Really cool. Historical menus available online

[Horse with no Name]

http://menus.nypl.org/

With approximately 40,000 menus dating from the 1840s to the present, The New York Public Library’s restaurant menu collection is one of the largest in the world, used by historians, chefs, novelists and everyday food enthusiasts. Trouble is, the menus are very difficult to search for the greatest treasures they contain: specific information about dishes, prices, the organization of meals, and all the stories these things tell us about the history of food and culture.

To solve this, we’re working to improve the collection by transcribing the menus, dish by dish. Doing this will allow us to dramatically expand the ways in which the collection can be researched and accessed, opening the door to new kinds of discoveries. We’ve built a simple tool that makes the transcribing pretty easy to do, but it’s a big job, so we need your help. Feeling hungry?

Questions? Comments? Want to stay in touch as the project develops? Contact us at [e-mail]

[livetohike]

1. Wow! Thanks for posting this

:hi: It is now in my favorite places.

[kestrel91316]

2. If DU has a History or Library forum you might cross-post it there.

This is cool. I have transcribed genealogical records, but never menus.

[Lucinda]

3. Love it. Thanks!

:)

[EFerrari]

4. That looks like fun!

[grasswire]

5. this is my idea of a treasure

Wow -- I love it very much.

[Warpy]

6. I'm amazed by the entree prices on the 1894 hotel menu

because they'd be the same at a mid scale restaurant now and you know how much inflation has happened since then.

I guess their clientele was restricted to the Robber Barons, no one else need darken their doors.

[EFerrari]

7. There are residential hotels, SROs on Kearny Street in San Francisco,

about two blocks below Broadway and south of Chinatown. One of them still has an old ad with rates from about that time painted on the back of the building, dinner and shower for fifty cents. ;)