#rodman wanamaker

Menu Monday: This menu is from a party in a dorm room (Princeton's 12 East Witherspoon Hall) from ca. 1885. Although we have seen dorm room party menus before, none have seemed quite so formal as this.

In fact, the student who kept this menu and pasted it in his scrapbook, William Maclay Hall, Class of 1885, also seems to have kept and pasted his place card alongside it:

We were able to determine that Lewis Rodman Wanamaker lived in 12 East Witherspoon Hall. Wanamaker was the heir to the Wanamaker's department store fortune and the son of John Wanamaker. Scrapbook evidence suggests he entertained in his dorm room frequently, and that several invited students kept souvenirs of their time with him.

Scrapbook Collection (AC026), Box 97

Throwback Thursday: Rodman Wanamaker, Princeton Class of 1886, sponsored two expeditions to the American West to document Native Americans (the “vanishing race”) in 1908 and 1909. This program, found in Wanamaker’s alumni file, is from an event at the American Museum of Natural History where the expeditions’ photographer, Joseph Kossuth Dixon, lectured about his experiences and showed his photographs and motion pictures from his time in Indian Country. Wanamaker’s intent in funding these expeditions was to preserve a record of his vision of indigenous peoples. Dixon noted that Wanamaker wanted to convene this last council with only those who had “typical racial characteristics.”