Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Food City
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
“Joy Santlofer was the editor-in-chief of NY FoodStory and taught in the New York University Food Studies program. Her husband, Jonathan Santlofer, a best-selling novelist, and her daughter Doria live in New York City.” * http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=166516509 * https://www.yahoo.com/style/a-daughters-inspiring-mission-to-finish-her-late-144050355.html * http://jonathansantlofer.com/events/food-city/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2016029213
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016029213
HEADING: Santlofer, Joy
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670 __ |a Food city, 2017: |b ECIP t.p. (Joy Santlofer) data view (editor-in-chief of NY FoodStory and the former chair of the New York University Food Studies program)
PERSONAL
Died August 16, 2013, in New York, NY; married; husband’s name Jonathan Santlofer (novelist); children: Doria.
EDUCATION:New York University, M.A. (food studies).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Market researcher and editor. NY FoodStory, editor-in-chief; New York University Food Studies program, teacher and chair.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Joy Santlofer was a writer, editor, and teacher. She died suddenly on August 16, 2013 and was survived by her husband, novelist Jonathan Santlofer, and their daughter, Doria. Joy worked for market research companies most of her career, but at age fifty enrolled in New York University’s food studies program, where she earned a master’s degree. She then wrote articles for food studies journals and was the editor-in-chief of NY FoodStory. She also taught at New York University, where she served as chair of the food studies program.
Before her death, Santlofer had nearly finished writing her five-year book project, Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York. After Santlofer’s death, her daughter spearheaded a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to hire a photo editor and an editor to reorganize and polish the manuscript Santlofer had left behind. Tracing four centuries of food-making and brewing, the book explores how food shaped New York City and the nation. Santlofer begins her study in the period when New Y0rk was still a Dutch outpost, providing details about the first brewery in New Amsterdam and how cattle and pigs were herded through the streets to slaughterhouses. She goes on to cover a variety of topics, including kosher meat packing, confection manufacturing, bread and sugar production, and unique products like chocolate-covered matzoh and Chiclets. She sheds light on how local politicians and capitalism sometimes colluded to create unsafe working conditions characterized by sixteen-hour work days and sweltering interior temperatures–conditions that sometimes led to worker strikes. Santlofer also explores the origins of famous brands like Thomas’ English Muffins, Hebrew National hot dogs, Twizzlers candy, Ronzoni pasta, and Sweet’n Low sweetener. New York was an international shipping hub where food innovations and traditions arrived and were shipped out to the rest of the world. Even during wartime, this level of trade continued through the efforts of merchant sailors.
A Kirkus Reviews correspondent noted that the volume “covers a lot of ground, but a number of lighter sidebars help keep the text from feeling too dense.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that the book lacks a clear thesis and “rambles as if through a Delancey Street market, stopping often for colorful anecdotes,” but acknowledged that “Santlofer’s vivid, lively exploration of this forgotten history makes for a great browse.” In a review at the Pop Matters Web site, Diana Leach commented: “Food City reaches the current moment, with its artisanal food producers, only to conclude abruptly, poignantly reminding readers of Santlofer’s untimely death. This is the literary equivalent of sampling a marvelous dish only to have the plate rudely yanked away, a morsel tasted just this once.”
In an article for Yahoo Style, Doria explained that the book combines “her [mother’s] two great loves, which were New York City and the origins of food manufacturing and the culture surrounding food in New York.” Doria told Samantha Hahn in an interview at Quarterlane Web site, “Through working on Food City, I got to know her as this intellectual force, this scholar who was so engaged and involved with her community.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, September 12, 2016, review of Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York, p.47.
ONLINE
Jonathan Santlofer Website, http://jonathansantlofer.com/events/food-city/ (October 3, 2015), author’s husband’s note about Food City.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (September 1, 2016), review of Food City.
New York Times Online, http://www.legacy.com/ (August 19, 2013), obituary.
Pop Matters, http://www.popmatters.com/ (May 10, 2017), Diane Leach, review of Food City.
Quarterlane, http://theedit.quarterlanebooks.com/ (April 26, 2017), Samantha Hahn, author interview.
Yahoo Style, https://www.yahoo.com/ (July 1, 2017), author profile.
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QUARTERLANE JOURNAL: DORIA SANTLOFER
Unnamed 2Doria Santlofer is an exceptionally talented fashion stylist, author, and editor. After working as a fashion editor at New York Magazine, Doria went out on her own to style for Teen Vogue, Allure, Wonderland, Harper’s Bazaar, Cherry Bombe and so many more publications and designers. Additionally, she authored a book titled 50 Contemporary Fashion Designers You Should Know. Recently Doria aided her mother’s legacy by ensuring her book Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York came to fruition. It was nominated for a James Beard award in Non Fiction, a well-deserved achievement. I had the pleasure interviewing Doria about growing up in an artistic household, her reading habits, and her role in bringing Food City into the world. Our talented photographer Christine Han took these amazing photos.
