Professional American Culinary Arts Schools 1927-1940
 
The founding of the Culinary Institute of America in 1946 is generally heralded as the beginning of American Professional Culinary Education. The founding of the nation’s premier private culinary school was actually just a small part of the larger scope of the development of public culinary education in America.
 
The majority of the culinary schools today are public programs that were created as a result of a partnership between, hoteliers, restaurateurs, chefs and educators. This same partnership came together to support the founding of culinary training program’s in disparate areas throughout the country from 1927-1940. After World War II these programs provided the seeds for the founding of American Technical Education Colleges and the majority of professional American culinary education programs today.
 
The effort to develop a system for culinary education began before the turn of the century. The culinary field at this time was dominated by foreigners and was not considered a field of high prestige. This confused and upset the European Chefs. Many had undergone torturous apprenticeships and believed they were professionals. One manner to improve the esteem of the profession was to develop professional association. The first professional chef association was the Societe Culinaire Philanthopique founded in 1865. The hospitality industry would develop many societies and associations to meet the needs of individuals by both occupation and ethnicity. In these associations, discussions and pronouncements championed the common need for the development of a system of culinary education for America. This was seen as method of improving esteem for the profession.
 
By 1906, Lead by the International Stewards, and supported by the Chef’s, Greeter’s, and Hotelmen Associations fundraising began for a national chef school to be located in Indiana. This effort fell apart prior to World War I, but the war did bring the industry together in an effort to train cook’s for the army. This period also saw the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act and the inclusion of the culinary arts as a skilled trade. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 was passed to provide a system to develop technical education through the public schools. The Act trained high school students for a variety of skilled trades and provided continuation training for adults interested in improving their technical skills.
 
This act provided a mechanism for culinary training programs to receive public funding and operational support. Partly due to WWI and partly due to Prohibition, it took nine years for the first program to become operational at the Frank Wiggins Trade School in Los Angeles on September 6, 1927.
 
Los Angeles at the time was in its first boom period and the program was founded in response and in partnership with committees from the various Los Angeles Hospitality industry Association’s. Titled Commercial Cookery, the program initially was planned as offshoot of the home economies program. The program was mandated to offer to full time day school instruction for young men and women of high school age. It also was required to offer trade extension instruction in out of work hours for those already employed. The program offered instruction to both men and women regardless of race.
 
While European chefs dominated the industry at this time, it was a very experienced cook, Miss Sara Alice McNamara who founded the program. Miss McNamara had been involved in training the army boys at Fort Sheridan during the WWI. She had experience in education prior to getting involved in food service. Miss McNamara had been with the Linard Hotel System, run the kitchen at the Hotel Green, Pasadena and been food service manager at the renowned Hotel Samarkand, Santa Barbara. She had a degree in Home Economics from Western Michigan Normal College and thus was qualified as an instructor.
 
The administration originally expected the program to be a home economics course. In 1927, 27 applicants applied for and enrolled in commercial cookery, the newly completed cafeteria became the laboratory kitchen and home to the program. The course structure required students to enroll in a food equipment and cleaning course similar to today’s’ offerings in sanitation. The students then moved into a program where they rotated throughout the kitchen preparing food for the cafeteria. One could either receive a certificate of completion or a certificate of proficiency in the trade.
 
McNamara developed an extensive industry advisory board and almost immediately began to expand the program offerings. The board members were so committed that all but three stayed on for the next twenty years. The first program to be added was a Salad making and Pastry class in 1927. In 1928, a course in food preparation for soda fountains was added. (Called by some the soda jerk school) The next component of the program, waitress training in 1932, was made possible with the construction of a new factuality dining room. A commercial baking program was added in 1932.
 
Trade extension classes were offered in the evening and the program utilized industry instructors such as Max Klepsadel of the Bonaventure. In addition the Local cooks 108 union began use the trade extension program, in 1940, to certify cooks. The same instructors from industry were used by McNamara to supplement instruction during the day. The program continued to grow until the war having a total enrollment of 248 in trade cooking, 73 in commercial baking, and 89 in waitress training and 89 in soda work in 1938. Graduates were employed in all fields.
 
When Miss McNamara prepared to retire, World War II had just begun. Even though the program had an enrollment of 319 for cooking in 1941, the Principal made the decision to eliminate the program after Miss Alice’s 1942 retirement. He reasoned the war would cause a drop in enrollment and more pressing demands for war training should have priority. The hospitality industry was outraged and protested. The program was immediately reinstated due to popular demand and has evolved to a two-year technical college program today.
 
