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Subscribe to RSSWhether it's a power lunch, a working lunch, a three martini lunch or ladies who lunch, a new exhibit at the New York Public Library looks at the history of the midday meal and what can arguably be called the first fast food lunch at the automat.
By Marcus Harun
NBC News
Between noon and 2 p.m. Americans nationwide have their midday meal: lunch. But years ago it used to be a much bigger meal called dinner.
New York City changed that.
In the 1900s, New York was industrializing very quickly and the work culture was changing. Bosses were stricter with work schedules and workers only had a half-hour to eat at midday. Employees no longer had the time to go home to eat their family meal, so dinner was pushed to the evening. As a result, a high-speed midday meal called “quick lunch” was born.
In a new exhibit, the New York Public Library tracks the evolution of lunch over the past 150 years. “Lunch Hour NYC,” on display now through February 2013, is complete with a restored version of an automat, an automatic restaurant that serves fresh food vending machine-style. Workers would rush to the automat and grab anything they could afford and ran back to work.
"The food was really good, it was clean, it was fresh," exhibit co-curator Rebecca Federman told NBC News. "It was a different kind of environment than many of us see today and I think that you can't help but have fond memories of dining in such an environment."
The automat, which first opened in New York City in 1912, served everything from pie to baked beans and every item costed five cents.
In the 1900s, employers emphasized the importance of making more money, working faster, and producing efficiently, Federman said. Automats flourished in the fast-paced environment.
"People from other countries coming to visit New York for the first time would always comment about how quickly people ate, specifically lunch," Federman said. "We realized quite quickly that lunch was a topic rich in interesting details that were somewhat specific to New York City."
Scraping together a lunch at home
At the turn of the 20th century immigrants poured into crowded multi-family New York City tenements. Most families did not get to sit down for a daily meal together, Shapiro said. Many women and children would do piece work for garment manufacturers or shell walnuts at home during the day while their father was at work. A mother and four children would typically have 10 cents to eat lunch daily.
"People would work in the flat all day long, there was no room for storage, there would have been no room to keep a lot of food," Lunch Hour NYC co-curator Laura Shapiro said. "So, our whole idea of the specialness of a meal at home just didn't exist; it couldn't."
The exhibit recounts stories of mothers who would send their children to pushcarts on the street to put a meal together for 10 cents. Examples of home lunches include a half loaf of bread, a whole loaf of stale bread or a can of salmon.
Using cutouts of food items, children who visit the lunch exhibit have the chance to assemble their own "10-cent lunch." The activity challenges children to decide how to efficiently spend their money and feed their families.
Evolution of the school lunch
In the 1890s a national school lunch program did not exist in the United States. Kids were supposed to go home to eat lunch – but not all of them were able to. Many poor families couldn’t feed their children breakfast and had no food to eat at lunch.
"They were often underfed, they were often quite thin and would fall asleep in class, and a lot of the reformers at the time noticed this and made sure to make an effort to get the food served within the school," Federman said.
In 1908 a charity introduced the first school lunch program in New York City for three cents. By 1920, the Board of Education took over the program and offered lunch to all of the city’s school children. Twenty years later, the federal government adapted the program and schools across the nation began serving lunch, Federman said.
Just one more example of how New York changed lunch as we know it.
“The conditions in New York were work, speed, time, and making money,” Shapiro said. “All those things were the kind of driving engines of life in New York and lunch emerged from that energy.”
To learn more about the exhibit, visit the NY Public Library Website.
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Brings back lots of memories. I remember my dad taking me and my sister to our 1st automat in New York; there were none in CT. We thought it was so exciting. Kudos to the author Marcus.
Is this article a joke..I had this operation when I went to school in the 60's!
