Designed by William Gibbons Preston in the French Second Empire style and built in 1971, the Hotel Vendome was noted for its white marble facade and mansard roof.  In 1882, the Vendome became the first commercial building in Boston to install electric lighting (specifically exterior lights at the entrance) and was one of the first in the country to do so.  Located at 160 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston's Back Bay, the hotel was a premier luxury institution of the Gilded Age. 

Known as a "Boston Brahmin institution," the hotel hosted international celebrities and heads of state including U.S. Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William Howard Taft.  French actress Sarah Bernhardt, according to online sources, famously watched snow from her suite).  Other notable people who visited the hotel include Oscar Wilde, John Singer Sargent and industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

The hotel navigated the social changes of the 1920s, including Prohibition.  Needless to say, you won't find wine listed on this menu.

This is a rare, vintage, collectible difficult to find anywhere online or in any store for sale.  Outside the handful of major menu repositories in public institutions in America and the private 10K collections of several individuals, this menu is quite likely one of only a few in existence.

The menu's provenance traces to a single Midwestern American menu collector's estate.   The collection of menus of American restaurants and bars dates predominantly from the 1920s through the 1960s.  The menus have been meticulously stored in acid-free plastic sleeves and are supported by acid-free cardboard backings.  They are packaged, shipped and handled with utmost care.

U.S. Measurements: 5" x 7" when closed.