When oysters became delicacies
One hundred years ago today … the Times gave advance notice of a report by the New York State Conservation Commissioner George D. Pratt that described an oyster industry on the wane. (“Extinction of Oysters in New York Feared,” The New York Times January 26, 1920, p. 9.)
As chronicled in Mark Kurlansky’s The Big Oyster: oysters had for centuries been a signature crop of the city’s food industry, and had been a staple of the local diet for centuries longer than there had been a city. The Lenape people who made their home in the region before the Europeans arrived and took over the land had used oysters as food, in technology, and in commerce,
Oysters had been readily and affordably available in New York City. This 1900 photo shows a street vendor charging a penny each.
Oyster cart. Photo by Thomas McCallister, ca. 1900. Museum of the City of New York.
Pollution was putting an end to all that. 1909, states Kurlansky, had been one of the last good years for New York oysters. In 1910, with over 600 million gallons of raw sewage per day getting dumped into local waters and a typhoid epidemic at large, the industry went into a tailspin and would be officially shut down by 1927.
Pratt’s report, dated January 24th, 1920, decries the declining availability of oysters. It predicts that “whereas oysters were once plentiful, and were food for the common people, the present conditions are forcing them gradually to become classified as luxuries…. Oysters will become a delicacy.