“Woman's Place is in the Tea Room”: White Middle-Class American Women as Entrepreneurs and...

‘‘Woman’s Place is in the Tea

Room’’: White Middle-Class

American Women as Entrepreneurs

and CustomersEleanor Alexander

There is perhaps no business more pre-eminentlya woman’s field than that of feeding the public.There is no barrier, no prejudice, no tradition againstwoman’s activity in the eating world . . . .[T]hat woman’s place is in the tea room has beenaccepted as an inevitable corollary of ‘‘woman’splace is in the home.’’

(Ware and Ware 565)

The tea room played an important role inbringing housebound late-nineteenth-century eliteand middle-class women into the business world.A study of these cozy restaurants is importantbecause tea rooms evolved into an early-twen-tieth-century cultural institution, one initiated bywomen. Tea rooms are also important becausethey impacted popular dogma regarding females,giving women opportunities beyond traditionaldomestic chores. In 1890, more than ninetypercent of females over the age of thirty-five weremarried (Kessler-Harris 109). Middle-class womenwere cloistered at home, charged with beingcheerful, and running orderly households.‘‘Housewife’’ was the only suitable role becausesociety frowned on women earning a living.Distaff tea room owners launched changes in thatsocial doctrine, shrouding their eateries in house-wifely attributes and channeling domestic skillsinto operating successful enterprises. Because tea

room entrepreneurship did not breech femininedecorum, it became an acceptable occupation forelite women. In essence, domesticity’s restrictingtenets became a bridge to a cultural sensation.

Tea rooms—or tea houses, as they were alsocalled—began in northeastern cities as venturesowned and operated by elite white women, for elitewhite women. They were moderately priced,atmospheric restaurants—often of one room—catering to women’s preferences and sensibilities.Initially owners served only light lunch and after-noon tea. The latter was a ritual in elite nineteenth-century homes, with the lady of the housepresiding. Families consumed dainty sandwichesand ate cake with cups of tea. Because men workedin the public sector at tea time, which was no laterthan 5 o’clock, the ceremony became the domain ofwomen. It spawned social activity. Friends gath-ered. According to Agnes Morton, a nineteenth-century doyen, the friends ‘‘chat[ted] for awhileover a sociable cup of tea . . . all at ease, every onethe recipient of a gracious welcome from thehostess’’ (Morton 67–68). Understandably, whenelite white women opened tea rooms to servicefemales of their class, afternoon tea was a staple.

It was not the only domestic element findingits way to the tea room. A commonality existed

Eleanor Alexander is Associate Professor of History at Georgia Institute of Technology. She is the author of Lyrics of Sunshine and

Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore.

126 The Journal of American Culture � Volume 32, Number 2 � June 2009

The Journal of American Culture, 32:2r2009 Copyright the AuthorsJournal compilation r 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

between tea rooms and women’s duties at home.Accordingly, proprietors viewed tea rooms as anextension of their domicile. ‘‘If you like house-keeping,’’ said one owner, ‘‘but want biggermoney returns and more human contact thanone house can give you, it is logical that a tearoom should . . . be a good business’’ (Brandimarte11). Added another: ‘‘[M]anaging a modern tearoom means exactly what managing a large homemeans. The most successful tea room is one thatpreserves the atmosphere of a pleasant, wellordered home’’ (Gleason 146). Giving tea roomsthe look and feel of old fashioned dining roomswas one means of capturing hominess. A custo-mer described this congenial atmosphere:

On sturdy legs that long have stood,The tables show their dark old wood;The chairs were new ten decades since;The curtains flaunt stiff folds of chintzThat multiplies a purple birdWith crested head and wings absurd,Entangled in a wreath of vines.The candle sticks are brass that shinesUnflecked, unscathed. The candle firesBurn high in straight upstanding spires . . .The narrow spaces of the roomTake shape in patterned light and gloom,Dusk mellowed where along the wallOld mirrors duplicate it all.

(Brandimarte 6–7)

This homelike ambiance characterized tearooms. And there was more. Customers wereconsidered guests rather than patrons. The pro-prietress of Highgate Hall Tea Room said of herestablishment: ‘‘Our policy is to treat our guestsas we would if they were in our home, givingthem a gracious welcome’’ (Cutler 8; Ware &Ware 569). At Filene’s Department Store TeaRoom in Boston, food servers were ‘‘not wait-resses . . . but Hostesses—receiving all day theGuests of this House’’ (Whitaker 180).