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 115
QL: Hi Doria, thank you for chatting with us. Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? Your dad is an artist and author, and your mom was a researcher and professor-cum-author. Both seem fueled by curiosity and creativity. What genres of books were around your childhood home? Can you tell us some of your favorite stories from childhood?
DS: I grew up in Chelsea, in a loft that my parents converted from a fur factory in the late seventies. They put up walls for our bedrooms, but it’s basically an open space that they filled with bookshelves and art. My dad’s studio is the back half of the house, so I grew up watching him paint. In the studio, he has floor to ceiling shelves filled with art books – I remember my childhood favorites were always the books on Egon Schiele and Jean Michel Basquiat. As a teenager I loved Hannah Wilke and the Starification series. I remember my dad buying me two catalogs in high school – one of Elizabeth Peyton’s paintings and one of Lisa Yuskavage. I still love them both.
I definitely gravitated towards written stories with precocious protagonists like Eloise (Kay Thompson) and Ramona (Beverly Cleary) and Matilda (Roald Dahl). I love everything by Roald Dahl, even his adult novels like My Uncle Oswald. Eloise in Paris is one of my favorites because she hides champagne corks behind her knees to get through customs and runs around the city saying “beaucoup de this, beaucoup de that.” Early French lessons. E.L Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler was, and still is, one of my favorite stories because running away and living in the Met is the ultimate dream. My mom and I used to read the Catwings series by Ursula K. Le Guin, which chronicles the adventures of a scrappy city cat named Mrs Jane Tabby, and her four winged kittens. Those books were our favorites. When I got a little bit older she would read to me from Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. My mother read more than anyone and it was instilled in me from a young age not to disturb someone while they’re reading.
Unnamed 1
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 119
QL: What fueled your interest in fashion? Were there any particular books or publications that inspired or sparked your passion?
DS: There were lots of photo and art books around our house growing up or at the homes of my parents friends – I distinctly remember Avedon’s pictures from In the American West and photographs by Guy Bourdin making an impression. My interest also came by way of movies – my dad had me watching Hitchcock movies before I could walk and I always liked the way that clothing and wardrobe choices could shape a character, even if I didn’t realize it in those terms then – especially Vertigo and To Catch a Thief. I grew up across the street from F.I.T. (Fashion Institute of Technology) and we would always go see the shows that curator Valerie Steele did at the museum there, but in truth having the fashion students as babysitters was the real thing- they would come over with sewing projects and show me photos from the collections. I honestly remember looking at pictures of Marc Jacobs’s grunge collection for Perry Ellis understanding that I was seeing something special.
QL: What books do you like to have around your house now? Favorite genre?
I go through phases and most recently I’ve been reading lots of personal memoir and, to use a term by Maggie Nelson, autotheory. Some titles: The Argonauts, Bluets, Women, The New York School and Other True Abstractions by Maggie Nelson, I Love Dick and Aliens & Anorexia by Chris Kraus, Abandon Me by Melissa Febos, and a book called I’m Very Into You, which is just over a hundred pages of emails that authors Kathy Acker and Ken Wark exchanged over a few weeks in the mid nineties. I got to style Chris Kraus for a British magazine called The Violet Book this winter and she turned me onto Acker’s work – she’s also writing her biography, which is coming out soon. Also, Joan Didion’s South and West A Notebook – I love Joan. I’ve been into books about relationships and love, gender and theory the past few months, but I think I’m ready to go back to fiction soon. John Water’s said it best,
“Fiction is the truth, fool!”
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 120
QL: Are you interested in food writing and cookbooks like your mom was?
DS: Not until recently. Around the time that I began working on finishing Food City, I also started styling for Cherry Bombe and Bon Appetit and made some friends in the food world. My mom, the food historian, always said “I’m not a great cook, but I’m really good in restaurants,” and I feel more or less the same. I tend to make healthier, macro-y things at home so that I can have anything I want when I eat out. I like the Sprouted Kitchen Bowl & Spoon cookbook because it takes all of those healthy things I know how to make and adds a few twists to make everything taste better. I haven’t gotten too far with the Sqirl cookbook yet -so far I’ve only made the Turmeric Tonic- but it’s one of my favorites when I’m in LA and I’d like to attempt some of the recipes. I did make lots of pasta this winter because my friend Colu Henry just put out a cookbook called Back Pocket Pasta, which is truly easy to follow and everything is so delicious.