The culinary arts program has continued to be successful and is now housed at the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. Other culinary programs were created in the schools over the next ten years around the nation. Martin Kliewe created an innovative and awards winning program in 1931 at the Oakland Trade School in Oakland. Swiss born Kliewe modeled his program after a European training system. Students worked with other students to master their skills. While the teaching chef in theory directly instructed each student, working with the more advanced students and watching assimilated most learning. A student mastered a component, vegetable cutting, pantry, soups, and sauces and had to pass strict tests. The only written part of the program was the test. The student learned by keeping a logbook of his observations and copying from other student’s logbooks or the chef’s files.
 
The program at the Oakland school was founded with the support of the Western Chefs Association and the Pacific Hotelmen. It also spawned a competing program at neighboring San Francisco Junior College. The San Francisco course was intended to produce food service mangers while the Oakland course was directed at Chefs. The Oakland course is now at home at Laney College and San Francisco Junior College is now a hotel management course.
 
Another program with strong industry support was the program at Delgado Junior Collegein New Orleans. The Delgado program is still operating today. It has had numerous changes and became a home economics program in 1958. It was recreated as a commercial program in 1982, and is an ACF accredited program today. The culinary arts classes were the result of staffing problems in the culinary field in hotels and steamship lines. The industry was having trouble finding qualified cooks during the depression and set up the program. Students were required to work while attending school.
 
Atlantic City Trade School, The Edison Trade School in Seattle, The Opportunity School in Denver, and Flower Technical High in Chicago had home economics and extension programs. Only the Edison School has survived. It was take over by Chef Paul Muillet, another Swiss Chef, shortly after World War II. He won an award as Chef of the year in 1952 for his work in developing a program for the northwest.
 
The most successful program founded during this period and still operating is the Washburne Trade School Chef Training Program. Founded by Swiss Chef August Forster in 1938, the Washburne program successfully negotiated the political winds of the public school system in Chicago to become the most successful and prolific program outside of the Culinary Institute. It was founded on European principles, espoused professionalism and believed in an analytical approach to teaching cooking. Industry leaders from all the associations supported the program. During the War the program trained cooks for the Navy. The high standards of the program were maintained and after the war many GI’s returned wanting a higher level of culinary education. Forster successfully reinvented the program as a technical school.
 
Farther South, the Tuskegee Institute had a well-received program originally funded by the Carnegie Foundation. In 1903, the International Stewards Association had written Booker T. Washington a letter asking him to consider developing a course for his students for the "varied duties in the hotels of America." It would take thirty years before Dr. F. D. Patterson; president of Tuskegee developed a program for Tuskegee, commercial dietetics. The program consisted of a three year of instruction and included meal planning, menu making, one year of food preparation and one year of quantity food production. Miss Motta Sims, a graduate of Fisk University and the University of Chicago directed the program. The course was located in the Home Economics building, but was included both men and women. The students served all the food at the school and were graduates were employed as cooks and chefs at prominent local hotels and in the railroad dining car industry.
 
While hotel and stewarding courses were offered in Universities to teach management, the only structured apprenticeship program during this time was operated at Waldorf Astoria in New York. Swiss Born Lucuis Boomer was the President of the Waldorf and he began his efforts by speaking at hotel meetings and association congresses on education for the industry in 1933. Working with his Chef he opened an apprenticeship program in 1937. The program would continue until after the war and one point sent graduate apprentices to the Tuskegee to train cooks.
 
Boomer would eventually develop a New York Food Trades School in New York in 1940 to assist in training his apprentices. The program continued until after the war when Mayor LaGuardia formed a formal alliance between the Local 8 of the AFL-CIO, the school and industry. As a result, the Waldorf apprentice program was no longer the responsibility of the hotel. With no responsibility for the program and a union with little or no interest in promoting apprenticeship the program failed to sign up any apprentices in 1954. Culinary education in New York eventually settled at the New York Technical College.
 
All of the programs mentioned had industry-school partnership and similarities of purpose. This occurred as a result of industry’s focus on hospitality education as a method of improving the esteem of the profession and the fact that educational issues brought unity purpose to the associations. Industry-school partnership supporting the culinary programs included Dieticians, hoteliers, club managers, quick service restaurants, retail store restaurants, commercial feeders, drug store lunch counters, cafeteria’s, hospital food service, equipment manufacturers, purveyors, ethnic restaurateurs and industry journalists. The industry school partnership and its inclusiveness made American culinary education is a truly American phenomena.
 
Another similarity was the progression from a European model of culinary education to an American one. In the beginning of all of the programs listed, students began training with menial tasks. Through repetition students were supposed to develop the skills to earn respect as a skilled culinarian. The European model, start at the bottom and eventually one earned the right to learn the higher skills of the craft.
 
