The Maps

Next, we chose to transition from environmental statistics, to a geographical perspective of how and where oysters declined, by comparing the oyster frequencies of two times: before 1910s and after 1930s.

MAP 1: Oyster appearance before 1910s

MAP 2: Oyster appearance after 1930s

The data for these two maps comes from the dataset of Blue Point Oysters’ Appearances on menus from 1887 to 1970. The specific data from certain time periods were extracted to serve as the sources of these two maps. In order to highlight the decline of oyster population due to environmental problems, we decided to compare their appearances in two contrasting time periods through mapping. In 1927, the last of the New York City oyster beds were officially closed down in Raritan Bay because they were too contaminated to eat. Thus, we decided to directly compare the major locations of Blue Point Oysters’ appearances before 1910 (the peak of its popularity) with those after 1930 (a few years after the turning point of its popularity). Through these two maps, we hope to highlight the changes that happened to oyster population along the years, which subsequently impacted their appearances in the local restaurants.

The first map shows the appearances of oysters from 1887 to 1910 in the New York City area. In this map, you can see that Blue Point Oyster dishes could be available in a large number of locations in the Manhattan area. The second map shows the appearances of oysters from 1930 to 1970 in the New York City area. Compared to the first map, this map demonstrates a significantly lower number of restaurants that serve oysters from 1930 to 1970, a significant decline possibly caused by environmental problems.

Meanwhile, if you zoom out to see all other appearances of oysters around the entire country, you will actually discover an increase — there were more and more restaurants which served oysters in various cities, such as Las Vegas and Phoenix, which did not appear on the first map. One of the primary reasons for this phenomenon is an increasing amount of importation in the later half of the 20th century, due to the galloping development of transportation. For example, the increasing use of airplanes after the World War II might greatly contributed to the popularity of oysters in inland cities like Phoenix by providing a fast and efficient means to transport fresh oysters. Thus, this seemingly paradoxical increase of oysters around the country in the second map can be explained by the increasing amount of importation.

The overall findings of this map correlate with Herbert Meiselman's study (Meiselman, 2017) on the changes of frequencies in certain New York foods. The author argues that variety decreases through time due to multiple reasons — one of which (related to the decline of oysters), is because of environmental issues which make them become increasingly expensive items on the menu as they become more scarce.

However, we still faced a major problem of data gap. In our dataset, there is a large gap among the data collected after the 1930s and the locations of a large amount of restaurants are missing, which made it difficult for us to accurately visualize them through mapping. One possible explanation for this huge data gap is associated with the most important contributor of the New York Public Library’s menu collection. Miss Frank E. Buttolph began to collect menus on the Library’s behalf in 1900 and passed away in 1924. During her 24 years at the Library, she contributed 25,000 menus to the collection, in contrast to the total amount of 45,000 items in the current collection. Indeed, Miss Buttolph contributed more than half of the total amount of items to the Library collection in only 24 years, while only approximately 20,000 items were added in a time span of 94 years. This anecdote can partially explain why the data collected after the 1930s tend to be incomplete.

Hence, our narrative in terms of the geographical perspective, is not yet complete because of the limitations in our dataset.