Thirty years ago, when I first landed in New York, my employer, Mr. Woolsey, who brought me over, as I have mentioned in the first installment of these reminiscences, told me one day he was goin’ to attend a meeting of “The Beefsteak Club.” I asked him about it, and the old gentleman told me that it was an association of gentleman who met generally every Friday to eat beefsteak at about the only place in America where they know how to really cook a beefsteak, at an old tavern at the junction of Market, Monroe, and Hamilton streets.
I wasn’t in a position to accompany Mr. Woolsey then to this “club,” and to tell the truth, I wasn’t able then to buy and eat as much beefsteak for myself as I liked. But I kept the place and the club in mind, and now for years, since I am better able to enjoy beefsteak and to feast others with these occasionally, I am often found along, with some of the best men in New York city, at the weekly holdin’ forth of the Beefsteak Club.
The tavern which is the scene of the meetings of the Beefsteak Club now, is a substantial brick and stone structure, which takes the place of the old wooden buildin’ which formerly answered the same purpose. This wooden structure was occupied by two distinct concerns, a tavern on the first floor and a religious association, a sort of amateur church, up on the second floor.
The church and the tavern got along very well and didn’t interfere with each other much the six working days of the week, but on a Sunday, the boss day for the church, the tavern wasn’t permitted to come into competition with it at all, for fear the tavern might get the worst of it.
In short, the tavern was completely closed on a Sunday; not even a side door was opened. The church on the second story had all the buildin’ to itself, which was a very wise arrangement–for the church.
The tavern on the corner of Hamilton, Monroe and Market Streets has passed through several generations of landlords. A man named Clerke or Clarke was one; McCarthy was another; Shannon was another; Tryon was another; and now a nice old gentleman by the name of Miller keeps it and Cooks the beefsteaks, just as the others cooked ‘em before him.
Aaron Burr used to go here to eat his beefsteaks; so did Hamilton; so did the old patroon, Van Rensselaer (whose descendant recently killed himself accidentally at the Hotel Brunswick); so did a good many of the old Mayors of New York, Mayor Harper among the number.
For many years the Beefsteak Club ate beefsteaks without formin’ ‘emselves into a regular organization or club. Then somebody proposed the “club” idea, and a lot of fellows took hold of it and a regular society or club was organized to eat beefsteaks for the good of ‘emselves and in memory of George Washington.
Among the original founders of this “club” were James Mitchell, John Freeborn, Joseph Mason Price, “Alec” Ackerman, William Shannon, Fred Riley, Thomas Freeborn, Sam Tryon, John Staats, Charley Mitchell, Bill Mitchell, R. M. Fox, George Kitchens, Ike Hunt Gillespie, W. S. Duke and I. S. Barnum.
It is over forty years ago since these folks organized ‘emselves into a beefsteak club, and most of ‘em have passed away, but the club and the beefsteaks exist still.
And the same way of cookin’ the beefsteaks still holds. That is the best part of it; anybody could get up a club, and anybody can eat beefsteaks, but it is safe to say that in this whole United States of America they don’t cook beefsteaks in the same way as this, outside of the Beefsteak Club.
In the first place the stove in which the beefsteaks are cooked is peculiar–an old fashioned Dutch-American stove, high and narrow and square, clumsy-lookin’, but with a tremendous amount of heatin’ surface and cookin’ surface. This stove is nearly a hundred years old, and is said to be the only one of its kind in this city.
Then the utensils used for the cookin’ are old fashioned and peculiar. The gridiron is fifty years old and over, and can hold over eight pounds of steak all cooking’ at once. The poker is an “old timer” with a brass pineapple head and only hickory logs are used–no coal is employed, good old fashioned hickory logs furnish all the fire needed.
About twenty years ago a merry party of New Yorkers came under my guidance to take a dinner at the Beefsteak Club. It was my treat, for most of the party had “treated” me before. That is the way dinners are managed at the Beefsteak Club, each treats in turn, invitin’ friends, and givin’ mine host Miller notice. Miller does the cookin’. He wouldn’t allow anybody else in the world to handle the beefsteaks. In fact I don’t believe, at least it is one of the articles of the creed of the club, that anyone else could cook the steaks but Miller.
Once when Tweed and Dick Connolly and Billy Cook and several old Tammany fellows were at a meetin’ of the club, Billy Cook got hold of a tough piece of steak. Billy called attention to this fact, and caused almost a dissolution of the club by doin’ so. Every member of the club resented the charge, that any piece of the meat was tough, as a personal insinuation and insult against himself.
Investigation showed that the charge was too true–that particular bit of steak was undeniably tough. It would have done well enough for a boarding house and cheap restaurant but it was far, terribly far, below the average of the Beefsteak Club.
The mistake was remedied. Billy Cook was overwhelmed with apologies. He had twenty delicious cuts of steak offered him in the place of the one “disgrace.” But the man who had furnished the meat, the butcher of the day, was overcome with shame and chagrin. He never held up his head from that day. He resigned his place as butcher of the club, left the club, and the story is, shortly afterwards left the city and breakin’ up his business went to the bad, dyin’ of a tough beefsteak and a broken heart.