Tea shops offered more than atmosphere and agracious welcome. There was also home cooking.The food was plain and familiar, what was servedup at home. One proprietress described tea roomedibles this way: ‘‘[D]ishes are apt to be thosesuch as ‘mother used to make,’ plus manyattractive details about which mother probablynever bothered her head’’ (Brandimarte 13). Soup,sandwiches, salad, chicken dishes, casseroles, and

waffles appeared in some form on most menus.Owners added a special touch by decoratingplates with olives, lettuce, parsley, and pimento—the ‘‘attractive details about which mother prob-ably never bothered her head.’’ Neither did mostcooks, for at the time, only chefs in expensiverestaurants garnished food. These tea shop viandswere sold a la carte, although the fixed price lunchwas a trademark. Customers choosing from aselected group of edibles enjoyed a complete mealof soup, entree, dessert, and beverage for one low,fixed price. The proprietress of a New York Citytea room offered the following fixed meal forseventy-five cents (1923):

clear tomato or cream of lettuce soupcold roast beef and potato salador hot smoked tongue and horse radish sauceor chopped livers on toast with baconor sausage and fried applescottage pudding or crushed strawberries and creamor fruit tarts or chocolate blanc mangetea or coffee

(‘‘Period Architecture’’ 6)

For value and variety, the fixed price meal wasincomparable. New York City’s Biltmore TeaRoom sold a la carte items (1923):

Chicken salad on toast $0.75Lettuce and tongue 0.45Cream cheese & Russiandressing on graham bread

0.45

Anchovies on toast 0.50Ice cream sodas 0.30–0.65

(‘‘In the Heart’’ 7)

Perhaps the most popular a la carte was theowner’s signature dish. This delectable edible,found only in her shop, set her apart from thecompetition. Rooted in domesticity—like the tearoom’s other customs—the signature dish was theequivalent of the specialty housewives whippedup for favorite guests, or celebratory occasions.The Vanity Fair Tea Room in Los Angeles had adistinctive chicken salad that ‘‘remain[ed] in one’smemory like a rare treat of childhood’’ (Scott 7).Aunt Polly’s in New York served chocolate cakewith maple icing; and Catherine Rogers, owner ofColorado’s Mary Grey Tea Room, made adelicious cake with twenty varieties of fruit and

127Woman’s Place is in the Tea Room � Eleanor Alexander

eight kinds of nuts (‘‘Aunt Polly’s’’ 15; ‘‘How theMary’’ 25).1

Other elements of domesticity were germaneto operating tea rooms. Refined dining reignedsupreme. Crisp linens, flowers, and candlesbedecked tables. This was not so in othermoderately priced establishments such as cafeter-ias, luncheonettes, and soda fountains.2 Theirstark interiors supposedly conveyed cleanliness.Tea rooms imparted warmth and exuded that airof gentility associated with middle-class homes.Food was daintily served, in small quantities.Neither liquor nor beer graced the menu. Womenimbibing strong drinks were considered vulgar atthe turn of the twentieth century, while beer wasthe domain of working-class immigrants. Civili-ties permeated all parts of the business. Oneproprietress advised: ‘‘The more a tea house canabsent itself from a commercial and graspingatmosphere—that ‘‘we-want-nothing-from-you-but-your-money’’ spirit—the more successful afoundation it will build for itself’’ (Brandimarte10).

Immersing tea rooms in domesticity worked.As one owner remarked, ‘‘. . . it is just this homepoint of view, the home atmosphere and homecooked food, that makes tea rooms increasinglyattractive the country over’’ (Ware & Ware 566).Another added: ‘‘The most successful tea room isone that preserves the atmosphere of a pleasant,well ordered home’’ (Gleason 147). By the 1920s,the tea room was a national institution. Largenumbers inhabited every city, town, and hamlet.Their overwhelming popularity caused a glut insome markets. New York City alone had twenty-nine in a single block of West Forty-Ninth Street(Whitaker 23).

