The Lady Who Collected More Than 25,000 Menus
A collection of history, who cares what was on the menu! (I do though...)
Do you collect things? Like matchboxes, coins, stamps or shoes? In that case maybe you can relate to Frank E. Buttolph, originally Frances Editha Buttles. In her 50’s she started a very thorough collection of menus and offered an immense gift to history, specifically to culinary historians.
Frank E. Buttolph was a multi-lingual teacher who lived in several states before settling in Manhattan, New York. She started being a hardcore collector of postcards. Not just all sorts of postcards, but ones with lighthouses on them. When you think niche isn’t enough, right?
Her endeavour started on January 1st, 1900 while having lunch in the Columbia Restaurant. She noted in a letter dated February 14th, 1900 :
"On New Year's Day I stopped in the Columbia Restaurant for lunch and thought it might be interesting to file a bill of fare at the library. A week later the thought occured, why not preserve others? As a result 930 have passed through my fingers to the Astor Library."
Frank E. Buttolph claims to have had the idea to collect bill of fares and restaurant menus right on the dawn of the New Year but the New York Public Library confirm she contacted them a year before; whereafter they agreed to take on her collection.
Interestingly enough, the first option for an entrée on the Columbia Restaurant Menu is the Hamburger Steak with Smothered Onions where I wrote about its cousin the Salisbury Steak and its beginnings — during the Civil War.
After New York Public Library accepted her collection, it grew from there. She volunteered at the Astor Library where majority of her free time was spent; writing letters to newspapers, trade journals, restaurants, chambers of commerce and government agencies.
An example underneath shows her drive and a quite obsessive compulsive manor on how people should send menus which she would receive, label and catalog. Her specific instructions on how they should be stored shows a collectors craze. The director of the Astor Library tried to rubber band some menus together, Frank refused the idea in order to keep them truly pristine out of fear of leaving marks. The only mark she wanted was her famous blue stamp to officiate as part of her collection.
Her meticulousness and reputation preceded her and didn’t necessarily give her a shine in the brightest of lights. The New York Times called her out on her library-lady looks and her unostentatious demeanour. It didn’t bother her one bit, she kept on pounding down her famous blue stamps amassing a collection that by 1921 amounted to near 25,000 in different languages.
Her supposed regal behaviour upset many staff members of the library and her complaints about the cleaners whistling or untidy desks of her coworkers didn’t make her too popular. On top of some accusations of her stealing books that led her to be dismissed from her volunteer position in 1923. The following year she passed away, with her last written record in a letter to the Astor library:
“For many years my library work has been the only thing I had to live for. It was my heart, my soul, my life. Always before me was the vision of students of history who would say “thank you” to my name and memory.”
One single menu turned out to be an aspiration of a mass collection. Not just menus and bill of fares but collecting culinary history. The collaboration of the New York Public Library and Frank E. Buttolph led to a continued assembly of more than 40,000 menus to share among scholars interested in history, food, restaurants and the beautiful thing called culinary history that I’m quite a fan of, and I presume so are you. For that maniacal meticulousness from Frank E. Buttolph, I thank her for her passion and dedication.
Here you can see some more of the collection
What an interesting collection!
We spent many years traveling the U.S. and Canada. During those years, we collected handout menus from many different restaurants ranging from haute cuisine to biker bars. We often told fellow travelers, "If you're going to Paducah, or Halifax, Nova Scotia or........, you must eat at this place. Here's the menu. Would you like me to make a copy?"
Now, most of those places have menus on-line, so we threw our menu collection away. Probably a bad move.
Fascinating! It’s also why I write food history, like her menu collections which are a marvelous peek into the culinary history of her time and her city and thus a reflection of history itself.