Inside the Chamber > Annual Banquets
In November 1915, the merchants gathered at the Waldorf Astoria for their annual banquet. Flower-filled vases graced the tables. An enormous flag, created for the occasion, covered the entire ceiling of the vast hall. The first speaker was Seth Low, the group’s president, and the subject of his talk was a matter of especial moment: a disquisition on the history of the Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquets.
“It gives me great pleasure,” he began, “to welcome you all to the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Annual Dinner of the Chamber of Commerce, that is to say, to the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Annual Dinner so called. I shrewdly suspected, when I saw the invitation, that the Chamber of Commerce had not fared so well during all its long history as to be able to dine as often as once a year.”
Indeed, it was so. The first banquet had convened in 1769, one year after the Chamber’s founding, with the series continuing until 1772, when it was interrupted by the coming of the Revolution. Then, there were irregular dinners in 1787, 1805, 1866 and 1867. Beginning in 1873, the group held its famous banquets each year, until 1914, when the dinner was cancelled out of deference to the war.
Convening again after this hiatus, Low felt he had to justify the decision to recommence the tradition. “We are dining together this year,” he explained, “notwithstanding the War, because we have come to see that it is in the interest of all men that the normal life of the world should be maintained, wherever possible, outside of the War Zone.”
But, “normal life” – perhaps – was not the most accurate description of the Chamber banquets, which were sumptuous even by the standards of the Gilded Age. Many a waistcoat button must have been strained – and many mustaches must have been wilted – by the courses that appeared, one after another, at these events.
Members received gold-embossed invitations, designed by Tiffany Co. And they convened at the most prestigious banquet halls - Delmonico's or the Waldorf - that the City could provide. At the 1895 dinner, celebrants that battled manfully through their potage and poisson courses, and then handled their filets de boeuf, still had to confront the entrees.
The dinners were the central social activities of the Chamber, linking members to their predecessors. And, as the years went on, they served as an annual reminder of the Institution's greatest days. By the mid-twentieth century, however, they were more of a bother than anything else. In 1951, the Chamber's officials gave them up. Since "so many public dinner demands are made on the chamber members today" they reasoned, "it does not seem desirable to continue to hold annual dinners.”