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 106QL: Back Pocket Pasta will be featured in our upcoming summer Epicurean box curated by Elettra Wiedemann, we too, adore that book! What other publications do you enjoy?
DS: I love looking at several of the independent fashion magazines and I’ve been lucky to style for some of my favorites- Lula, Violet Book, i-D, Dazed and Confused. Cherry Bombe, Gather Journal and Bon Appetit for beautiful food writing and photographs. I consistently read and obsess over the New Yorker. I’m also addicted to podcasts especially when I’m working on the computer or prepping for a shoot – I love The Daily with Michael Barbaro on nytimes.com, the New Yorker Radio Hour, Fresh Air and How I Built This on NPR and Longform.
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 103
QL: Where do you carve out space to read at home? Is Norma Jean (the cat) into cuddling up with you when you’re reading?
DS: Everywhere! But reading in the bath is my top choice – most of my books are a little warped on the bottom from getting wet. I’m never too precious with books, most are underlined and folded because I like going back to favorite passages. I’ve probably said too much and no one will ever loan me a book again! If I’m on the couch or in bed, Norma loves being involved. Reading a good book with a cat on my lap is definitely my idea of a good time. I’m going to make a great old woman.
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 116QL: What prompted you to pen your first book, 50 Contemporary Fashion Designers You Should Know, and what was your experience working on that book?
DS: I was asked to write that book by Prestel, which is a publishing house that focuses on art and photography. It was an intensely educational undertaking because I profiled 50 living designers via a combination of research and interviews. I learned so much working on that and it was nice to have some context about the clothes I was styling for photoshoots. Writing is the opposite of styling in many ways and for me it’s healthy to do both. Styling is very visual and physical and also very social and collaborative, whereas with writing is solitary and still, it’s a slower process. It can be challenging to switch make and forth between the two, but I really appreciate the different parts of my brain that styling and writing force me to use.
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 114
QL: When I found out about Food City: Four Hundred Years of Food Making in New York, I was simultaneously excited about it and saddened to learn that your involvement with it came about because your mom suddenly passed away after working on it for five years. It’s beautiful and amazing that you jumped in to see it through. I have no doubt she’d be so proud and honored by your work to bring it to fruition. I’m sure it was a bittersweet process. Has working on it, helped you cope with the grief of losing her? Did you learn anything new about her through her writing? I am so sorry for your loss.
DS: Bittersweet is a good word for it. I’m not sure if or how it helped with grieving, but it has kept me connected to my mom in a way that was very different than just missing her. Through working on Food City, I got to know her as this intellectual force, this scholar who was so engaged and involved with her community. I’m so lucky to have a very artistic and passionate father whose work defines him in such an inspiring way, but my mother took longer to find her true interest, as many of us do I think. She got her masters in Food Studies from NYU when she was nearly sixty and her life took on this whole new meaning. The book has gotten such amazing attention and accolades, which makes me so proud, but of course I long to share it all with her, to have her see it’s success. Food City was just nominated for a James Beard award in Nonfiction, which is such a wonderful honor.
QL: The book reveals how and where food was produced and manufactured in New York city throughout history, along with stories about the people who made and consumed it. From the first golden wheat fields of what became Wall Street to the local food makers throughout the city today, Food City provides both a historically sweeping and deeply personal account of New York City’s food industry. Tell us your favorite tidbit from the book.
DS: One of my favorite parts is about the “Brewery Princess” in the Drink section of the book, which tells the story of Josephine Schmid inheriting her husband’s brewing empire in 1889. Schmid was 36 when her husband died and left her the Lion Brewery, which sprawled between 107th and 109th on the West side of Central Park, as well as the fifty saloons that he’d acquired throughout the city. The story of Josephine is so detailed, I love that only six years after taking over the business, she “built a limestone mansion in a style reminiscent of a Loire Vallery chateau at Fifth Avenue and 62nd Street.” I love that Schmid became this beer mogul at a time when women weren’t even working in that industry.
Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 107
QL: Lastly, can you share some of your 5 favorite books with us plus 1 that’s on deck?
DS: Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, Franny and Zooey by Salinger, Heartburn by Nora Ephron, The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, Speedboat by Renata Adler. On deck: Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, The Men In My Life by Patricia Bosworth and The of Eddy: A Novel by Edouard Louis (I know that’s three!).
QL: Thank you so much for sharing your space and thoughts with quarterlane.
