Member-only story
Why Restaurants Didn’t Shut Down in the Previous Pandemic
What the city can learn from 1918
New York City is scared. A vicious virus is alarming scientists, baffling the government, and rapidly claiming lives throughout the five boroughs. There’s a ban on handshaking. People are encouraged to wear masks. Citizens are expected to avoid crowds and stay home if sick. Despite these measures, however, thousands are dying.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Health is celebrating his birthday inside a fancy restaurant in Columbus Circle. Dr. Royal S. Copeland is enjoying a broiled squab along with a special dance performance given in his honor. The public will read about it in the newspaper the next day and will not be outraged…because it is 1918, and amid the Spanish flu pandemic, restaurants are open: a marked difference from 2020, when New Yorkers are forbidden to dine inside restaurants for months because of Covid-19, even as the city moves into Phase 4 of reopening.
Historians have several explanations as to why the city didn’t shut down restaurants 102 years ago. “Restaurants were considered even more of an ‘essential business,’ especially for those who lived in boarding houses or in kitchenless studios,” says Rebecca Spang, author of The Invention of the Restaurant. Pushcarts provided “takeout,” but delivery didn’t exist. Dining out, whether at an oyster cart or in Delmonico’s, was necessary for a large part of the populace.
Kevin Draper, in-house historian for Delmonico’s and tour director of New York Historical Tours, says the decision not to shut down restaurants was an effort to downplay the severity of the flu. In an era before broadcast radio, television, social media, and Andrew Cuomo, information was easy to manipulate.
Kevin Draper, in-house historian for Delmonico’s and tour director of New York Historical Tours, says the decision not to shut down restaurants was an effort to downplay the severity of the flu.
“The thinking was it would cause a panic and if everyone stayed home, the whole economy would be destroyed. And businesses were afraid,” Draper says. “There was no such thing as bailouts; no such…