Considering the nature of the restaurants—their nurture within the bonds of domesticity—the business’s growth may seem anachronistic.Tea rooms flowered during what historian Wil-liam O’Neil called ‘‘a kind of feminist golden age,1890–1920’’ (Douglass 10). During that time,women activists fought to break into what wasdesignated as man’s sphere; that is the worlds ofbusiness, commerce, and the professions. Yet atthe same time, to make a success of their

enterprise, tea shop owners exploited what wereconsidered feminine attributes. Graciousness,hospitality, and refinement were expected at tearooms; but they were unheard of at any man’splace of business. While female activists tried toeradicate sex stereotyping from certain jobs, tearoom proprietors proudly categorized their ven-ture as ‘‘woman’s own.’’ While female activistsclaimed that men prevented women from achiev-ing unlimited goals, female tea room ownerscatered to patrons through the restricted, tradi-tional role of food service.

Yet tea room proprietors cannot necessarily betermed antifeminists. Historian Karen Blair mayhave a more appropriate label—‘‘domestic femin-ist.’’ She uses it to describe those who increasedtheir autonomy within their decreed role ofproper womanhood. Domestic feminists gainedpower outside the home by extending the limitedbonds of femininity (Blair 4, 5, 10).3

This is exactly what middle-class white womendid at the turn of the twentieth century. Theyapplied the narrow bonds of domesticity todeveloping the tea room business. And theysucceeded. Although few tea shop owners wouldhave called themselves feminists, they attainedsome goals targeted by activists. Tea room ownerscreated a job situation that fostered an indepen-dence unattainable for women crashing the barrierof typical male professions. If women securedmale-dominated positions, they received less paythan their counterparts. However, tea roomentrepreneurs had no gender-imposed restrictionon their salary. Nor was there a glass ceiling. Theowner held the top administrative and managerialslot. Unlike teaching and stenography, careerswhere women had gained a foothold in the latenineteenth century, tea room entrepreneurs werenot forced to resign upon marriage. In fact, manystarted businesses when husbands were ill orsuffered financial loss. And whereas older womenhad difficulty keeping positions or re-entering thejob market, age was not a factor in the tea roombusiness. ‘‘The Tea Shop,’’ a sentimental songwritten in 1917 confirms this:

The girl in the tea shopIs not so beautiful as she was


The August has worn against herShe does not get up the stairs so eagerlyYes, she also will turn middle agedAnd the glow of youth that she spread about usWill be spread about us no longerShe also will turn middle aged.4

The Beginning

Many think because tea rooms were sosuccessful on these shores that Americans in-itiated the tea room movement. An isolated bit ofhistory supports this misconception. New YorkCity records show that in 1753, Mrs. ElizabethSteele bought a tavern called the King’s Head. Sheimmediately announced that

Instead of the heavy meals usually served . . . shewoulddevote herself to serving such home-made delicacies asthe public desired—cold ham, delicious chicken,daintysalads, rich preserves, fine pastries . . . delicate cakes[and] the most fragrant of tea.

(Pickett 19)

Steele built her prosperous business on malecustomers, probably because respectable women didnot dine in public in the eighteenth century.Although her venture thrived, no tea room pro-liferation occurred. Hence, no tea room movement.

The earliest American tea rooms date to the1890s. They were part of a movement beginningin Glasgow, Scotland. Tea was a major import, asevidenced by the city’s 160 dealers in 1871(Kerchin 18). Stuart Cranston was one of theprominent merchants. With the goal of sellingmore loose tea, in 1875 he set up accommodationsin his store for sixteen customers—‘‘elbow toelbow’’—to sample various blends at nominalprices; and nibble bread and cake for additionalsums (17). Cranston’s enterprise was aptly called atea room because the emphasis was on tea. Onehistorian cites this bare-bones venture as the firsttea room (18). Although Cranston quickly openedother stores where patrons sampled teas whileeating sandwiches and cake, he did not initiate thetea room movement. That distinction should go

to his sister Kate. Her Crown Tea Rooms in 1878offered lunch and afternoon tea in intimate,artistic settings. It is this type of tea room thatmultiplied in Glasgow and elsewhere. Scottishhistorian Perilla Kerchin writes

What happened in Glasgow was rather tardily copiedin London;other cities followed suit, and the movement spreadover thelength and breath of the land, and was taken up on theContinent[sic], and spread to every civilized spot on earth. (15)

This included America.Stuart Cranston’s first tea room should not be

tagged as the model for those springing up later inthe States. His goals were selling loose tea, andsecondarily, educating the public about thebeverage. These were never objectives in theStates. American ventures did not revolve aroundtea, even though the shops were called tea rooms.Sampling the drink was never part of the agenda,and retailing it in packaged form was a nominal tononexistent portion of the business. Americanproprietors offered several nonalcoholic potables,with coffee being as popular as tea. One may thenwonder why stateside ventures were called tearooms when tea was not stressed. It was probablybecause that name was attached to the restaurantconcept when it came from Europe and/orbecause afternoon tea was initially an importantpart of the business. Another reason for notcasting Cranston’s tea room as the Americanprototype is that his lacked atmosphere. This wasendemic to those in the States. His shops hadneither ambiance nor intimacy, probably becauseof clientele.