Unnamed 3Doriasantofler christinehanphotography 118
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Food City
Posted on October 3, 2015 by Jonathan
As most of you know, my wife, Joy, died suddenly and unexpectedly two years ago. At the time, she was close to finishing her 5-year book project, Food City: 400 Centuries of Food Making in New York. This epic, history-changing book is scheduled for release by WW Norton in June 2015 but there are still many things to be completed. Doria took it upon herself to create a Food City Kickstarter Campaign that is both pragmatic and a loving tribute to her mother. I know how hard she worked on this and how difficult it was emotionally. I hope you don’t mind that I offered your contact info to Doria. Of course you should not feel in any way compelled to donate, but we would appreciate it if you pass along the link so the word can spread. This is an important book, Joy’s life’s work, and we are making sure it gets the attention it deserves.
People
A Daughter’s Inspiring Mission to Finish Her Late Mother’s Book, ‘Food City’
Rachel Tepper Paley Rachel Tepper PaleyOctober 5, 2015
All photos courtesy of Doria Santlofer
When Joy Santlofer died suddenly two years ago, her daughter Doria felt as though her world had been blown apart. Among the many pieces to pick up was Joy’s nearly finished book, an obsessively researched examination of the New York City food scene spanning a remarkable four centuries.
Even in the midst of her grief, the younger Santlofer could not bring herself to shut her mother’s life’s work away in a drawer. She resolved to pick up where Joy had left off, or at least find others who could. On Friday, Santlofer launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the completion of Food City: Four Centuries of Food Making in New York.
Just hours after going live, the project had already raked in an impressive $11,304 of its $25,000 goal. With luck, the funds will go to an independent editor tasked with cutting, reorganizing, and polishing the manuscript, plus a photo editor who will select and curate accompanying photos.
Related: When Getting Pregnant Upended This Pastry Chef’s World, Life Truly Began
Joy Santlofer and daughter Doria.
In speaking about her mother, Doria recalls a dynamic woman whose passion for food spurred a late-life career change. Though she’d worked for market research companies most of her career, at age 50 Joy enrolled in New York University’s food studies program, earned a master’s degree, and began contributing to food studies journals and books.
Though always an energetic force with a penchant for seeking out below-the-radar Chinese joints and atmospheric neighborhood haunts, Joy was now consumed with the thought of food and the history behind it. From a loft in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, which she and artist husband Jonathan Santlofer had shared for more than 30 years, Joy began writing about the city she loved and the foods it had produced — from everyday fare favored by the earliest Dutch settlers to delicacies produced by today’s artisanal purveyors.
Joy Santlofer.
Related: You Can Feel the Love in the Sweet Recipes from ‘Grandbaby Cakes’
“It combined her two great loves, which were New York City and the origins of food manufacturing and the culture surrounding food in New York,” Doria recalled. At the time of Joy’s death, she’d been working on Food City for about six years, and her enthusiasm was palpable. “There was always this excitement around the project,” Doria said. “I was so happy for her.”
Doria says Food City has the potential to change the way people think about food and food manufacturing, but also hopes its finalization will bring her some closure as well.
“There is, of course, a bittersweet element,” she said. “The only person I want to tell about it is her. I wish, more than anything, that she can see how excited everyone is about it.”
Related: My Sister, The Food Whisperer
JOY SANTLOFER
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SANTLOFER--Joy.Unexpectedly on August 16th, 2013. Beloved wife of Jonathan, Mother of Doria, sister of Kathy. Friend to many, respected food writer and historian. Family and friends will gather at the Santlofer home on Wednesday, August 21st 4-6pm. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Meals on Wheels.
Published in The New York Times on Aug. 19, 2013
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=166516509#sthash.QUt5FTNo.dpuf
Food City: Four Centuries of FoodMaking
in New York
Publishers Weekly.
263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p47.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Food City: Four Centuries of FoodMaking in New York
Joy Santlofer. Norton, $28.95 (416p) ISBN 9780393076394
New York City, the mecca of finance, fashion, and musicals, has an earthier past as the world's greatest
foodproducing settlement, according to this sprawling history. The (now. deceased) Santlofer, former New
York University professor and editorinchief of NY FoodStory, surveys four centuries of food processing
in New York, a typical Gotham tale of prodigies with piquant local flavorings. After the Erie Canal made
the city the global outlet for Midwest agricultural bounty in the early 19th century, flour and hardtack made
in New York fed the Union Army in the Civil War and much of Europe, vast herds of cattle and pigs were
herded through the streets to reeking slaughterhouses near Times Square, Brooklyn and Manhattan
refineries made most of the nation's sugar, and neighborhood kosher butchers, bakers, and Italian pastamakers
perfected immigrant delicacies that became American staples. This is an industrial saga: New
York's food sector was capitalism's hideous underbelly, with 16hour days, sweltering temperatures,
periodic explosions, stomachturning filth, and bitter strikes. But it also became one of capitalism's marvels
as it pioneered giant mechanized factories with antiseptic cleanliness. The book rambles as if through a
Delancey Street market, stopping often for colorful anecdotes; there's not much of a thesis, but Santlofer's
vivid, lively exploration of this forgotten history makes for a great browse. Photos. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Food City: Four Centuries of FoodMaking in New York." Publishers Weekly, 12 Sept. 2016, p. 47.
