An Unexpected Find

For the past few weeks, I have been scanning and uploading yearbooks from my high school to our alumni site. The first batch I picked up from the principal contained yearbooks from 1937-1981, albeit with some years missing. It has been so fun to see how not only the yearbooks have changed over the years, but also how high school students and high school culture have changed too! I’ve been trying to whip through them and get them posted for fellow alums to enjoy so I haven’t taken time to really nerd out and look at them in detail. I hope I can do that soon!

While scanning the yearbook from 1940, some loose items fell out of it. There was a 50th reunion program from 1990, a newspaper article from the summer of 1940 reporting on a car accident and death of a recent JHS graduate, and an incredible, unexpected item: a guest check from October 10, 1940!

My best guess at the order is: 4 vegetable soup, 4 mashed potatoes, 4 tossed salads, 2 pork chops, 1 wiener (wienerschnitzel ??), 1 ham loaf, 2 sauerkraut, 1 tea (unsure if this could be iced? or sweet?), 3 coffee. All for $1.40! I like to imagine this is from a double date but who knows! Also unclear as to why it was in the 1940 yearbook.

As you can see on the top of the check, someone noted that it was from the Ries Hotel in Meadville, PA. After spending some time researching, I was not able to find much about the Ries Hotel; however, there are a couple of listings on eBay for Ries Hotel matchbooks from approximately the 1930s.

The Crawford County Historical Society has an article about historical hotels from the area and the Ries is mentioned. It was first called the Occidental Hotel, then the New McHenry House, then the Midland, and finally the Ries. In my brief search, I was not able to find any photos of the hotel under any of its names. I did, however, find an ad for the New McHenry House in The Campus newspaper of Allegheny College dated February 16, 1886 (from Allegheny College’s digitized The Campus Newspaper Collection). The ad boasts a rate of $2.00 per day, a porter at every train, and the “Finest table, in fact the Delmonico of the city.”

Additionally, an article popped up from The Evening Republican dated Tuesday, December 9, 1902, announcing the lease of the Midland Hotel by Lewis Ries. The first year’s rent was only $1,200! Sure, that was a lot of money back then, but before I moved back home to PA I was paying about double that per month for a studio apartment in Minnesota…just saying… lol.

This was such a cool find and it lead me down an even cooler rabbit hole! You never know what an old book may turn up! I wonder if there will be any treasures in the next batch of yearbooks I work with!