From the beginning Cranston served male andfemale customers, although they sat in genderedsections. Seating patterns acknowledged the mid-dle-class doctrine of separate spheres permeatingEurope and America. This was the belief that menand women were inherently different, and werethereby relegated to divergent life roles. Womenwere pious, delicate, and refined. Their world wasthat of motherhood, domesticity, and submissionto masculine authority. Men were ruthless,aggressive, and ambitious. Their sphere was thatof politics, business, and commerce. This edict of


separate worlds had a different interpretation inAmerican tea rooms than in Cranston’s. Whereashe served both men and women—although seatedin sexually segregated sections—nineteenth-cen-tury American tea rooms were for women only.

The diversity emanated in purpose. Onceagain, Cranston wanted to sell patrons more tea,regardless of gender, whereas American tea roomscropped up to meet a demand of elite whitewomen. They needed restaurants of their own. Itwas socially unacceptable for them to dine ineateries serving both genders unless accompaniedby a respectable looking man. With men atbusiness during daytime hours when elite womenshopped (and only in those parts of stores setaside for them), what was the gentler sex to do fora repast?

It was a very real problem. Historian PerryDuis notes that the presence of nineteenth-century Boston women in public places ‘‘doingthe things that men did was an emotional issue,’’causing men dining in cheap eateries in 1890, toraise eyebrows when women entered (Duis 186).He concludes that the concern for the well-beingof ladies at lunch spawned a rapid increase in thenumber of tea rooms at the turn of the century.

Ellen Rodman Church addressed this problemof women diners in her nineteenth-century book,Money-Making for Ladies. Using a fictionalcharacter, ‘‘Ysolte of the white hands,’’ the authorpersonifies elite females in need of lunch, as wellas income. However, the author explains, theseladies are not ‘‘obliged to enter the ranks ofrecognized working-women’’—that is, working-class women (Church 3–4). Ysolte’s description—‘‘of the white hands’’—indicates not only that sheis a gentle woman of European descent, but alsothat she does not work, because she lacks therough, red hands of laborers. While shopping, thetired, hungry heroine cannot find a satisfactoryplace for lunch. Although there are plenty ofcheap establishments for men, there is nothingcomparable and nearby for women. Ysolte goes toa department store restaurant but finds prices highand the food inferior. Even worse, she encountersrude service and filthy table linen. She dreams of amodel lunch room for females with excellent

coffee, homemade bread, immaculate linens, andpleasing decorations. ‘‘What a chance,’’ shethought, ‘‘for some enterprising woman to makea fortune!’’ (5). She could begin on a small scalewith just a pleasant spoken assistant.

Charlene Baker, proprietress of Buttercup HillTea Room in Lunenberg, Massachusetts, startedsmall. She opened with a kerosene stove andseating for twelve. Baker offered simple food andmade cakes, pies, and mayonnaise at home,bringing them to the tea room each day (Whitaker60). The owner of the Blue Peacock in Cam-bridge, Ohio, opened her forty-seat restaurant onUS$500.00 in 1923 (Green 13). It cost US$700.00to start San Francisco’s Court Yard Tea Room inthe same year (‘‘An Outdoor’’ 5). Other entre-preneurs lowered expenses by setting up tearooms in their homes. In so doing, they savedthe cost of renting a shop. Usually women’s onlychoice was starting small. It was almost impos-sible for them to get loans and credit in theirnames. They fared best when male relativessecured capital.

Many shoestring operations succeeded, butmany also failed. Major reasons were the samethat can kill any business—inexperience and lackof capital. Business analysts opposed starting teashops with a minimum amount of cash. Instead, acareer analyst in 1926 specializing in tea roomsrecommended no less than US$8000 to get a shop(with the ideal seating capacity of seventy) up andrunning. The sum was to be distributed asfollows:

1. Equipment $3000.002. Improvement, decorations 2000.003. Deposits with landlord,

electricity, and gas1000.00

4. Reserved capital 2000.00

(Elliott 9)

Another expert suggested operating expensesof US$276.00 per month for a city business in agood neighborhood, but away from the down-town district. In this scheme the owner took nosalary.


