New York City Vintage Menus

Manhattan’s Gilded Age — banquet menus from Waldorf-Astoria, Hotel Astor, Delmonico’s, Plaza, and the Knickerbocker, 1880–1908

For half a century, from the 1880s through to the eve of Prohibition, the great Manhattan hotels and society banquet halls defined American luxury dining. The Waldorf-Astoria, opened in 1893, set the standard. Hotel Astor at Times Square (1904), the Plaza (1907), the Knickerbocker, the Murray Hill, and Delmonico’s hosted society dinners, fraternal banquets, university alumni reunions, and the occasional wedding breakfast. Each event got its own printed menu card — and many of the finest survive in the Buttolph Collection.

This is the largest city sub-archive in our collection.

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