The old City Hotel was one of the first public places to fall into line.
The time was to come when a dining establishment, second to none of its day in social prestige and culinary excellence, was to stand on a corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street.

But when those who dwelt on lower Fifth Avenue were still pioneers, dining out in public places meant a long and venturesome journey to the southward.

The restaurants of that time--they were more generally called "eating houses,"-- were almost all established in the business portions of the city.

The midday dinner was the meal on which they depended for their main support.

Then masculine New York left its shop or its counting house, hurried a block to the right, or a block to the left, and fell greedily on the succulent oyster, the slice of rare roast beef, or the sizzling English mutton chop.