1. Rent on a small room, kitchen,and possibly small reception hall

$100.00

2. Gas bill if afternoon teaand lunch are served

20.00

3. Electric bill if afternoon teaand lunch are served

8.00

4. Cook preparing afternoon teaand one other meal

80.00

5. Dish washer 40.006. Waitress based on tip prospects 28.00

(‘‘While the Kettle Sings’’ 9)

Professionals cautioned beginners to keep alow overhead for a period of three years, and tostay with the venture for at least that long.

Tea room entrepreneurship could be lucrative.The average annual income for big city managersand owners was US$5000–6000 in 1924 (‘‘TeaRoom’’ 19). This may be compared roughly withbeginning salaries of stenographers, one of thetraditionally male jobs opened to women in thelate nineteenth century. The federal governmentpaid US$1280–2340 per annum in 1926 (‘‘Help’’15). The prospect of a good income was not theonly reason to set up shop. The proprietress of theaforementioned Court Yard Tea Room spoke ofthe ‘‘grand and glorious feeling of being your ownboss [and] earning your own money’’ (‘‘AnOutdoor’’ 13). Augusta Bell, of the Pierrette TeaShop in New York City, left her job as a WallStreet secretary when told that she had ‘‘advancedas far as a woman could go.’’ Bell opened a tearoom. When interviewed about the success of herrestaurant, she replied,’’ I think many womenwho are having a really stupid time as secretariescould really make good at this business’’(‘‘Glimpses’’ 6).

Owning or managing a tea room appealed toambitious, independent women. Each year thistype of female increased in numbers. By 1900,more women than men graduated from highschool, and eighty percent of the nation’s collegesadmitted women (Banner 4, 6). However, becauseof the limited number of occupations available tothem, these graduates often asked themselves,‘‘After college, what?’’ Historian Frederick Allensays of this dilemma, ‘‘. . . girls of the middle

classes who wanted to ‘do something’ with theirlives had largely been restricted to school-teach-ing, social service work, nursing, stenography, andclerical work in business houses . . . . But now . . .they [go] into tearoom management’’ (Allen 84).

For two New York City siblings, Jeanette andJosephine Ware, tea room entrepreneurship alsoanswered the question of ‘‘After college, what?’’Upon graduation, the sisters worked in salariedpositions, and decided they were too limiting.Then they examined several independent venturesin the early 1920s, before concluding that ‘‘tearoom management is the one business that womencan go into and do as well as a man—if not better’’(‘‘A Romance’’ 6–7). Within two years the Waresowned as many tea shops. Shortly thereafter, theyopened a school of tea room management, as didmany others. The Lewis Tea Room Institute inWashington, DC advertised in 1926:

You Can Manage A Tea Room. Fortunes are beingmade in Tea Rooms . . . .You can open one in your own home—city, town,country or resort, and make money hand over fist,or manage one already going. Big salaries paidto trained managers; shortages acute. We teachyou entire business in a few weeks. You train inspare time at cost of but few cents a day. Beindependent. Write for free book, ‘‘Pouring Tea forProfit.’’

(Whitaker 109)

By the 1920s, tea room entrepreneurship wasacknowledged as a profession. It had its own tradepublications such as Tea Room Management,giving advice on how to succeed in the business.College officials viewed the field as a suitablecareer for graduates. Educators incorporated teashop administration courses into home economicsprograms, and opened tea rooms on universitycampuses.5 The University of Wisconsin offered acourse called ‘‘Cafeteria and Tea Room Manage-ment.’’ On a weekly basis, students working ingroups of five ran the campus tea room. Theyrotated positions so that each had the experienceof being manager, chef, pastry cook, salad girl, andwaitress (Brandimarte 17). Additionally, in localcommunities, tea room training classes were heldin high schools, cooking schools, and branches ofthe Young Women’s Christian Association.


Boom and Decline

The tea room was a national institution by the1920s, and no longer woman’s sole domain.Opportunities in entrepreneurship and manage-ment drew men to the business. Large hotels inparticular preferred male supervisors, althoughwomen had built tea rooms into successfulventures. But even with this masculine invasion,females remained the majority owners, managers,and tea room patrons.