I am from New York, moved here to Los Angeles, to write a winner screenplay, did that, Now I am going back to New York where I can work with Silvercup Studios....Named after the Famous Silvercup Bread. And! AND!! AND!!! My Father and Uncle first brought me to The Automat When we went to see a matinee broadway show; What A Delicious Thrill!!!! Then the republicanCrimeCartelAssassins; McDonalds and the Other fast POISON FOOD ARTISTS Killed The Automat off. They served Excellent/Nutritous Food! Not the Poisonous pink $lime $h!T they now serve that customers wolf down. A Different Generation and the taste difference between The Automat Food and the $H!T mcd's and the other fast food artists passes off on these kids is Night and Day. Good times will be back like the automat AFTER we deal with these republicanCrimeCartelPoisonArtists.
Really? I mean, Really?
"CostED?"
Outsourcing your articles MSNBC or is your staff just that illiterate.
Yeah, I caught that one too, and said the same exact thing. Every item costed five cents?
"Costed" Really. You talk about getting the unemployment rate down, MSNBC could do it by hiring much needed English majors.
"...and everything costed five cents"?????
Seriously? COSTED?
"Costed" is an irregular verb. Perhaps the food was costed at 5 cents per portion by management. But everything COST five cents...not COSTED.
What a great blast from the past. I'll never forget the thrill I had as a kid playing with what's now a piece of history. It was great to grow up in New York. Not easy. But I got an education in my 28 years there that's stuck with me for the last 28 years and counting....
I'm kind of wondering though: Why isn't Horn & Hardart mentioned even once in this article? Their name is almost synonymous with "Automat."
Warren, I was thinking the same thing. When I was a little boy my grandma would take me to the Horn and Hardart automat. It was the best. It's a shame all that stuff, like the five and dime and soda fountains and penny candy stores are all gone. Life then was better because the simple thing were such a joy.
Brings back memories also, I went to the Horn and Hardart's in Philly.
Yes, I went to Horn & Hardart in Philadelphia and New York as a young girl. I've always found that to be such a happy memory! Definitely an oversight not to mention H & H!
Dinner was never at midday. Whether luncheon was the largest meal is a separate issue.
Wrong Hunter, dinner was originally the larges meal of the day, usually at noon.
Actually if you look up the word in less modern dictionaries (and some current dictionaries), "Dinner" is defined as the midday meal.
Growing up, "dinner" was ambiguous in my family. Sometimes it was the evening meal, but "Sunday dinner" was always the mid-day meal after church. I realize now that this ambiguity was the result of a mixing of generations, with older people following the definition cited by Hugh Akston above: breakfast, dinner and supper.
Sorry, Hunter, but "dinner" was always the main formal meal of the day in my home growing up (I am a baby boomer), no matter when it was served. We had dinner at 6 during the week, and on Sunday dinner was our noontime after-church meal. The evening meal on Sunday was always called "supper". And if our evening meal on Saturday was casual and light, that was also supper.
And my dad told me that at his home growing up, dinner was always at noon; he went home from school and his dad came home from work, and they had their big formal dinner then.
By the way, I lived in Melbourne, Australia a few years. "Supper" there means and evening snack!
When my husband worked second shift (3 p.m.-11p.m.) I would cook a meal and we would eat our dinner about 2 p.m. In the evening the children and I would have a light supper, so my children grew up eating a midday meal, until they started school.
A little looking produced the following result: Horn and Hardart opened their first Automat restaurant in the USA in Philadelphia on June 12, 1902. Care of Wiki. That's 10 years before the one in New York!
Nice article. I don't really mean to nit pick, but "...and every item costed five cents..." Or do you guys throw these things in to see if anyone is really paying attention?
I remember the old Horn & Hardarts in NYC. How exciting to insert the coins in the slots, have the door pop open, take your item, and then watch the tray rotate with another serving of the same thing. To a kid growing up in the 1950's, it was much more exciting than the way Mom served dinner at home.
Again, nice article - invoked just the right amount of nostalgia for me.
I tripped over "costed" myself. Incorrect usage...
I guess that is something else we can all be nostalgic for, proper editors who actually cared about the language.
thank you! That stuck out like a sore thumb...
Don't be so harsh. It is obvious that it was "Take your first-grader to work day" and the kids had a chance to write an article.
I remember going to an automat when I was a kid, and watching the people through the little doors, as they fixed the plates. Years later, I saw a Doris Day movie that had one of the characters working in an automat.
