The Ritz Carlton: INternational food, orientalist parties
One hundred years ago today … The Ritz Carlton Hotel, Madison Avenue between 46th and 47th Street, was a site for portrait sittings, charity events, society parties, and a sumptuous lunch menu.
A 1921 advertisement proclaiming the Ritz-Carlton “the Center of Distinguished Social Life in the Americas.” CTG Publishing
Here is the building in 1921, before Madison Avenue was widened and stores added to the hotel’s ground floor,
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Manhattan: Madison Avenue - 47th Street (East)" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1921.
Lunchers on this day in 1921 had 146 dishes to choose from, including abundant seafood: oysters, clams, and crabs. The options include the insistently international (“Canapé Moscovite” and “Kingfish Persane”) and insistently local (“apple pie”).
Menu, Ritz Carlton. 7 April 1921. New York Public Library.
There are over ten ways to eat “oeufs”–the menu is about half in French. Indeed, the New York Public Library’s copy of that day’s lunch menu has a long handwritten note in French on the back, fertile ground for a translator/researcher with time on their hands.
Daily News, 12 April, 1921, p.14.Newspapers.com.
Two days later, the New York Committee for China’s Famine Fund held a tea in the hotel’s Crystal Room as a preliminary event for a “Thé Dansant” and costume ball to be held on April 14th. The purpose of the “ tea with dancing” was to “give the patronesses of the ball an idea of the most suitable kinds of costumes,” as they would be expected to wear “Chinese” garb. (“Chinese Costumes Attract Society At ‘Famine’ Tea.” Daily News, 12 April, 1921, p.14.) One tea attendee was Lou Hoover (née Henry), future First Lady.
“Among the guests of honor” at the costume ball, also in the Crystal Room, would be “the Chinese Minister to the United States, Alfred S. Sze, and members of the Chinese Consulate of this city.”
Another guest, Madeleine Liebert, was featured in a Times photo for her orientalist outfit:
New York Times Rotogravure Photo Section, 24 April 1921, p. 70.
The costume events fit in with the kind of racist stereotyping of Chinese culture we keep seeing in 1920s NYC, the forebear of anti-Asian violence in our own time.
Back to First Ladies: earlier in 1921, soon-to-be First Lady Florence Harding (whom we featured here) said that the photo taken of her at the Hotel was her favorite. The Daily News had given it the entirety of its front page.
Daily News, 5 February 1921, p.1. Newspapers.com.
The New York Ritz-Carlton opened in 1911 and lasted 40 years on Madison Avenue. Read a Click Americana feature about it here. The current Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South has no connection to the original save the name.
– Jonathan Goldman, April 7, 2021
TAGS: hotels, luxury, charity, parties, society, food, cuisine, AAPI stereotypes, orientalism, race, lunch, restaurant