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FOOD CITY
Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York
by Joy Santlofer
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A comprehensive history of New York City’s food industry, from the late chair of New York University’s Food Studies Program.
These days, it’s hard to think about NYC as anything but a concrete jungle, but when the Europeans first settled Manhattan, it was mostly uncultivated farmland. Santlofer, the editor of NY FoodStory, who died in 2013, takes us there first, to a group of hungry settlers who spent years waiting for provisions from their native Holland before finally learning to be self-sufficient. The first industry they tackled was beer. In the early days of New Amsterdam, settlers (even children) drank it at every meal because it was cleaner than water. Santlofer divides the bulk of the book into four industries that have played a major part in New York’s economy over the past four centuries: bread, sugar, drink (including coffee, beer, and dairy), and meat. She tells broad, interesting stories: about the problematic triangle trade system among Africa, the Caribbean, and the Colonies, which led to the establishment of some of the United States’ most profitable sugar refineries along the Brooklyn riverfront; about the role of war in the establishment of American industry (New York fed the Union Army with hard, durable crackers, which eventually led to the creation of the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco, an enduring American brand); and about the wave of immigrants that worked in perilous conditions during the early 20th century. The author covers a lot of ground, but a number of lighter sidebars help keep the text from feeling too dense. They explain everything from how to strip sugar cane to a turn-of-the-century horsemeat scandal to how yogurt went mainstream—there were actually ads in the New York Times in the 1950s that asked, “What is Yogurt?”
Rich, impeccably researched urban history with plenty of fun fodder for foodies.
Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-07639-4
Page count: 416pp
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1st, 2016
EXCERPT
When New York City Was Food City U.S.A.
The largely forgotten history of the Big Apple’s role in stocking American pantries.
Noah Rothbaum
NOAH ROTHBAUM
11.28.16 1:00 AM ET
New York likes to claim it’s the center of the food universe, with dozens of famous restaurants and even more celebrity chefs. And while it’s truly a great place to have breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner, not that long ago, the Big Apple wasn’t just known for its dining establishments but for its breweries, distilleries, farms, and food factories that helped nourish the nation.
With more than eight million inhabitants and an ever-growing collection of skyscrapers, it now seems hard to believe that over the last 400 years, the five boroughs were home to sprawling facilities, which employed hundreds of New Yorkers. Joy Santlofer spent years trying to chronicle this fascinating (and now often lost history), but she passed away in 2013 before she could finish her magnum opus, Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York. The work was fortunately completed by her husband, Jonathan Santlofer, and a team of other family members and friends.
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The book unearthed a number of stories of entrepreneurs, innovators, and business owners who at the time were quite famous but have since been forgotten by the general public. One of my favorite concerns the family drama that unfolded at the Lion Brewery on Manhattan’s Upper West Side after August Schmid passed away in the late 1800s, leaving the company and its dozens of bars in the hands of his wife, Josephine. Even at the turn of the century, the brand was valued at millions of dollars and its worth led to a soap-opera style family feud.
So, pour yourself a cold one and enjoy this rare look at a piece of lost New York.
Brewery Princess by Joy Santlofer
Though it’s unlikely that he expected to die suddenly at forty-six, August Schmid so believed in the business acumen of his thirty-six-year-old wife that he bequeathed her his half of the Lion Brewery and his enormous estate, which she was to manage until their two daughters came of age and the estate was equally divided between them. A woman heading any large business, especially a brewery, was an anomaly in 1889. The Lion Brewery, a sprawling group of buildings between 107th and 109th Streets and Amsterdam Avenue to Central Park West, employed 230 men and not a single woman. When Josephine Schmid incorporated the brewery, she made herself president and treasurer and showed up at the plant every day. She also ran the fifty saloons her husband had accumulated over the years, though her work was exclusively on the executive side. She “never attempted to brew beer in person,” she later explained, and the “mending of beer pumps was always relegated to employees.” During this time she also expanded August’s real estate holdings and six years after his death built a limestone mansion in a style reminiscent of a Loire Valley château at Fifth Avenue and 62nd Street.
