Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time
560Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time
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Overview
The legendary life and entrepreneurial vision of Fred Harvey helped shape American culture and history for three generations—from the 1880s all the way through World War II—and still influence our lives today in surprising and fascinating ways. Now award-winning journalist Stephen Fried re-creates the life of this unlikely American hero, the founding father of the nation’s service industry, whose remarkable family business civilized the West and introduced America to Americans.
Appetite for America is the incredible real-life story of Fred Harvey—told in depth for the first time ever—as well as the story of this country’s expansion into the Wild West of Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, of the great days of the railroad, of a time when a deal could still be made with a handshake and the United States was still uniting. As a young immigrant, Fred Harvey worked his way up from dishwasher to household name: He was Ray Kroc before McDonald’s, J. Willard Marriott before Marriott Hotels, Howard Schultz before Starbucks. His eating houses and hotels along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad (including historic lodges still in use at the Grand Canyon) were patronized by princes, presidents, and countless ordinary travelers looking for the best cup of coffee in the country. Harvey’s staff of carefully screened single young women—the celebrated Harvey Girls—were the country’s first female workforce and became genuine Americana, even inspiring an MGM musical starring Judy Garland.
With the verve and passion of Fred Harvey himself, Stephen Fried tells the story of how this visionary built his business from a single lunch counter into a family empire whose marketing and innovations we still encounter in myriad ways. Inspiring, instructive, and hugely entertaining, Appetite for America is historical biography that is as richly rewarding as a slice of fresh apple pie—and every bit as satisfying.
*With two photo inserts featuring over 75 images, and an appendix with over fifty Fred Harvey recipes, most of them never-before-published.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780553383485 |
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Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 05/03/2011 |
Pages: | 560 |
Sales rank: | 320,735 |
Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Prologue
WHO THE HELL IS FRED HARVEY?
On that spring night in 1882, the drunken cowboys riding through northern New Mexico could have been forgiven for squinting in disbelief at the sight of the Montezuma Hotel. It did appear to be a hallucination.
The Montezuma was one of the most astonishing architectural creations in America— although perhaps most astonishing was its location. It was nestled in a gorgeous middle of nowhere, in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains six miles outside of Las Vegas, New Mexico, an old Santa Fe Trail town that the railroad had only recently connected to civilization. The largest wood-frame building in the United States— some ninety thousand square feet, with 270 guest rooms— the Queen Anne–style Montezuma featured a dining room that seated five hundred, a casino, a breathtaking wine cellar, eleven bowling alleys, a billiard hall, and an immense therapeutic bathing facility offering six different kinds of baths and douches, so patrons could fully experience the medicinal powers of the underground hot springs.
The service at the Montezuma was brilliant, with staff imported from the best hotels in New York, London, Chicago, and St. Louis. And the cuisine was amazingly ambitious. The food combined the expertise of classically trained chefs from the restaurant capitals of the world with fresh regional American ingredients— fruit, vegetables, and shellfish, as well as delicacies like green turtles and sea celery harvested by pearl- diving Yaqui tribesmen— to which few other kitchens in the country had access, and which most chefs wouldn’t come to fully appreciate for almost another century. Open for only a few weeks, the resort was already attracting dukes and princesses and presidents, who quickly booked passage on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, the upstart railroad whose newly laid tracks were the only way to get there.
In front of the Montezuma was a large park, exquisitely landscaped with shade trees and rare flowers, planted in three train- car loads of imported sod and topsoil. At the center was a huge fountain, flanked by lawns for tennis and croquet, an archery range, and even a zoo, where the deer and the antelope literally played. The free-form park was illuminated, as was the building itself, by thousands of gaslights fed by the hotel’s own generating station.
So when “Red John” and his men approached on horseback that evening, they couldn’t believe their bloodshot eyes.
The cowboys rode first to the park, where they hollered and shot their guns in the air while galloping across the manicured bluegrass and graveled walks. The commotion could be heard throughout the hotel, from its grand entranceway to its cavernous main dining room. There it reached a tall, slim man in his mid- forties, with a perfectly groomed Van Dyke beard, deep, cautious eyes, and senses that were always cocked. He tried to ignore the noise and enjoy his dinner, but soon threw down his linen napkin and rose abruptly from his canebacked chair.
The man was dressed fastidiously in a dark blue suit with a waistcoat and dangling watch fob, the formal uniform of a Victorian gentleman from his homeland of England. But he walked quickly, with the nervous energy of America, drawing the attention of the dining room staff and some of the guests as he passed.