At a recent Gathering of the club I found among the thirteen guests a swell from the “crusty” circles of Fifth avenue-dom, and he looked around half-nervously, and half-suspiciously, and wanted to know where the dinin’-room was, and where the waiters were, and where the tablecloth was, and the tables and the knives and forks, and the dishes. You should have seen his face when I told him that the Beefsteak Club didn’t have anythin’ to do with any of those. That it dined on beefsteak pure and simple, without any plates or knives, or forks, or spoons, or tablecloth, or waiters. He first thought I was jokin’, but when he saw that I wasn’t, he rose up in disgust, and wanted to go home. But I told him to keep quiet for half an hour or less, and then if he wanted to go home, well and good.
In the meantime Miller, on whom all eyes and stomachs now rested, took a hickory log and let it down, in the stove, meanwhile preparin’ his steaks on the gridiron. While Miller was busy with the stove, the butcher, who assisted him on this momentous occasion, melted a lot of prime butter in an old-fashioned Worcestershire glass dish, on top of the stove, and got the salt, pepper, etc.,all ready.
Now into the stove went the gridiron with the steaks and the stove door was shut. Pretty soon the door was opened again, and out came the gridiron with ‘em. Then the steaks were salted and peppered, and melted butter was poured on ‘em or rather dripped. Then the steaks were put into the stove again, and at last were taken out for the last time.
Meanwhile the assistants had been preparing a lot of nice buttered toast, cut into slices, and on top of each slice or toast was now put a slice neatly cut of the just cooked beefsteak, presentin’ thus an array of beefsteak on toast, which was quite as appetizin’ as any quality toast ever seen or tasted.
The barkeeper now went the rounds of the hungry and expectant thirteen and put a nice clean napkin on each of the thirteen laps. Then the butcher in turn took hold of the plate containin’ the slices of beefsteak on toast, and each of the thirteen took a slice from this plate as it was passed round, or let the kind butcher hand him a slice.
“Pshaw!” said my swell Fifth Avenue friend, “How the deuce is one to hold that piece of steak on toast?”
“It won’t need any holdin’,” says I. “You will find the steak quite as soft and tender as the toast, and you can bite one part of it as easily as you can bite the other. You will bite the two together.”
“Nonsense,” said my swell friend. But he found in a minute that it wasn’t “nonsense” but joyful truth.
Not only was the beefsteak most delicious in taste–as sweet as duck or venison–but it parted beneath the teeth with exquisite facility. My swell found that he was really bitin’ and eatin’ toast and steak together, and that he had no more trouble with the one then he had with the other.
“Why, Harry,” he asked, “what on earth is this?”
“That’s only beefsteak–nothin’ but beefsteak,” I answered, thinkin’ he might be an imagining that we had given him somethin’ else. “Only beefsteak, you can take my word for it.”
“Then, Harry,” said my friend solemnly, “You must take my word for it, I have never tasted beefsteak before.”
And he never had. It is a cardinal article of doctrine with the Beefsteak Club that there is no better steak to be had in New York, save at the club.
It is astonishin’ what quantities of beefsteak the club and its individual members have eaten. In the last thirty years or so statistics have been tabulatin’ on this point, and records, beefsteak eating records have been kept.
One winter’s evenin’, twenty years ago or so, forty-eight pounds of steak and thirty-four [illegible] were “absorbed” at one session of the club. It is said better work than this has been done, though unrecorded.
Among those who have made A No. 1 “members” have been Billy Rogers, who keeps Harry Feller’s place on Broadway, George Rainer,…John B. Nolan, John Kress,… Henry M. Hoag, Randolph Guggenheimer,…Frank Cushing, C. W. White,…Frank Hoag,..William Engle and ex- Judge Tony Hartman, Professor Heine, the great musician, Charlie Walton, son of the Plunger;… John F. Tobin,…Charley Mulbank, M. R. Dunton,…Tom Asten, who ued to run of the good old time saloons on the Bowery,…Dr. Goodrich, Charlie Ottingen,…Pete Wannamacher, Charley White of the post office,…Hoxie Dunlap and Ben Allen.
I am particular about givin’ their names, for the love of beefsteak is an attribute which every Englishman wants to see encouraged.
I know we can’t have the good old times again. East Broadway was an “aristocratic” portion of New York, when prize oxen used to be taken along the streets in triumph all decked with ribbons, and the old merchants of New York would go to the Catherine Market to get their prime cuts, payin’ over a dollar a pound for ‘em. But at any rate, the Beefsteak Club still remains.
[Editor’s notes: The Museum of the City of New York blog has an excellent post on the “19th-century dining craze,” but Harry’s account gives an enticing personal account of the ritual. The secret, then as now, is to have a good butcher selecting the best cuts.]
