Lunch Hour NYC

New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

Fifth Avenue at 42^nd Street

I recently found myself at Bryant Park with three hours to kill. I had just finished attending a book club discussion of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth hosted by the Bryant Park Reading Room and led by Suzzy Roche of The Roches. I would later be meeting up with a Spanish language group. I am between jobs, so I needed somewhere cheap, preferably free, to spend some time.

My frugal feet led me the Stephen A. Schwarzman branch of the New York Public Library, generally known as the “main” branch of the extensive library system. The building is hardly obscure—a gorgeous Beaux-Arts building flanked by its famous lions, Patience and Fortitude—but because it is a research library rather than a lending library, and because a tedious bag search hinders traffic in and out of its single revolving-door entryway, most people tend to view the Schwarzman Building from the outside. Intrepid tourists who brave the queue at the door are rewarded with even more stunning Beaux-Art design inside, including luscious dark wood paneling hidden in the Periodicals Room on the first floor.

Few people realize, however, that the Library offers free exhibitions and guided tours. The latter can be horrid or wonderful, depending on who the guide is. I once took a group of high school girls on one of the tours and they were so traumatized by the rude woman leading the charge I think the poor things will never enter another library as long as they live. I have, however, seen tour groups smiling and laughing in the McGraw Rotunda, so the guides can’t all be terrors.

I had no real interest in visiting the exhibition Lunch Hour NYC currently on display in the Library’s Gottesman Exhibition Hall on the first floor, but I had some time on my hands and thought, “Why not?” Imagine my surprise when I ended up staying at the exhibition for almost two hours! It really is that well done.

I’ve visited previous exhibition at the Schwarzman Building and have found that the Library’s exhibitions struggle with being informative without being overly pedantic. Lunch Hour NYC manages to strike just the right chord between smart and fun. Etymologists will be tickled by the development of the word “lunch” (it comes from the Spanish “lonja” meaning “a thick piece,” or “chunk,” and was initially characterized as a snack taken anytime during the day, generally in the form of “as much food as one’s hand can hold”) while nerds of all ages will be enamored of the Library’s lunch box collection.

The real star of the show, however, is the huge Automat display. The Automat was a New York institution that began with a bang in 1912 and ended with a fizzle in 1991. An automat-style place briefly opened on St. Mark’s in the East Village a few years ago, and as someone who completely missed out on the Automat culture I really wanted it to be successful, but this business quickly went the way of the original Automats; I guess the owners should have considered that if the kings of the original Automat, Joe Horn and Frank Hardart, couldn’t make it work into today’s society, no one would be able to.

Nearly a quarter of the exhibition space is dedicated to the glorious Automat. There’s film clips from classic movies and television programs featuring the Automat (thoughtfully subtitled so the sound doesn’t interfere with other parts of the exhibition), touching stories of immigration and civil rights (because Automat employees remained hidden from view, Horn and Hardart could high people of color without fear of alienating their cliental), and, best of all, a great big Automat with knobs you can turn and doors you can open! Granted, there is no food inside the pristine steel boxes, but there are some pretty delicious looking recipes on cards visitors are free to take.

Other exhibition highlights include the rise of dieting culture in American housewives, the positive effects of the first public school food programs (poor children’s academic performance improved as their weight increased), and the development of the business power lunch. In a time when most people had to rush to eat in under thirty minutes, taking a leisurely long lunch meeting was a display of one’s weight. Particularly fun is the display discussing the development of the Round Table at the Algonquin, the effects of which can still be felt in the pages of the New Yorker today.

Along with tactile displays and short, informative didactics, the exhibition is strewn with photographs by Berenice Abbott and Alice Austen, caricatures drawn by Alex Gard for Sardi’s celebrity display, and fabulous illustrations of 19th-century lunch rooms. The exhibition does go a bit far in claiming New York City was responsible for developing the idea of lunch as we now know it today, but New Yorkers love claiming responsibility for whatever we can.

Lunch Hour NYC is up until February 17^th, 2013, and is open during library hours. Tours of the exhibition are available at 12:30 and 2:30 Monday through Saturday, and 3:30 on Sundays. Tours of the Library itself are available 11am and 2pm Monday through Saturday and 2pm on Sundays. Neither the exhibition nor the Library, however, require tours to be appreciated.

http://exhibitions.nypl.org/lunchhour/exhibits/show/lunchhour