooms to get ideas of the latest styles. In New York, Delmonico’s and Sherry’s were prime spots to see the pleats, flounces, laces, scallops, eyelets, and ribbons of the much be-decked outfits of 1905. The wisdom of the day had it that women went to such places not for the food, but to see what other women were wearing.

Those traveling in the open autos of 1909 wore heavy, unattractive coats to protect them from road dirt and grime. But the bright side, pointed out the Philadelphia Inquirer, was that the coats were loose enough around the shoulders that “really elaborate costumes may be worn beneath them without harm.” The example, hard to appreciate in the black and white drawing here, was a coral pink restaurant frock with braided trim and crocheted buttons topped with a hat sporting what were mysteriously described as “vivid coral wings.”

Enormous attention was paid to women’s necklines with the new interest in restaurant wear. Time and again readers were warned not to confuse restaurant wear with formal wear. The rules were firm. Formal wear meant revealingly plunging necklines, bare arms, and no hat. Restaurant wear, by contrast, meant a frontal coverup, with a moderate neckline or even a high choker-style collar. The dress must have sleeves and the costume was to be topped off with a hat.

But rules are often broken. According to Julian Street’s 1910 magazine article titled “Lobster Palace Society,” gauche gold-trimmed Babylonian restaurants such as the Café de l’Opera in New York’s Times Square made every effort to seat women with low necklines prominently on the ground floor.

The 1920s featured a new silhouette, as shown in this advertisement for glamorous gowns in 1922 as sold in Philadelphia’s Frank & Seder department store. Hats were getting smaller in the 1920s and 1930s, sometimes replaced with hair ornaments.

Far from the Depression dampening the wish to get dressed up and go out on the town, the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 introduced a new fashion category, the cocktail dress. Tailored looks prevailed, and in 1938 a fashion columnist chided women who instead chose “luscious, romantic, billowy” frocks to wear to restaurants and nightclubs, sternly telling them that “such fragile, pale bits of formality are not worn!”

The trend toward simplification and informality continued in the 1940s with a wartime preference for plain, dark dresses as shown here. By the mid-1950s many women reportedly tried to pass off sundresses as appropriate for the cocktail hour (verdict: “Nothing could be more incorrect for after-five-wear.”) while teens couldn’t see why they shouldn’t wear jeans to a restaurant. Not nearly special enough, reasoned the columnist Dorothy Dix. Advice thrown aside, the casual trend continued.

Since the 1970s “restaurant wear” has come to refer mainly to uniforms for restaurant staff.

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Filed under elite restaurants, night clubs, patrons, restaurant etiquette, women

Tagged as dressing for dinner, early 20th century, restaurant gowns, semi-formal wear, women patrons

July 20, 2014 · 7:48 pm

Famous in its day: Thompson’s Spa

Beverages have played a big role in the operation of restaurants. I even tend to sort them mentally by what kind of drinks they featured. That is, by whether they had a bar or dealt in alcoholic beverages or were based around coffee, tea, or soft drinks. Throughout history many restaurants began as saloons, coffee houses, or soft drink stands.

Thompson’s Spa, a long-gone chain in Boston that grew to about a dozen units in the 1930s, began as a soda fountain – a “spa” — selling non-alcoholic “temperance drinks.” Open year round, it provided both cold and hot drinks such as these from its 1895 menu:In case anyone wandered in thinking they were going to get a whiskey, a sign hanging on the wall set them straight: “This is a temperance bar.” Not a big problem since they could duck around the corner and into the alley where the Bell in Hand stood, looking to all appearances like an old London tavern.

Before very long Thompson’s proprietor, Charles Eaton, added sandwiches, doughnuts, and pie to the menu, ALL of which counted as basic foodstuffs – not desserts — to Bostonians then.

Eaton was a graduate of MIT who in 1880, after briefly practicing as an architect in his home town of Lowell MA, had invented an electric telephone signaling device that he sold to Bell Telephone. For some odd reason he chucked that career and joined his brother-in-law (named Thompson) in running a wholesale drug store in Boston. Perhaps selling was in his genes; his father had done well peddling snacks to railroad passengers, thereby earning the title “popcorn king of Lowell.” The drug business must have been slow because in 1882 Eaton and Thompson decided to install a soda fountain for non-alcoholic beverages.

The original Thompson’s Spa was located on the corner of Washington and Court streets in Newspaper Row where the city’s newspapers were located and also home to many of their employes. Near Thompson’s was Pi Alley, aka Pie Alley and officially Williams Court, where many printers, compositors, and pressmen lived in rooming houses and, undoubtedly, ate in restaurants. Eating places were accordingly plentiful in the neighborhood, among them Gridley’s Coffee House and Mrs. Atkinson’s.

Thompson’s kept the appellation “spa” even as it gradually expanded into a regulation restaurant. It added a fuller menu plus much-appreciated amenities such as seats for customers, who had previously had to stand while they ate. Women were finally admitted in 1909. [1933 dinner menu shown]

Although Thompson’s had servers, the spa exhibited some of the earmarks of an automat. Like the early German automat which was primarily a delivery system for beverages, Thompson’s had an elaborate piping system to supply chilled liquids to serving counters. With the decision to add ice cream to the menu in 1915, a new soda fountain was installed that permitted syrups to flow through pipes as well. A bonus was that the soda clerks could prepare an entire ice cream soda or sundae while facing the customers rather than turning their backs.

After Eaton’s death in 1917, followed by a bitter battle with his widow, his three sons took over the business and began to expand it beyond the sprawling Washington street edifice it had become. By 1939 it occupied eleven locations in downtown Boston. In addition to soda fountains the Spas had air conditioning, sound proofing, table service, and wall murals. But the company’s finances were not in good shape, due partly to overexpansion during the Depression. In 1946 it was acquired by the Sheraton (hotel) Corporation which daringly installed a cocktail bar at the Washington Street location. In 1949 Sheraton sold the company to New York’s Exchange Buffet Corporation which also failed to make a go of it and began closing units in 1952.

In 1958 the two Spas that remained, one of them on Washington street near the original location, were closed. Former executives and employees tried to carry on at one location for a few years.