Women had created the tea room sensationby exploiting its homey attributes. Yet that alonedid not cause its phenomenal success. Great chan-ges occurred in American society between the1890s and 1920s. The manner in which own-ers responded to these transformations greatlyinfluenced business growth and approbation.Increased patronage resulted; for by the 1920s,tea rooms were no longer just for elite women.

Female office employees constituted the newpatron group. They lunched primarily in businessand financial districts. Because of changes in theworkforce, these women formed a customer basethat would only grow over time. Increasingly,employers preferred females for low-level officejobs, because management could pay them one-half the salary of comparable males. By 1920,more than twenty-five percent of wage earningwhite women were office workers (Kessler-Harris96). And these single women fueled a boom in tearooms.

While females remained the most prevalentpatrons, men too, frequented tea rooms. Prohibi-tion brought them in. Traditionally saloonsoffered a free or cheap lunch for the price of aglass of beer. When the Eighteenth Amendmentclosed these establishments in January 1920, menneeded another source of viands. Males alsocreated a demand for evening meals. Manybachelors in big cities rented rooms with nodining facilities. Tea room owners changed theirhours of operation and served supper to this newmarket. A banker in Toledo, Ohio, enjoyed tearoom dinners because he thought they wereunique. He commented,

When I dine at the Ottawa Hill Tea House, I feel as ifthe dinner had been cooked especially for me; in anyother public place I patronized I someway get the ideathat they have piles of food just like mine out in thekitchen and have dished up some of it for me.

(Hineline 8)

The ‘‘servant problem’’ also swelled the ranks oftea room patrons during the 1920s. Elite familieslamented the loss of live-in domestic help. Farmgirls and European immigrants traditionally madeup this class; but by the 1920s, other optionsbeckoned. ‘‘Never go to a country town to get agirl,’’ related a well-to-do homeowner. ‘‘They wantto go to the city to work in a factory, or to trainthemselves to be typewriters or school teachers’’(Levenstein 63). Recent immigrants worked asdomestics only until they could get factory jobs. Inthe 1880s, upper-middle-class families of Europeandescent had three to four live-in servants, andmiddle-class families, one or two. But by 1920,one-half of the declining number of domesticsresided in their own homes (162). Because foodpreparation was the traditional task of live-incooks, and they were rare, elite householdsmembers began eating out. Ida Frese, proprietressof three New York City tea rooms, saw the servantproblem as a boon for the business. She remarked,‘‘Many families in the present shortage of servantswould be only too glad to take one meal outregularly every day. Why, the opportunity istremendous’’ (Breuning 5). So sure was Ida Freseof this new business trend that she signed anunprecedented eighty-four years lease for her tearoom properties (‘‘While the Kettle’’ 11). Theservant problem further enriched tea rooms.Without live-in cooks to prepare fancy morsels,the eateries became the sites of club meetings,bridal showers, and other events requiring finefood, a dignified air, and hired help.

Some tea room owners cashed in on thegrowing propensity for night life in the 1920s.New York City’s Mary Warner Tea Room re-opened at 9 O’clock to serve theater goers latesupper. Seattle’s Pig and Whistle also opened late,but for a different reason. Employees rolled upthe heavy carpet and pushed tables and chairsaside so guests could dance. Tea dances—as theywere called—were especially popular during


prohibition. The American House Tea Room inWashington, DC, advertised afternoon tea anddancing for seventy-five cents per person (Whi-taker 25). New Yorker Mike Lewis said of suchdances, ‘‘You’d have them at 4:30 and they’d lastan hour and a half or so. The Pennsylvania Hotelwas very elegant for a tea dance’’ (Kisselhoff 133).Added another New Yorker, ‘‘[W]hen I was atVassar I’d go to the tea dances . . . . They werewonderful if you had a date’’ (132).

With the tea room’s warm, cozy ambiance, itwas inevitable that it should become a favorite oflovers. No doubt the milieu aided romance. Apoet wrote,

The guests sit long and smoke and chat,And stroke the friendly tea room cat,While wistful lovers linger here,For tea and toast and atmosphere.

