Lord & Taylor’s Bird Cage restaurant and tea room was opened in the late 1930s. It continued on the fifth floor of the Fifth Avenue New York City store until the 1980s when it was updated and renamed Café American Style. Accommodating only about one hundred persons, the Bird Cage was considerably smaller than the main restaurant in Altman’s which held over two hundred, as well as Abraham & Straus’s in Brooklyn which held over four hundred. Until the mid-1970s the Bird Cage was outfitted with armchairs with trays connected to them. In the early years each tray was supplied with a complimentary cigarette. Diners selected sandwiches, salads, and desserts from rolling carts modeled on Italian racing cars. As Lord & Taylor branches were opened after World War II in locations such as Westchester (shown here, 1948), Millburn NJ, Hartford CT, and Washington DC, they too were furnished with their own Bird Cages.
For many years the Bird Cage staff at the Fifth Avenue store provided refreshments to shoppers who arrived before the store opened each morning. Lord & Taylor president Dorothy Shaver initiated the custom and insisted that the coffee, juice (in summer), or bouillon (when temperatures were frigid) be served in china, not paper, cups.
Another well-loved eatery in the Manhattan store was the men’s Soup Bar on the tenth floor. Scotch broth and deep-dish apple cobbler with rum sauce were specialties there.
© Jan Whitaker, 2008
We eat in restaurants several times a week and yet know very little about their history. I plan to dip into my archive of research and images every so often to present a little tidbit that highlights aspects of our American restaurant culture. Let me know your thoughts.
3 Comments
November 10, 2009 at 10:01 pm
At the Lord & Taylor’s in Washington, men who went to the Bird Cage were entitled to two desserts with their lunch. My sweet-tooth father naturally loved going there for lunch when we went shopping, and we kids felt deprived because we only got one!
October 16, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I ate at the Bird Cage on Fifth Avenue with my mother many times, when I was growing up in the ’60’s. My favorite from the dessert cart was a Bavarian cream with some kind of sauce, it was a combination pudding/gelatin type of thing. I would be interested in a recipe recreating it, if you’re aware of one. Thanks for the information above!
October 16, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I’ve looked around but haven’t found any recipes yet. But I did see a reference to a pink Boston cream type of pie that was served with vanilla sauce. Could that be it? — Jan