Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-01-13
DOWN OWNLUNCHEs
Workers Who Eat Noon Meal
Away From Home.
GREAT VARIETY OF CAFES
Several Thousand in "Old" New York
Alone.
MEALS FROM FIVE CENTS UP
Restaurants Where Hungarian Gou-
lash and American Mince Pie Are
on Same Bill of Fare.
Written for The Star.

AhSiO are SEVERAL thousand places OH
the surface of the long. narrow river-in-
closed Island known as the borough Of
Manhattan-"old'' New York-wEere the
rich, the poor and the middle class folk who
make their millions and earn their living
there go daily to midday lunch, and there
must be more than a half million daily
lunches at these places.
In no city in the world, probably, do so
large proportion of the workers, both high
and low grade, eat lunch away from home
as in "old" New York. And while tens of
thousands, the same as in every other city,
take their lunch in bundles and baskets
and tin buckets with them to their working
places, the vast majority get their midday
food at the restaurants
Only Chicago, of all other American cities
approaches New York in this regard, but
large as the proportion of restaurant lunch
ers is in the city on the lake shore, 1t is
less, by far, than In the city at the Hudsons
mouth In both these great cities the pro-
portion of midday restaurant lunchers is
enormously increased by the army of COM
muters who pursue their daily tasks within
their borders, of course Probably quarter
at least of those who throng the eating
places in New York at noon live off Man
haitian Island even IT, by reason of having
homes in Brooklyn or some other outlying
New York exceeds most cities though
perhaps not Chicago, in the variety of its
restaurants. Certainly they are of many
kinds, almost of every kind to be found
anywhere on the face of the earth. You
would need to spend a year at least. if
you set out 10 learn something about each
variety and then you would have only a
superficial knowledge of them. They range
from the big modern places-with walls
glitterfng with glazed tiles with floors also
of tile or mosaic. where the lunchers listen
to music as they eat and pay a dollar
for their lunches, even when simple-down
to the holes in the WALL" and the lunch
wagons now seen in most small towns even,
and frequented by messengers, Office boys
newsies and bootblacks, to say nothing of
the multitude of queer foreign places.
By a liberal distribution of your per-
sonalfty at lunch time for a year among
the New York restaurants would give you
an altogether new point of view to the
composition of the town, no doubt, and also
of humanity at large.
Begin at the Bottom and Go Up.
If you wished to begin at the bottom and
work up, taking the cost of the lunches
served as the standard, you wouldn't begin
with the restaurants at all, paradoXical as
the statement would seem. You would be-
gin in one of the cheap clothing manufac-
tories somewhat akin to the old sweat
shops, of which, fortunately, only a COM
parative few are left.
There you would find, it is the custom,
as 1t is in some of the great financial in
situations, though for a different reason,
for the lunch to be brought to the eaters;
not for the latter to go after the lunch.
The cheap clothing workers, laboring as
many minutes as possible every day, earn
little enough as it is. without stopping at
midday just to eat.
The restaurant of this grade of clothing
maker is carried about in a basket-by
not strong enough fO work which
contains cheap cakes. mostly, sweetened
literally, and bottles of so-called mineral
water, the latter really being merely water
from the hydrant, charged with gas, sweet
ened even more literally than the cakes
and favored with some sort of essence.
Bottles of this connection may be had
two for five cents" and, for the garment
maker used to that sort of drink at lunch
time, two bottles and five cents worth of
the sweet cakes are sufficient drinkablas
and eatables for the midday meal. Often
there is no perceptible stoppage of the
lunchers sewing machine while the lunch
is in progress; the expert operator can keep
the treadle going while he eats, and, hold
ing the bottle or cake in one hand, is quite
able to guide the cloth under the presser
foot with the other hand at the same time,
thus not losing a single one of his precious
minutes.
Skipping the lunch wagons, which every
body everywhere has-seen, at least, you'd
find something really worth at least one
lunch hours time in the places where the
customers are chiefly boys. One such place
on Ann street, near the junction of Park
row and Broadway, housed in a low one
story structure but overshadowed by build
ings that scrape the clouds, is better known
probably than any other like establishment
in the world, because from its location at
least a hundred thousand persons must
pass by it and see 1t every working day
in the week.
It's entire front used to be open to the
street In the summer time but at this
two or three hundred boys daily, the prices
being SO low-roll one cent, sandwiches
two for five pie the same, coffee cent
@ cup-that a customer who Is hard up can
get along with five cents worth of food;
for fifteen cents he can fill his skin to re-
pleticn.
Feeds Thousands.
Not fifty feet from the portals of this
humble feeding joint is the entrance of
the "talIest business building in the world"
three stories of which-basement ground
and first floor-are largely occupied by
restaurant, where. if you drink tea with
cream at your lunch, you must buy little
pot full and pay twenty-five cents for 1t,
other things being scheduled in proportion
This restaurant feeds Its thousands to
the more humble ones hundreds. and II
you are not New Yorker and so believe
that all who are eat their lunches at break
neck speed, visit there will undeceiye You.
For, largely frequented by men of Euro
pean ways in ating, the lunchers there
linger long over the little round tables on
which their expensive food is spread an
hour being generally too short a time to be
devoted to them.
This Is one of the places of glitter and
clatter, of what seems like everlasting hurry
and hustle, despite the leisureIy pace of
those who eat there. a place where diges-
ton Is aided-or is it retarded ply music
while you eat; one of the most typical of
all the truly up-to-date eating places in the
entire town, nothing at all like it having
been in existence either In New York or
anywhere else some twenty odd years ago
Less than a block away, fronting Broad
way, housed in grim and brown old gram
lite building, erected when New York was
comparatively young, but still only sixty
years old as a hotel. you may see Iunchers
who have as much money to spend as those
who eat under the sky-scrapers roof-and
who spend 1t, too-yet who apparently race
with each other and sit on stools at coun-
tiers while they put away their food Not
all the feeding at this famous old place Is
done with unseemly haste however; there
are other departments, where those who eat
at midday sit at tables covered with snowy
linen and eat as leisurely as the REQUIRE
ments of digestion can possibly demand
In these departments many OF the lunch-
xz~Ah Ys.xrx Vel t1yT a.