Her daughter Pauline later recounted that during the period when Josephine was trying to work with her partner, Simon E. Bernheimer, she had “business difficulties” and was “rather bitter against everybody.” Bernheimer wanted to move the Lion Brewery closer to the Hudson River and was undoubtedly shocked when Josephine objected. In 1900 he initiated a suit to declare that all the Lion Brewery’s assets—the land, buildings, and capital—belonged to the partnership and should be sold. Josephine countersued, stating that half the land under the brewery was hers. And she won. By 1903 she had bought out Bernheimer’s interest for $3 million and was solely in charge of the brewery.
It was a good time to own a large brewery; beer consumption had risen steadily, as a 1905 headline in the New York Sun, “Beer Drives Out Hard Liquor,” testified. Mechanization and refrigeration were speeding up brewing, and the total number of breweries declined as several of the larger ones expanded and smaller operations were forced out of business. By 1910, Brooklyn was down to thirty-one breweries, and by 1915 to twenty-three.
By the second decade of the twentieth century, most large breweries had bottling facilities, and about 20 percent of their output was earmarked for pint and quart bottles of pasteurized, clear, pale, and mellow beers distinguished by branded labels. Once the top was popped, creamy white foam formed as the liquid cascaded into a glass. New Yorkers could now chill bottles in the icebox and drink beer at home.
When Pauline Schmid turned twenty-one in 1894 (her older sister had died two years earlier at the same age), Josephine offered to buy out her portion of the inheritance for a lump sum of $342,748, promising to manage the money and pay her daughter 5 percent of its profits annually. What Josephine didn’t tell her daughter was that the estate was worth about $10 million. Asked later why she agreed to sign away her fortune so easily, Pauline replied, “I signed anything she wanted me to sign,” because she believed any profits “were for both of us” and eventually every- thing would be hers.
Pauline’s attitude obviously changed by 1908, when she sued to receive her fair share of the estate and to remove her mother from management of the brewery, where most of the profits went to pay Josephine’s $500,000 salary as treasurer. During the trial, which lasted for almost a year, fifty-five-year-old Josephine married in a quiet ceremony in Brooklyn. The groom, Don Giovanni Del Drago, who claimed to be twenty-seven and an Italian prince, was actually forty-seven, twice divorced, and had a twenty-year- old son in Switzerland, and he was no prince. Four days after her wedding Josephine settled the lawsuit, agreeing to step down as treasurer but not as president. Pauline now became a director of the brewery.
Even though Princess Josephine Schmid Del Drago, as she was now known, spent much of her time with her husband in Italy, she retained tight control of the brewery, to the detriment of the business. After the brewery experienced several years of significant losses, Pauline sued her mother for neglect and mismanagement. Josephine won, and she and her husband, possibly chastened, took charge of day-to-day operations.
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After years of further legal wrangling with her mother, Pauline Schmid Murray emerged as the sole shareholder of the Lion Brewery in 1925, and her husband was named president. The brewery survived Prohibition and continued to operate after the Murrays were killed in a car crash in 1931. The wealthiest woman in the American brewing industry, Pauline was worth over $4 million at the time of her death—$3 million attributed to shares in the brewery.
Excerpt from Food City: Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York by Joy Santlofer. Copyright © 2017 by the Estate of Joy Santlofer. Reprinted with permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
'Food City' Will Challenge Your Appetite
BY DIANE LEACH
10 May 2017
FROM SUGAR TO BUTCHERY TO CANDY MAKING, EARLY FOOD MANUFACTURE WAS CRUDE, DANGEROUS, AND DIRTY.
cover art
FOOD CITY
JOY SANTLOFER
(W. W. NORTON)
US: NOV 2016
AMAZON
Food City is look at New York City’s history as a food producer, from the arrival of the first Dutch colonists to the current artisanal foodie movement. Scrupulously researched, at times humorous, often moving, Food City is above all bittersweet, for author Joy Santlofer died unexpectedly in 2013, leaving an unfinished manuscript. Santlofer’s daughter Doria raised the necessary funds to complete the book.
Subtitled “Four Centuries of Food-Making on New York”, Food City begins with the earliest days of colonization, taking readers through bread making, beer brewing, the search for safe milk, and a nascent candy industry. While never less than entertaining, Food City doesn’t gloss over the many painful ethical issues plaguing the early food industry, including child labor, appalling working conditions, and horrific indifference to animal suffering. Nor does the book ignore the raw realities of slavery or the colonization of native lands.