(‘‘The Tea’’ 10)

Because of its elite connotations, men oftensaw the tea room as a place to take a woman on aspecial date. This is evident in the 1931 song,‘‘When I Take My Sugar to Tea’’:

When I take my sugar to teaAll the boys are jealous of me,Cause I never take her where the gang goesWhen I take my sugar to tea.I’m a rowdy dowdy, that’s me,She’s a high hat baby, that’s she.So I never take where the gang goesWhen I take my sugar to tea.6

The tea room was not just a sophisticatedurban experience. It sprang up in rural areas too,especially in New England and the Northeastcoast. Automobiles were the reason, as well asgood roads. Car registration was highest in theNortheast, and highways better. Conversely, fewroadside tea rooms emerged in rural areas of theMidwest and South.

Country businesses were called tea inns. Themost successful were within an easy drivingdistance of a major city. Urban motorists likedto take the air on weekend afternoons and lunchat their idealized notion of a rural tea room. Smartentrepreneurs opened tea shops in old farm-houses, barns, stables, and mills. Then ownersfabricated rustic interiors.

The Wayside Inn in Pennsylvania was typical.Located on a major state road, it was situated in a

century-old farmhouse owned by two impover-ished sisters.

The ladies decided to open a tea room. Theirfarmhouse had all the nostalgic appeal thatcustomers sought: stone walls, low beamedceilings, fireplace, wooden floors. To this thesisters added snowy white muslin curtains,handmade rag rugs, and Windsor style chairspopular in the eighteenth century. Brass candle-sticks and pewter objects were scattered about theroom, and an antique mirror hung over thefireplace. The sisters also placed the family’sheirloom blue and white china on built-in shelves.It was perhaps after dining in such a setting that acustomer wrote, ‘‘[When] the fresh air whets theappetites of the [motor car] riders . . . the chanceto have a cup of tea at an old farmhouse ratherthan at the average roadhouse, makes a strongappeal’’ (‘‘Road Side’’ 494).

Rural tea rooms offered the complete rusticexperience as well as country items for sale. Butterchurned by local women, honey from local bees,quilts, handcrafted items, preserves, pies—what-ever nearby matrons produced. Tea inns werepopular and competition fierce. To get and keepcustomers, some owners served free second help-ings; others gave apples to departing patrons orbags of homemade cookies.

Just about this time, urban tea rooms beganretailing gift items. In fact, it is uncertain whetherthe rural or city ventures initiated the practice.Many managers added gift areas in their tearooms, stocking them with items that particularlyappealed to women. Art, books, needlework,home-made candy, and feminine apparel weresold. Retailing these products was a lucrativesideline. To promote profitability, the industrylaunched a new publication in the 1920s calledTea Room and Gift Shop. In many eateries thismerger revived the nineteenth-century concept ofa woman’s exchange. This was a site where itemshand crafted by elite women were sold for theirbenefit. It was one of the few acceptable meansfor refined females to make money, and perhapsto keep knowledge of this modest income fromtheir husbands. The gift shop in New York City’sStage Door Inn Tea Room worked on the


exchange principle. All items were made byactresses between engagements. Catherine Ro-gers, owner of the Mary Grey Tea Room inColorado, liked sewing and sold her projects inthe gift shop. However, perhaps the most activeentrepreneurs in tea room retail were rural tea innowners. They actively commissioned and pro-moted products by local women. Some proprie-tors even sold country antiques.

Although business boomed for tea roomentrepreneurs in the 1920s, and their customerbase expanded, not everyone was welcomed.Owners preferred middle-class and upper-incomepatrons of European descent. The proprietress ofthe Blue Lantern Inn in Lexington, Kentucky,admitted to pricing her food high enough toeliminate the cafeteria crowd. Still there wereothers owners found undesirable as patrons.Never seat ‘‘an over painted woman by a frontwindow,’’ advised a successful entrepreneur. ‘‘Shespoils the atmosphere’’ (Wierman 16). A businessanalyst also ruled out ‘‘the less refined, or thoseengaged in a class of work which prevents themfrom constantly appearing in clean clothes’’(Elliott 62). Nor were people of SouthernEuropean or Eastern European ethnicity wanted.

Regardless of socio-economic status, people ofcolor were welcome in mainstream tea roomsonly as low-level employees. Even this presentedproblems in the South. ‘‘To avoid mutiny,’’ saidthe owner of the Satsuma Tea Room in Nashville,‘‘I use all colored folk in the kitchen; waitressesare all white’’ (Ware 23; Hergesheimer 57). Theproprietress of the Blue Lantern in Nashvilleemployed only women of color. Because shebelieved they were prone to stealing, she inven-toried her stock every morning.

