The Visiting List

To many New Yorkers living during the Gilded Age, Louis Sherry was synonymous with Delmonico's. In fact, Delmonico's was the one business which Louis Sherry himself was happy to consider a rivial.  In 1896 work began on a new building for Sherry and on October 8, 1898, he re-opened his business uptown in a predominantly residential neighborhood on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and West 44th Street. Shortly thereafter Delmonico's would follow and would set themselves up across the street. Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the 11-story apartment building was the new home to Louis Sherry, which occupied the first three floors of the building. Built of a steel frame, the  façade  was made of cut limestone in the style of the  Renaissance .  Main Entrance on West 44th Street The special feature of Sherry's was a large ballroom, which with an accessory of halls and anterooms, occupied the entire third floor of the building, with the dancing space proper...

It is hard not to consider Delmonico's when discussing American cuisine. Delmonico's was the beginning of fine dining in America. In addition to the famous Delmonico steak and Delmonico potatoes, Delmonico's has also been attributed as the originator of Chicken a la King, Eggs Benedict, and Lobster Newberg.  Delmonico's first opened in 1827 at 23 William Street. The restaurant moved several times before settling at 56 Beaver Street in August 1837. Eventually spreading to four locations by the same name in New York between 1865 and 1888.  In the mid-1890s it was decided to move Delmonico's uptown, and land was leased from Theodore Augustus Havemeyer at the north-east corner of Fifth Avenue and West 44th Street. (This is the same Theodore Havemeyer  who owned "Friedheim" which was previously discussed  here .) Designed by James Brown Lord, on March 17, 1897 plans for the new building were filed with New York City Building Department. The front of the buildin...

Buckboards and Bar Harbor were at one time synonymous. But the first buckboards, or boards as they were sometimes referred, in that part of the country were not made in Bar Harbor, though the idea may have originated there. The claim for the first buckboard was made by Landlord Swann, of the Biddeford House, who said he built the first vehicle of this type while he was keeping the Green Mountain House in Bar Harbor in 1871. The buckboard was the carriage type best suited to the roads of the island. The gentle swaying motion of the board while travelling at full speed over the hilly roads was simply delightful, and no person who had travelled in one wished to use any other type of vehicle during their stay. Perhaps the best-known maker of buckboards was Mr. W.H. Davis who went into the carriage making business in 1869 with his father James W. Davis in Ellsworth. They formed a co-partnership under the firm name James W. Davis and Son. In 1881 he bought his father out, and later t...