Author, social historian, interpreter of American retailing, esp. restaurants and department stores
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Articles by Jan Whitaker
Jan Whitaker and Barton Byg: Normalizing house flipping
E-Edition Advertise Newsletters Subscribe Home News Opinion Sports Business Arts & Life Obituaries Classifieds Calendar At a time when so many people are priced out of the housing market, both as renters and buyers, it’s an unpleasant surprise to see an article in the recent Home Magazine called “The Basics of Flipping Homes.” Its headline is ironic, given that the flippers have taken what was once a home, made some upgrades, not so that they can have a home, but so they can make a nice...
California coffee shops
With the end of World War II, the United States became the undisputed world power as well as the leading economy, producing the largest share of the world’s goods. Many changes took place in American society as the soldiers returned. Suburbs sprang up with housing for growing families, shopping centers appeared, and many workers enjoyed prosperity.
Image gallery: Redness!
The author of the book A Perfect Red identifies it as “the color of desire” and “the color of blood and fire.” She also notes that the color has often been associated with masculinity because it signifies power, prestige, and “heat and vitality.” So it makes perfect sense that at one time it was popular as steak house decor. [above, Presto, Chicago, ca. 1970] But it took a while to catch on.
Catering to airlines
After the early years of serving cold box lunches, U.S. airlines tried to improve their in-flight food service through alliances with restaurants and restaurant chefs. As early as the 1930s, the decade in which transcontinental flights began, hot meals were becoming common. In 1939 George Rector, formerly of the swank and swinging Rector’s of pre-prohibition Broadway in New York City, advised Braniff Airways on their menus.
What were they thinking?
August 14, 2022 · 11:04 am I have often been struck by how many postcards fail to present restaurants at their best. Most of those I’ve chosen for this post are from popular restaurants, some of which stayed in business for a very long time and were well loved. But the whole idea behind postcards was to extend the appeal of a restaurant beyond its regular patrons, to those who perhaps never even heard of it. What would strangers think about the places associated with these self-presentations?
Native American restaurants
Although there has been growing interest in exploring native foodways in the past twenty or so years, it seems there’s been little research into the history of Native American restaurants, that is, those serving traditional Indian dishes and/or those run by Indians. The earliest one with a Native American proprietor that I found was in Coweta, Oklahoma, around 1906. It was run by Frank Oliver, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation.
An early French restaurant chain
Sometimes you need to leave your own country in order to get some perspective on it. Along with going back in time, that is what I’ve done. I’ve gone to France — though only through texts and pictures — to explore a restaurant chain begun in the 19th century known as Bouillon Duval. I tend to think of the United States as the home of restaurant chains, and that they are quintessentially American. There is some truth to this, but it is also full of blind spots as the existence of the Duvals shows.
Restaurant murals
It’s likely that most Americans are familiar with restaurant murals. They have appeared in a range of restaurants, from sandwich shops to expensive dining resorts. They reveal how much restaurants are related to the arts, not only as producers of fine food but as patrons of the visual arts. Admittedly, many of them are artistically tame.
Black Tulsa’s restaurants
(This post is a footnote to Robin Caldwell’s fine essay on Black grocers in the Greenwood community – my attempt to give some sense of the community by sketching a little about the area’s many restaurants.) Before the Greenwood district’s destruction in 1921 – evaluated at $536M in property damage in today’s dollars — the area had become home to a prosperous Black business district filled with brick buildings, many of them housing eating places.
Famous in its day: Blum’s
In the early 1890s Simon and Clemence Blum started a confectionery business in San Francisco, creating a brand that would become one of the nation’s largest. In 1907 they relocated to what become the store’s lifetime address at Polk and California after their earlier location was destroyed in the earthquake and catastrophic fire of 1906. By the 1920s, if not earlier, Blum’s was serving three meals a day in addition to selling their handmade confectionery.
Women chefs before the 1970s
In the late 20th century women began to make serious inroads into restaurant kitchens, sometimes taking the top spot as chef. An account of women’s progress is given in Ann Cooper’s “A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen: The Evolution of Women Chefs” published in 1998. But not a lot is known about women’s status in professional kitchens in earlier eras. In an appendix, Cooper lists a “sampling” of women chefs from the past.
Dining during an epidemic: San Francisco
After spending time isolated or constrained in any way people tend to become impatient and want to break loose. That’s what happened in San Francisco during the “Spanish” flu of 1918, especially as the number of cases began to decline. It was understandable, especially when World War I ended. Everyone wanted to celebrate. Unlike most U.S. cities, San Francisco – with about 500,000 residents — was a city with a flourishing nightlife.
Dining during an epidemic
1918 was an extremely challenging year for restaurants. As if coping with the (so-called) “Spanish” flu weren’t bad enough, there were food shortages and rationing due to WWI, a shortage of employees, and looming national prohibition of alcohol. And yet the proprietors of Gailey’s Lunch Room in Chicago look quite content in September of that year. Only six days later, on September 24, a headline in a Chicago newspaper would read “Influenza Hits City.” Then on Oct.