Women of African descent patronized main-stream tea rooms in disguise. That is, their skincolor was so light, and features so European thatthey were assumed to be white. This is the fate ofIrene Redfield in the 1929 novel Passing by NellaLarsen. Larsen, an African American, wrotefrequently on the theme, perhaps because shebelieved her absent father had crossed the colorline. In her story, the heroine dines at a rooftoptea room in Chicago. She is fearful that her true

identity is suspected. Redfield wonders whetherthe management will be pleasant when she isasked to leave.

Crossing the color line was never a problem forAlice Dunbar-Nelson, widow of the famed Afri-can-American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Withnear white skin, auburn hair and hazel eyes, sheassumed a white persona whenever she wished toattend a concert, play, or other public forum thatexcluded African Americans. Alice was an author/journalist who traveled frequently. She lovedeating in local tea rooms. There are four referencesto them in her 1928 diary. On June 28, whilewaiting for repairs on a flat tire outside ofRichmond, Virginia, she visited the Arcadia TeaRoom with her sister Leila, and her niece Polly. Itwas ‘‘a very gorgeous place,’’ Alice wrote in herdiary. Although she and her sister were indis-tinguishable from white women, Polly, her brown-skinned niece was refused admittance. ‘‘They JimCrowed Polly,’’ Alice entered in her diary, ‘‘soLeila and I would drink no tea there’’ (Hull 242).Her next excursion was more successful. Alice atelunch at the Venetian Tea Room in New York Citywith Bessye Bearden, mother of late-twentieth-century artist, Romare Bearden. Like Alice, Mrs.Bearden crossed the color line with no difficulty. Afew months later Alice’s dined at the only African-American tea room noted in her diary, a Chicagorestaurant called the Colonial Tea Room, locatedin a black neighborhood. In Alice’s last diary entrydated December 7th, she wrote that she ate a bowlof very bad chicken soup at the Marion Tea Roomin Philadelphia.

Alice’s tea room adventures and those of thefictional Irene Redfield suggest that AfricanAmericans were also caught up in the tea roomcraze. Regardless of race, people simply enjoyeddining in these atmospheric restaurants. More-over, like their mainstream counterparts, African-American owners apparently preferred middle-class and upscale patrons. According to manage-ment, only ‘‘the wealthier class of colored people’’lunched and dined at Chicago’s Poro Tea Room(Whitaker 26).

Not enough people of any socio-economicgroup ate in tea shops during the Great Depres-


sion. Owners lowered prices, but that was notenough. The depression, followed by war-timeshortages of the 1940s, forced most independententrepreneurs to close. A new competitor alsohurt tea room business. Kathleen Drowne andPatrick Huber state that other eateries offeringfaster service and lower prices attracted morecustomers (131). Only tea rooms located in largedepartment stores, or as part of a chain, surviveduntil final death in the 1960s.

But during the early twentieth century, the tearoom was a major cultural institution. It so impactedAmerican society that it was heralded in stories,poems, and songs. Yet few realize that women gaveit birth. What began as a small restaurant operatedby white middle-class women for their own kind,developed into a profitable national industry. Thesesmall eateries further evolved into social centers. Fora time, and for a large segment of the population, tearooms were a way of life.

Notes

1. For other articles on tea room signature dishes, see CarolineKing (1923) and Helena Judson (1916).

2. The luncheonette was a small, no frills restaurant offering onlysandwiches, beverages, and desserts. Soda fountains gained popular-ity in the late nineteenth century and were commonly found indrugstores. Initially, only ice cream-based carbonated drinks andthose made from flavored syrups were sold. By the twentiethcentury, a quick lunch was available. See Harvey Levenstein (1988).

3. Historian Lois Banner has a more restrictive definition of theterm ‘‘domestic feminist’’ than Karen Blair. See Banner (1974, 38).Kathryn Glover (1987, 48) coined a similar term ‘‘material feminist.’’

4. Ezra Pound wrote the lyrics to ‘‘The Tea Shop,’’ John Kochwrote the music.

5. For tea rooms as a learning device on college campuses, seeEda Lord Murphy (1922, 1923) and Lois M. Davis (1929)

6. ‘‘When I Take My Sugar to Tea’’ was written in 1931. Lyricsand music by Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal, and Pierre Norman (1931).

Works Cited

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Banner, Lois. Women in Modern America: A Brief History. NewYork: Harcourt, 1974.

Blair, Karen. The Clubwoman as Feminist: True WomanhoodRedefined. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980.

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