Food City begins with the Dutch. Safely arrived on the shores of “New Amsterdam”, they were homesick for Dutch food, especially fine white bread and dairy products. Scorning the abundant produce of their new home, refusing to farm, many of the earliest settlers starved. Wiser souls began growing wheat, which they refined into flour. Others became skilled brewers, selling beer and spirits to a population lacking potable water.
By the time of the Civil War, bakers were providing Union soldiers with supplies of newly popular crackers and “hardbread”, or hardtack, a rock-hard product whose long-keeping powers were useful during ship voyages. Actually consuming the stuff was another matter; Santlofer writes the first minister of New Amsterdam, one Domine Jonas Michaelius, “found them a trial to his teeth.”
From sugar to butchery to candy making, early food manufacture was crude, dangerous, and dirty. Early sugar making involved quicklime, woolen blankets as strainers, and a purification step calling for “ox or bullock blood”. The resulting product was then baked. Blood spoiled quickly in summer heat, with a stench so overpowering even workmen passed out.
Bread baking was no better. In 1894, a New York Press exposé described 19-hour workdays, seven days a week. What sleep men got was taken on filthy cots. Lacking access to sanitation, bakers fell ill from inhaling flour. Most workers had body lice and a skin condition called “Baker’s Itch”. Inspectors told of rats running free and vermin falling into dough.
Women and children were not spared. Women worked on candy and cracker lines, often standing for over 12 hours daily. Anna Saitta, who worked for Uneeda Cracker, wrote in a 1928 diary entry, “The heat is terrible. The foreman was every five minutes hollering at us today, because we couldn’t work fast. Our fingers were bleeding from the hot crackers that stick to the pans, and nearly every one of us had to go for a plaster to the nurse. One girl fainted in Building A.”
As chocolate had to be kept cool, many candy factories kept their workrooms at 45 degrees Fahrenheit. An inspector watched as old, worm-infested candy was used to make up for a shortfall of fresh chocolates. Workers brushed off the bugs, packing the spoiled candy with the fresh. One woman licked her finger to separate paper candy cups before placing a chocolate inside each one. Asked why she wore no gloves, she explained they slowed the pace, which angered the foreman.
On 21 December 1877, an explosion at E. Greenfield And Son’s, a gumdrop maker, killed 13 employees. Amongst the dead were German immigrants George and Albert Krumery, aged 16 and 13, respectively, and August Droxler, aged 13 years.
Santlofer documents increasing calls not only for better working conditions, but for stronger sanitation regulations. An 1850 city ordinance banned daylight cattle herding below 42nd Street. Meanwhile, the noise and stench of animal slaughter took its toll on even the most avid carnivores. In 1884, one Matilde Wendt, sick of being unable to open her windows or stroll her Beekman Place lawns for the sickening smells, formed the Ladies Protective Association of New York. The group demanded the City’s meat processing establishments install cement flooring with proper drainage systems.
The slaughterhouses did not take a group of ladies in furs seriously. They should have. While not entirely successful, the Ladies Protective Association got the Butchers Hide and Melting Association to comply. Similar battles were fought—and eventually won—for clean milk, bread, and candy.
The history of alcohol manufacture in New York City could fill multiple volumes. Santlofer does it justice here, covering the rise of breweries and hard liquor, the unexpected popularity of Kosher wines drinking in the African-American community, and the crafty methods New Yorkers employed to evade prohibition laws.
Every foodstuff was, of course, made by immigrants or their children. When Ignatz Margareten, of Horowitz Brothers and Margareten, a matzoh baking factory, died in 1923, his wife Regina became treasurer. She fed the hungry during the Depression, gave bi-lingual Passover radio broadcasts in the ‘40s (Yiddish and English), and was working two weeks before her death at age 96 in 1959.
Other successful immigrants included Italian native Joseph Kresivich who, with his wife, Angela, founded the Stella D’Oro factory, baking breadsticks and cookies. Santlofer notes their baked goodies were popular with Jewish customers because “they were made without milk or butter and thus were kosher.”
Indeed, my kosher-keeping grandparents ate Stella D’Oro cookies as a nightly snack before bed.
There’s far more—the development of diet soda, saccharine, and margarine, the advent of Trident Chewing Gum, the arrival of Dannon Yogurt, food through the World Wars.
Sadly, Food City reaches the current moment, with its artisanal food producers, only to conclude abruptly, poignantly reminding readers of Santlofer’s untimely death. This is the literary equivalent of sampling a marvelous dish only to have the plate rudely yanked away, a morsel tasted just this once.