Dining on a dime
To celebrate my blog’s 10th anniversary, I’m looking at what a dime would buy in American restaurants of the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s not too surprising that a meal could be bought for a dime through much of the 19th century. BUT, does that mean that a restaurant meal was much cheaper then than today? Not necessarily. For example, compare the situation of unskilled laborers in 1869 and now.
Anatomy of a restaurateur: Woo Yee Sing
While looking for something else one day, I came upon Yee Sing [full name: Woo Yee Sing], a Chinese-American who ran a restaurant in Minneapolis in the late 19th century and early decades of the 20th. In 1902, he was interviewed by a reporter from the Minneapolis Journal in which he revealed an anti-racist perspective that was sadly uncommon among white America at the time. Chinese restaurants were some of the very few spaces in the United States where the “races” mixed.
Soul food restaurants
Before the 1960s, the term “soul food” wasn’t used in reference to food. Until then the words had religious connotations for Protestants. What became known as edible soul food, such as chitterlings, pigs’ feet, greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread, and cobbler (to name just a few), had been popular in the South long before the words soul food were applied. But the diet gained a charged meaning in the 1960s when proponents of Black Power affirmed eating soul food as a political statement.
Green Book restaurants
Interest in historical Green Book guides for Black travelers has been growing in the past decade and the new movie of this title will surely increase it. The Green Books’ slogan, “Covering the United States like a blanket,” nicely sums up its goal of making travel more comfortable (maybe even enjoyable) for Black travelers living in a country that typically greeted them with hostility whenever they moved outside their restricted neighborhoods and social roles.
When the Temperance Movement Opened Saloons
On February 1, 1882, Charles Sumner Eaton opened the doors of his new saloon on Washington Street, near Court, on Boston’s famed Newspaper Row. The address had a long history as the site of the city’s first tavern, licensed to Samuel Cole in 1633. But Eaton, an MIT-educated druggist-turned-barkeep in his mid-20s, had something more modern in mind: The men dressed in white coats and caps who stood behind the marble bars of his establishment would serve no alcohol.
Doughnut Corporation of America – Restaurant-ing through history
Doughnuts are a food that has rarely been taken seriously by the media. After encountering loads of silly stories about doughnut holes and dunking I have decided the reason is that throughout the last century the doughnut industry was amazingly successful in promoting its products, often through humor. Most of what appeared in papers and magazines was the work of publicity agents for the manufacturers of doughnuts, equipment, and mixes.
Famous in its day: Reeves Bakery, Restaurant, Coffee Shop
The renowned Reeves of Washington, D.C. was a many splendored thing. So much so that for lack of space I had to leave out its other historical identities as Grocery Store, Tea Room, Confectionery, and Soda Fountain. Though called a restaurant, it was really a lunch room of the bakery/confectionery type which closed for the evening.
Peter Pan Inn | Restaurant-ing through history
What kind of career might the son of a junk dealer father and a mother who owned a restaurant end up with? If he was Richard Baumgardner he would run restaurants raucously decorated with gilded and spray-painted objets d’art — wonderfully kitschy palatial junque bought by the ton in Europe (70 tons of statues in 1966). When his warehouse ran low on statues and urns, he would make plastic replicas with rubber molds.
King’s Food Host | Restaurant-ing through history
It’s remarkable how people still pine for Frenchies of days gone by. Recipes for the most cherished of these, the Cheese Frenchie, a battered, deep fried cheese sandwich with a crunchy cornflake exterior, are all over the internet. It may have been modeled on the somewhat similar Croque Monsieur sandwich of France, explaining the name Frenchie.
Famous in its day: Wolfie’s
Wilfred Cohen was an opener. He’d buy or start up a restaurant and once it became a success he would sell it for a nice profit. The former Catskills busboy came to Miami Beach around 1940 and bought Al’s Sandwich Shop on 23rd St. off Collins Ave., selling it after turning it into a popular spot “known coast to coast.” Overstuffed sandwiches were his ticket.
“Waiter, telephone please!”
As one year ends and another begins, it’s a good time to think about what’s old and what’s new. For example, talking on a phone at the table in a restaurant seems a new-ish kind of activity. Of course you realize that I’m going to tell you it isn’t. Even though the telephone was invented in the 1870s, it took a while for it to become an everyday necessity. So it was still newsworthy when restaurants began to provide telephone service at patrons’ tables in the early 1900s.
Prices
Restaurant prices in the 19th century (followed by 20th, below) Note: Until the mid-19th century prices were often quoted in shillings and pence, or in Spanish dollars. One Spanish bit = 12½¢; One penny (1d) = 1¢; One shilling (1s) = 12d, or 12¢. At all times, a fixed-price dinner costs less than ordering a la carte. 1833 A cheap NYC eating house on Maiden Lane: “The charge for a plate of fish, for a plate of roasted turkey, with a slice of ham, with vegetables, potatoes, beans, &c.
Lunching in the Bird Cage
August 7, 2008 · 12:49 pm Lord & Taylor’s Bird Cage restaurant and tea room was opened in the late 1930s. It continued on the fifth floor of the Fifth Avenue New York City store until the 1980s when it was updated and renamed Café American Style. Accommodating only about one hundred persons, the Bird Cage was considerably smaller than the main restaurant in Altman’s which held over two hundred, as well as Abraham & Straus’s in Brooklyn which held over four hundred.
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