u/lascheratlarge

A dinner menu from July 3, 1922, the last night at sea for travelers aboard the White Star Line's R.M.S. Majestic ocean liner. The journey began on June 28 and the ship — which sailed from Southampton, England, to New York by way of Cherbourg, France — arrived in the U.S. the following day.

The Majestic was at the time the largest ocean liner in the world. It had just entered service for White Star two months earlier after being built by Germany as the Bismarck and given to Britain as part of Germany's World War I reparations.

This menu comes from members of Los Angeles's Stern family who boarded in France and were returning to the U.S. from a vacation in Europe that included a visit to relatives in Germany, attendance of the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris at France's Auteuil race course, and other exploits. The Sterns traveled in First Class, which means they may have dined with such fellow passengers on the voyage as composer and pianist Irving Berlin, film producer Jesse Lasky (who with Cecil B. DeMille launched the studio that would become Paramount Studios from a barn once owned by Stern family patriarch Jacob Stern), and famed French singer Maurice Chevalier.

I'm also including some fun information pages from the Majestic's passenger list and brochure, including descriptions of the restaurant, secondary dining facilities, and other amenities. Not sure how I feel about "Electric Baths."

Another great L.A.-area postcard. This one depicts the Mt. Lowe Railway, which once operated from Altadena up into the San Gabriels. There, atop the railway, travelers like the sender, E.J. Louis, could stay at the Echo Mt. House, a hotel opened in 1894.

Beyond the photos of the railway, note the address of the recipient: Louis's six-week-old niece, Ysidora (known to friends and family as "Bob"). The site of Bob's home at 7th and Hope in what is now Downtown Los Angeles would in 1915 become part of the property where famed retailer J.W. Robinson opened its flagship store. Bob would later joke that she was born in Robinson's menswear section (a cousin born next door often made a similar joke but replaced menswear with the lingerie department).

E.J. Louis, BTW, was involved in many elements of Soutehrn California business and society, with roles as an insurance agent, commander of California's naval militia, president of the Newport Bay Investment company (and a longtime booster of Balboa Island who championed that name for the Orange County destination), and for many years Peru's vice-consul and consul to Los Angeles, but I'll save more about him for another time.

I Love the identification of Hollywood as "near Los Angeles" on this 1905 postcard. I also love that the address is listed simply as "Villa Casa de Las Palmas" without a street number of any kind and that the card still made it to its destination.

That destination — Casa de Las Palmas (I've never seen it written with "Villa" except here, presumably because that would have been redundant) — was located at the intersection of what is now Hollywood Blvd. & Vine Streets. It was owned by Jacob Stern, who'd bought the property a year earlier. In 1912, filmmakers Jesse Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, and Samuel Goldwyn would rent a barn on Stern's property that became their first film studio and lay the foundation for what became Paramount Studios. That barn has since been relocated and houses the Hollywood Heritage Museum, located on Highland Ave. near the Hollywood Bowl.

The card's recipient, Elsa (or Elza) Stern, was Jacob's daughter and 11 years old at the time she received this card from an uncle. Of potential note: Elza's son, Melville Jacoby Jr., would later have a legendary if brief career as a World War II-era foreign correspondent for Time, Life, and other publications in China and the Philippines. She was also the woman behind the selection of the Bird of Paradise as Los Angeles's official city flower.

Source: I'm Jacob Stern's great-great-grandson and this postcard is among a trove of family history materials I've been processing for some time. I also wrote the 2016 book Eve of a Hundred Midnights about her son.