Recently, I visited with a 90 year old woman who was raised on a ranch in between WWI and WWII. Dinner (at noon) was the main meal of the day. Breakfast was just what there was to get you going in the morning--fried salt pork and bread. The hours between breakfast and dinner were spent getting dinner ready for the family and the field crews (who ate breakfast before work, and went home afterwards), and then in the evening, it was left-overs or milk over bread, "every man for himself."
Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, Supper. Breakfast comes after the cows get milked, and before the morning field work. Dinner, the main meal of the day comes at noon. Lunch comes after the afternoon field work, and supper comes after the cows are milked at night. Harvest dinners are when all the neighbors gathered at one farm to get the crops in or the corn shelled, and moved from farm to farm... the best dinners of all! The women competed with their cooking skills. Pie crusts were made with lard, the pie was cut into quarters, ( to fit in your hand ), and you could eat all you wanted. You could tell the people who really worked, they probably consumed more cholesterol in a week, ( butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon fat, lard, etc. ) than most would consume in three or four months of eating. My Uncle Earl who was a WWII prisoner of war in Europe, returned to be a dairy farmer. Every day at Dinner he broke a half dozen eggs into a very large glass, and filled the glass with whole milk from the milk can in the barn, that wasn't full for shipping out, and this milk was mostly cream. He stirred it up and drank it down, and even as a kid I thought that concoction was " a little rich ". He ate fish, bones and all, on bread. He used to say, " The money isn't good in farming, but you won't starve to death. " Most New Yorkers don't know what work is.
Amen Steve!
School lunch programs were also in response to having a ready military. Many men were turned away in WWI and WWII for having rickets, scurvy, and other poor-nutrition caused disabilities; girls who suffered severe malnutrition in their childhoods did not produce healthy babies to be the next generation of soldiers.
In the 1900s, employers emphasized the importance of making more money, working faster, and producing efficiently, Federman said. Automats flourished in the fast-paced environment.
Not much has changed - except now you are expected to eat lunch at your desk or work station - and keep working.
It certanly has in the public sector. Lunch can last well over an hour then it's back to "work" where 5 "supervisors" watch one guy actually do something. But not to be outdone, the federal bureaucrats even go on lavish trips to Vegas where top shelf meals are served all courtesty of the taxpayers.
I don't know what government you worked for but the one I worked for paid me for 40 hours a week when I usually worked many more, I got called in at night for emergencies with no additional pay because I was considered on-call 24/7 as a primary job function and spent years eating breakfast and lunch at my desk to keep up with the work.
While states and the feds have been cutting jobs, the work has remained the same or increased and the people left still have to get it done.
Most of the people I know who work in the private sector are in no better position. American productivity is falling because employers have finally wrung the last drop of energy out of their over-worked and under-paid employees.
No, American productivity is falling because we are in a recession created by artificially manipulated fiat currency and interest rates. Big government has been sticking its nose where it doesn't belong for far too long. The Fed's housing bubble, government forced lending mortgage programs, and now another bubble in college tuition rates thanks to federal student loans. The Keynesian lunatics are destroying everything that made this nation special.
OK, now I'm hungry --->
I'm 47 and I still call my 6 year old for "dinner" to lunch and then correct myself. My parents who had two hours off during school for "dinner" never seemed to get the "lunch" thing. It was a different time but my parents were lucky to be able to do so and said so many a time. They live in Fall River, Mass...inner city and walked home for "dinner".
"The automat, which first opened in New York City in 1912, served everything from pie to baked beans and every item costed five cents."
Respectfully, cost is both the present and past tense of the word. If your career is writing and reporting to the masses, it might be nice to first have command of the English language. It's a distraction when one doesn't. Good subject matter, however. No offense intended, I'm an educator.
The sentence is factually flawed too. The automat, which was first opened in Berlin, Germany, first opened in the US in Philadelphia in 1902. Typical egocentric NYC.
Is it flawed? It depends on how you read it. They could be referring to when then automat opened in NYC. The "first" is unnecessary, but commonly used in speech.
