On Christmas Day 1898, the Hotel Metropole printed an illustrated menu that captures the moment American hotel hospitality became theater. The menu’s front cover depicts a winter coaching scene; inside, the dinner runs nine courses and twenty pages of holiday extras. This is what a luxury Christmas dinner looked like at the turn of the twentieth century.
The hotel
Hotel Metropole was, by the late 1890s, one of the standard mid-tier luxury hotels of the American urban scene. There were several Hotel Metropoles — in New York, in Chicago, in Atlantic City, in Buffalo — and they shared a common aesthetic: a brick or stone facade, a velvet-and-mahogany lobby, a dining room serving European-influenced American cuisine. The Metropole was the sort of place where a successful merchant would take his family for Christmas dinner.
The card itself
The 1898 Hotel Metropole Christmas card is unusual in our archive in two respects. First, it is unusually elaborate — three illustrated pages with chromolithograph borders, a winter coaching scene on the front, and a printed menu inside that runs to nine numbered courses. Second, the inks are unusually vivid: deep green for the holly borders, a rich crimson for the title text, a soft blue for the winter sky. This is not letterpress; this is full chromolithography, the most expensive printing technique available.
The Hotel Metropole, in other words, made an investment in this card. They printed it weeks in advance, they distributed it to every guest, and they expected some guests to take it home as a memento. It is a piece of hotel marketing as much as a meal record.
What was on the menu
The nine-course Christmas dinner of 1898 follows the conventions of formal Edwardian American dining:
- Oyster cocktail. Raw oysters on the half shell with cocktail sauce — a fixture of American luxury dining since the 1880s.
- Consommé. Beef-based, clarified, served in two-handled cups.
- Roast turkey, cranberry sauce. The American Christmas centerpiece. By 1898, turkey had largely displaced goose as the holiday meat of choice in American hotels.
- Mashed potatoes, candied yams, creamed onions. The standard side dishes.
- Mince pie.
- Plum pudding with brandy sauce. The British classic, then still standard at American hotel Christmases.
- Cheese and crackers.
- Fresh fruit.
- Demitasse coffee, after-dinner liqueurs.
What is striking is how completely this menu has dissolved into mere convention. By 1898, the Hotel Metropole’s chef did not have to invent anything: he simply executed, beautifully, the menu that every American luxury hotel served on December 25.
Why this menu still matters
It is the visual quality of the card, more than the food itself, that gives it lasting value. The chromolithograph coaching scene is genuinely beautiful — a horse-drawn coach against a winter landscape, snow on evergreens, lanterns in the distance. The typography is in Bodoni, then a fashionable type, with the holiday extras in a script face that adds warmth.
For a contemporary buyer, this is a Christmas card from another century. It is at once historically specific (1898, Hotel Metropole, nine courses, plum pudding) and visually universal (the warm coaching scene, the holly borders, the snowflake details). It hangs equally well in a hotel lobby, a vintage-themed bar, or a private dining room.
About this print
The print we offer is reproduced from the original 1898 card. The chromolithographic colours have been preserved exactly. The NYPL stamp has been carefully removed. The card is offered in three sizes (8×10, 11×14, 16×20) and two versions (pure print, museum print with a small caption).
View the Hotel Metropole 1898 Christmas dinner menu → · Browse all Christmas menus →