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Menus reflect social and cultural
as well as design and artistic value.
The Alice Statler menu collection characterizes the culinary
life of San Francisco and Northern California from 1920 to
the present, but it also contains a large number of items
from throughout the United States. The menu collection began
with the benefactions of the Library’s early librarians
and alumni in the 1960’s. The early accessions included
many rare and beautiful items from the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.
In the 1980’s the menu collection was greatly augmented
by the accession of menus from the National Restaurant Association’s
Menu Design Awards competition. Through these competitions
the Alice Statler collection has come to hold all of the original
menus considered for these awards, many of which appear on
the awards competition catalogs compiled by Judi Radice: Menu
Design (1985), Menu Design 2 (1987) and Menu Design 3 (1988).
The entire collection is currently 72 feet of material housed
in six steel filing cabinets. Currently, the menus are loosely
organized by location and type of cuisine. It is the intention
of the Library to eventually digitize the collection and to
promote the sharing of information in this area. Our collection
compliments the collection housed at the Los Angeles Public
Library on the west coast. Other notable menu collections
include those at Cornell University and the New York Public
Library.
The menus are available to view by appointment only. Please
call the Alice Statler Library at (415) 239-3460.
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