FOOD CITY
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Diane Leach has a Master's Degree in English Literature from Humboldt State University. She writes for PopMatters.com and blogs at Theinsufficientkitchen.com. She can be reached at dianesleach@gmail.com.
Book Review: Food City (Joy Santlofer)
PUBLISHED MARCH 23, 2017 BY CHARLES
Food City, by the late Joy Santlofer, shows us the amazing history of manufacturing, in this case food manufacturing, in New York City. Nowadays we don’t associate New York with manufacturing, but as recently as 1950, it was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the country. Reading about this lost past is a fascinating exercise, even if there is much less manufacturing in the city today.
Santlofer begins with a brief overview of the food history of the city, under the Dutch and then the English. This introduction culminates in what sets the framework of the book: a parade celebrating the ratification of the Constitution, held in 1788, in which various food trades marched in groups. These included brewers, chocolate makers, butchers, bakers, and many more. Santlofer does an outstanding job, here and elsewhere in the book, evoking the atmosphere of the time she’s discussing, whether the 18th Century or the 20th. The reader practically feels like he’s there, watching the parade.
The rest of the book is divided into four major sections, each covering one type of food: bread, sugar, drink, and meat. In each section, Santlofer weaves together descriptions of the food making processes, from raw materials to marketing and sale, and descriptions of the city at various times, including its physical atmosphere and the ins-and-outs of politics, especially as food affected its physical atmosphere and politics affected food. Naturally, the predominance of ethnic groups in eating patterns, manufacturing, and politics features frequently. Plus, there are enough descriptions of manufacturing equipment to satisfy a die-hard fan of the TV show How It’s Made, without the descriptions becoming overly technical or tedious. For example, I now know why sugar was sold in cones in blue paper—the refined sugar was a thick liquid that was poured into cone-shaped molds and dried, and the blue paper made the sugar look more white. And there is more, much more, where that came from.
So the book is full of fascinating anecdotes. In fact, the book is basically a series of anecdotes. That’s not a criticism; the anecdotes are well-chosen, illustrative and hang together in service of the common themes of the book. It’s amazing to know, for example, sticking with sugar as my example, that sugar manufacturing was a huge business in New York for centuries. Sugar was of course intimately connected with the slave trade, since the raw materials for making refined sugar were produced by slaves in the Caribbean under conditions far worse than the terrible conditions of the American South. Cotton was not the only American industry that relied on slaves, just the one that did so most obviously. Naturally, the sugar barons of New York opposed the Civil War, fearing disruption of their economic interests, both from the disruption of trade and from slavery potentially ending. The Roosevelt family made its fortune on sugar, beginning prior to the Revolutionary War and going through the Civil War, which they opposed, of course—something that is ignored today, since they are liberal heroes. But it is good to remember that Franklin Roosevelt’s jaunty mien had foundations of slave bones.
Santlofer also covers the common problem of maltreatment of workers by owners. Of course, when owners maltreated workers, it was in order to get money, and what money would buy, including social acceptance. That doesn’t mean that owners were necessarily, or even often, rich. In many instances, they were barely surviving themselves—one thing that comes through very clearly in Santlofer’s book is how intensely competitive all aspects of food manufacturing have always been in New York. An owner might have to work grueling hours himself, living in squalor himself, while his employees did the same, just to stay in business. But, of course, there were those businessmen who, especially as factories got bigger (some Manhattan factories occupied entire city blocks), divorced themselves from manual labor and from the actual operation of their businesses, and lived in luxury, yet still demanded that the workers compete among themselves, and against lower-priced labor if it could be found, to accept the lowest possible wages.
The book ends with the decline and fall of food manufacturing in New York, as the high costs of real estate and taxes, along with snooty locals no longer desiring manufacturing in their proximity, combined to drive manufacturing farther and farther out, eventually away from the city and the area entirely. Santlofer concludes on a positive note, focusing on the rebirth of artisanal food manufacturing, from bread to pickles—although, of course, those foods are sold to the same wealthy people who drove out old-style manufacturing, which provided jobs and decent lives to hundreds of thousands of people who did not and do not eat artisanal bread. A little research does show that after decades of steep decline, manufacturing is on the uptick in New York City, with several thousand jobs having been added in recent years—all in small manufacturing businesses of various types. But in 2016, only 79,000 people worked in manufacturing in the entire NYC metro area. One can never tell, though—perhaps there will be a wholesale renaissance of manufacturing in America, and perhaps it will once again be led by New York.
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