American students questioned the value of becoming educated in a skill such as pot washing or mopping floors. If the program were to attract students, the culinary arts needed to be a profession to master. The menial tasks students were expected to perform before moving on to hire tasks were eliminated. Instead of primarily cleaning pots and mopping floors for six months students were making Hors d’oeurves and cutting vegetables. They were required to clean up after themselves, but they were able to create first.
 
The transition from a mock European to American system included the understanding the students were expected to perform as professionals. In numerous publications and texts one is reminded of this fact. Students were treated with respect. The students were made aware of the larger responsibility of the culinarian and their responsibility for the health of the nation through the food they prepared. This greater purpose provided esteem for the profession. The improved esteem was a transformational force for students and contributed to leadership development. And while European apprenticeship continues its traditional format and uses texts and systems of fifty years ago, American culinary education offers a broad vista of cuisine's to all students in addition to its philosophy of respect and professionalism. Today's American culinary education systems have produced quality chefs. The American culinary traning system is respected by culinarians throughout the world. These chefs have successfully competed in international competitions in Frankfurt. It is the heritage of the early public culinary programs that have contributed to the respect American cuisine and American culinary education enjoys today.
 
 
References
 
Boomer, Lucius "Problems that Confront the Culinary Profession", The Hotel Monthly, July 1938, 33-36.
 
Brown Anitra The Culinary Review, "Culinary Advice from the Master," Aug. 1998, p 19.
 
Delaney, John Chicago School Board Journal,"Chicago Opens Cooks School," May 1954. p. 37.
 
Dornenburg, Andrew and Page, Karen, On Becoming a Chef, p. 10.
 
Frank Wiggins Annual Report 1928, Los Angeles, Ca., p. 2.
 
Frank Wiggins Trade School, Cookery Brochure provided by LA Trade Tech., p. 12.
 
Frank Wiggins Trade School, Advisory Board Minutes, 1947, p. 32.
 
Frank Wiggins Trade School, Annual Reports, 1926-1942, p. 22.
 
Hammesfahr, E.A. "Chefs Step Forward", The Culinary Review, November 1934, 29, reprinted from the Western Hotel Reporter.
 
Hamiliton, WI. With John Willy", The Hotel Monthly, "Courses in Hotel Work, Jan. 1940,58.
 
Hamilton, WI. with John Willy, The Hotel Monthly, "Training for the Culinary Arts,"Jan. 1940, 58.
 
LA School Journal, April 1933, p. 3.
 
Menfee, Seldon, Vocational Training and Employment, Peoria, Vol. XVI, 1933, p. 453.
 
Oliff, Martin Notes from an unpublished dissertation Feb. 1997, p. 3.
 
Oliff, Martin ,The Culinary Review, Nov. 1997, p.42.
 
Petersen, Mary, ACF Accreditation Manual Report, 1997
 
Shircliffe, Arnold, The Hotel Monthly, "Seeks funds for Cooking Schools," Feb. 1945, p. 32.
 
Shirring, Stephen, From Apprenticeship to Culinary Schools, 1996, p. 82.
 
Staff, Delgado Course Offerings, 1939.
 
Staff, The Official History of the Frank Wiggins Trade School, 1944, p. 54.
 
Van Landingam, Paul, The Effects of Change in Vocational, Technical, and Occupational Education on the Teaching of Culinary Arts in America, 1995, p. 122.
 
Willy, J. The Hotel Monthly, Sept. 1903, p. 15.
 
Willy,J. "News" The Hotel Monthly, Oct. 1903, 28.
 
Willy, J., The Hotel Monthly, July 1917, p. 49.
 
Willy, J. "Training School Demonstrates Value" The Hotel Monthly, September 1942, 64. Reprinted from the Pacific Coast Record August Boomer, Lucious "Education for our People, "Culinary Review Nov. 1933, 52.
 
Willy, J. , The Hotel Monthly, July 1939, "Schools teaching Hotel Work", p. 35.
 
Willy, J. The Hotel Monthly, "Training Cooks in Tuskegee Institute" Jan. 1940, 58.
 
Willy, John Knight The Hotel Monthly, "New School of Cookery Assured for Chicago," January 1946, p. 54-55.
 
________________________________
This document was written by:
Keith H. Mandabach Ed.D.
 
New Mexico State University
Professional American Culinary Arts Schools 1927-1940
For Rocky Mountain CHRIE Proceedings Oct. 1998
 
 
 
 
Box 30003-Dept. 3 HRTM
 
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