"Costed" is a perfectly cromulent word. It embiggens us all to use it now and again. :)
Dear Denise- I think most folk on this thread get that "costed" was a typo and or not edited correctly. Even in the 50's people didn't always spell correctly. It's great that you are an "educator" but when is the last time you had anything published and had to deal with people like you?
Ouch! A little bitter?
And it's this attitude that has led to the USA's decline in world education rankings.
And, the sentence is factually flawed too. The automat, which first opened in Berlin, Germany, first opened in the US in Philadelphia in 1904. Typical egocentric NYC.
Give it a rest!
Yeah! Facts aren't important, it's what you feel the truth is that makes it true.
Really weird - I was just talking today to someone (much younger generation) about the treat of getting to eat at the automat in Philly with my father from time to time when I was a young kid. Back then, fast food was nearly unheard of. Other than a few pizza and sandwich shops, you had to sit, order, and wait. It almost seemed magical to be able to open a door and get all kinds of food ready to eat. I don't remember the cost, but it was only a coin or two for anything they had. I also remember peeking in and seeing the folks scurrying around behind the doors and constantly stocking things as they were emptied. As for lunch at school (grade school), everyone went home unless you got very special permission to bring your lunch. I didn't have lunch available at school until I was in junior high school, and then only got about 20 minutes for lunch (not an hour plus as in grade school). Thanks for a great article about "the old days".
My Father was a very "old school" New Yorker and loved those Auto-mat places as if it were some Zagat rated, five star dining experience. The last I can remember is eating in one when I was 10 years old or so. This would have been around 1973. I guess most of them went out of business or otherwise disappeared after that time.
Before 1624 the people of world were hungry and without style. And then on the southern end of an island there was founded a city; the cradle of high society from which would come even the solution to one of Man's greatest questions, "what to do when you're hungry in the middle of the day but don't have the time to sit down to eat?" And so it went that on that Island, Man first ate a quick meal around noon.
bad times can happen for anyone at any time, unless you're the rich republican that make it happen...........99% of americans has awoken and smells the rats of greed.
Costed? Thet's jist plane carless ripurting...
I have many fine memories of my mother taking me to the city from our home in Central Jersey. As many different things that we might do during our visit, the highlight of the day for me was lunch at a Horn & Hardarts Automat. In the early 1940s it only took a few nickels to buy a hot meal, a tasty dessert, and a glass of milk. She would let me insert the coins but she must have been afraid I'd lose them in turning the knob because she always did that. There was always a delicious variety of meals to chose from. The Automat is a vital part of the "good old days".
I clearly remember my Dad taking me to an automat when I was a little girl. We would take the train from Westchester to NYC and he let me try food at an automat near Grand Central Station. I clearly remember getting a hot dog and a piece of pie, I thought it was the nastiest thing to ever touch my lips. I don't remember any delicious variety of meals to choose from. I don't remember that food being fit for human consumption at all. Maybe he took me to a bootleg automat.
If you are in New York, visit the exhibit at the NY Public Library. It's at the main branch next to Bryant Park. 42nd and Fifth Ave. The library has really done a first rate job with this. Among other items, the wall of Automat windows has been carefully restored. Really amazing.
Al Mazzone
Horn & Hardart Coffee Co.
www.HornAndHardartCoffee.com
Our family came from Boston and my oldest sister went (1951) to live in NYC. I first visited my sister in 1954 and she took me (I was ten) to my first automat. I remember using nickels. It cost me 15 cents for baked beans. They were the best beans I ever had. We never have had beans in Boston no matter what anyone tells you. Boston may be called Bean Town, but we never had beans...NEVER. Oh yeah; we do have TAXES, plenty of them. You can't wipe your arse without paying a tax.
Actually, costed is a word, all of you English majors. It is used correctly in the sentence. How do I know? I am an English professor on the university level. So please, check before you make fools of yourselves.
I found this article and video very informative and entertaining! I check Nightly News a lot, and I've never seen this author before but I hope to see him more often! This is exactly the kind of engaging writing NBC needs, don't let this one go!