By the time he left the dining room, the cowboys had dismounted and were running riot through the hotel. He could hear them in the billiard hall, where they were taking target practice with the Indian relics and curios displayed above the bar, and shooting the tops off the private- label liquor bottles on the sideboard.
“Boys, put up your guns!” the Englishman called out, striding into the room.
“Who the hell are you?” Red John yelled.
“My name is Fred Harvey,” he replied. “I run this place. And I will not have any rowdies here. If you don’t behave like gentlemen, you can’t stay here and you can’t come again. Now put up your guns and take a drink with Fred Harvey!”
Although he had been in America for thirty years, Fred still retained his British accent, which made some Westerners titter.
But as the cowboys laughed, cursed, and taunted him, and hotel guests started gathering, he walked over and grabbed Red John by the collar. In a single motion, the fastidious Englishman yanked the dusty desperado over the bar and pinned him to the floor.
“You mustn’t swear in this place,” he told the stunned cowboy. There was a moment of silence— and then Red John told his men to stand down.
“Fred Harvey is a gentleman, boys,” he declared, brushing himself off. “I say, let’s have those drinks.”
When the drinks were done, they were served a midnight breakfast as well— the breakfast for which Fred Harvey was becoming famous. The freshest eggs and steak available in the country, shipped directly from farms in refrigerated train cars. Pan- size wheat cakes stacked six high. Quartered wedges of hot apple pie. And cup after cup of the best damn coffee these cowboys had ever tasted in their lives.
Red John and his men never made trouble at the Montezuma again.
But they still wanted to know, as did more and more people across the country:
Who the hell is Fred Harvey?
Table of Contents
Prologue: Who The Hell Is Fred Harvey? xiii
Part 1 Fred Discovers America (And Vice Versa), 1853-1901
Chapter 1 Pot Walloper 3
Chapter 2 The Last Train Stop in America 10
Chapter 3 A Gentleman Among the Bleeding Kansans 16
Chapter 4 Railroad Warrior 24
Chapter 5 Opportunistic Sponge 29
Chapter 6 Savage and Unnatural Feeding 37
Chapter 7 They'll Try Anything 46
Chapter 8 Suited to the Most Exigent or Epicurean Taste 54
Chapter 9 Cowboy Victualer 61 2 Chapter 10 Viva Las Vegas 66
Chapter 11 We Are in the Wilds, We Are Not of Them 76
Chapter 12 Harvey Girls 85
Chapter 13 Like A House Afire 98
Chapter 14 Acute Americanitis 106
Chapter 15 Transcontinental Fred 116
Chapter 16 Biting the Hand 123
Chapter 17 The Biggest Catered Lunch in American History 130
Chapter 18 Let the Boys Do it 140
Chapter 19 Rough Ridden 150
Chapter 20 The Clutches of the Grim Monster 158
Part 2 Exceeding the Standard, 1901-1948
Chapter 21 A Little Journey in the Wilderness 173
Chapter 22 The Fred Harvey Indian Department 182
Chapter 23 Tenth Legion 194
Chapter 24 On the Very Brink of the Dizzy Gulf 204
Chapter 25 Trainiacs 212
Chapter 26 Kansas City Stars 222
Chapter 27 National Parking 233
Chapter 28 Daring Young Freddy & His Flying Machines 246
Chapter 29 Soroptimistas 260
Chapter 30 The Roar of the Twenties 271
Chapter 31 Santa Fated 281
Chapter 32 A Wonderful Live Toy to Play With 288
Chapter 33 Poised for Takeoff 293
Chapter 34 Ford Harvey Has a Cold 303
Chapter 35 Freddy Spreads His Wings 310
Chapter 36 Pay no Attention to That Crashing Sound 317
Chapter 37 Loaves and Fishes 327
Chapter 38 Heir Raising 334
Chapter 39 Great Expectations 344
Chapter 40 Tailspin 354
Chapter 41 Kitty Blinks 360
Chapter 42 Private Pringle to the Rescue 368
Chapter 43 The Spies at La Fonda 379
Chapter 44 Big Hollywood Ending 382
Epilogue 390
Appendix I The Grand Tour of Fred Harvey's America 399
Appendix II Meals by Fred Harvey 410
Appendix III Fred Was Here: A Master List of Fred Harvey Locations 427
Acknowledgments & Outshouts 433
Freditor's Notes & Sources 439
Bibliography 483
Index 489