From the History Buzz archives: It’s time for tea!
Before there was History Buzz, there were over 100 stories emailed to our readers from another platform. From the archives is an occasional look back to a time before History Buzz started buzzing.
Let’s take a look back to August 14, 2020, to a short post, “It’s Time for Tea.” A big round of thanks goes to occasional History Buzz writer Gail Ralston for her May 2020 Andover Stories article on tea rooms. You can find her original Andover Stories article on the History Center’s website.
It's Time for Tea!
Tea rooms were a step into independence for women entrepreneurs
The establishment of tea rooms in America in the early 1900s expanded opportunities for women to own their own businesses. This impetus for single women to supplement family income began with their inability to dine publicly in regular restaurants.
Afternoon tea grew in popularity in the late 19th century, but most tea rooms at the time were in high end urban hotel restaurants, off limits to most middle class women. Beyond the cost, an unaccompanied woman risked her reputation entering a restaurant without a male escort, because restaurants were associated with appetites of all kinds, not just food.
In Cynthia Brandimartes' article “Gender, Space, and America's Tea Room Movement,” she observes,1
The tavern scenes were dominated by men. Women weren't welcome in some places at all, and only with a man in other tea rooms, often in a home, gave women chances to dine out.
Because Americans were not as dedicated to tea as their British counterparts, independent tea rooms served more than just that beverage. Tea rooms were also known for serving simply-prepared, home-cooked meals.
The small independent tea room faded from American life in the mid-20th century. Mary Mac’s Tea Room in Atlanta, opened in 1945, is one of the only remaining tea rooms in the country.
The Rose Cottage Tea Room at the old home at 2 Chestnut St. was one of Andover’s first tea rooms. It was a short adventure for this 240-year-old house. For seven years – from 1906 to 1913 – Elizabeth “Lizzie” Marland ran the Rose Cottage Tea Room in the front room of the house.
Lizzie and her husband Abraham Marland became the last of the Marland family to own the house. In 1906, Lizzie altered the house to use it as a tea room. She installed latticed windows, boxed in the ceiling beams, and installed hardwood over the original wide pine floor boards to accommodate tea room foot traffic.
As typical of other tea rooms, the Rose Cottage offered teas and much more. The menu included afternoon tea for 25¢; tuna fish salad, 20¢; potato salad, 15¢; and egg salad with nut bread, 20¢. Other beverages were coffee, ginger ale, grape juice and chocolate.
After her husband Abraham died in 1911, Lizzie and her son Harold continued to live in the house until 1913. They then moved and rented it to another resident. In 1916, Lizzie rented the home to Muriel and Christine Rundlett of North Andover, who continued the tea room well into the 1920s.
The tea room closed shortly before the height of the small tea room craze during prohibition in the 1920s.
Lizzie Marland was at the forefront of the small independent tea room business. Owned by women, staffed by women, with a primarily middle class female clientele, independent tea rooms were a new business opportunity for women.
In 1911, a tea room and gift shop opened in Andover under the name The Circle. Located in the attractive house on Main Street, this enterprise was run by two guild members, Miss Thompson and Miss Ashton. Miss Ashton, a graduate of the Boston Domestic Science School, was in charge of the tea room. The gift room was managed by Miss Thompson.
The next year in the ARCO Building at 56 Main St., the newly-established Goldsmith-Clark Company opened its tea room, The Sign of the Bay Tree. Here, the former store workshop was converted into a "delicately tinted, well-lighted room, entered through an archway opening from the gift shop.''
Away from the town center, the old Abbot Homestead on Andover Street soon opened The Old Abbot Homestead Tea Garden. Open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., the tea garden's "bill of fare'' included sponge, nut and fruit jumbles cakes; a variety of cookies; and lemonade. Yes, tea was also served and sold along with postcards and large photographs of the house.
Instead of inside a home or commercial property, according to the article, “Reporter’s Idea of the Tea Garden” published in July 1914, tea was served under the ancient elm tree in front of the home.
Between two hundred and fifty and three hundred years have passed since that elm tree sprouted, a time far off and dim in these busy, restless days. The Reporter signed her name in the guest book, with the old quill pen belonging to Miss Abbot's grandfather and expressed much curiosity over the stone inkwell that dated back as far as the pen.
And, in 1916, shortly after its founding in 1911, the Andover Historical Society offered Saturday afternoon tea in its first location on the corner of Main and Chestnut Streets.
Tea rooms continued to pop up in Andover through the 1920s and 1930s.
On Jan. 7, 1927, a new tea room opened at 109 Main St. — Ye Andover Manse. Its name can still be seen on the building.
As if by magic,'' Mrs. Louise I. Maxwell converted the old dwelling into a "tastefully appointed and progressive tea room.'' Mrs. Maxwell upped the competitive ante and offered dinner dances, the first of its kind seen in town. The tea rooms had a seating capacity of 32, decorated with "white wainscoting and dashing color schemes of green and orange.
The names of other tea rooms reflected the owner's creativity: Black Cat Tea Room at 5 Morton St.; Kirkshire at 174 Lowell St.; and the Nasson at 56 Bartlet. Also, the Open Door at 137 Main St.; the Red Lantern at 123 Main St.; Shattuck Farms off River Road; Stop & Rest on Woburn Street; and Wallaces off Haggetts Pond.
At The Open Door Tea Room, proprietress Lillian Seymore offered more substantial meals than Rose Cottage had, including Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners. She recruited bridge clubs and other women’s groups to meet at the tea room, and also did some catering.
Remembering these tea rooms in today's fast-paced world, I hope we never turn down the opportunity to create social times where all can enjoy conversation and a spot of tea!
How about you? Have you visited a traditional tea room? Are there any tea rooms to be found in your community?
Thank you, Gail, for your Andover Stories article, which added a lot of fun detail to this archives revisit. And thank YOU for reading!
Resources
There's much more to the story of 2 Chestnut Street! You can find it on the Andover Historic Preservation website. Want to learn more about team rooms? Check out Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn: A Social History of the Tea Room Craze in America.
Be sure to check out Gail Ralston’s May 2020 Andover Stories article on tea rooms. You can find her original Andover Stories article on the History Center’s website.
In the late 1930s, my mother, Mary Casey, and her sister, Dorothy Canney, and their husbands bravely opened a tea room they called Casey’s Bungalow on Jackson Street. My understanding is that it was in Methuen, but the Jackson Street address suggests it may have been in Lawrence. Since nobody had any money at that time I don’t know where they got the money to open the tea room, as my mother always called it, but it didn’t last a whole long time.They made the mistake of letting their friends “cuff” meals so they soon went broke. I was about four years old, but I do remember it and remember the dining room and The ladies room which I was not supposed to use. Before my family bought it, it was called Flo’s Tea Room run by a single mother, Florence Kavanaugh. The house is still there, but everything around it has changed quite a bit. Curiously, I now live up the street from Casey’s bungalow
Check out Charles Rennie Mackintosh's designs for Miss {Kate] Cranston's Tea Rooms in Glasgow, Scotland. Her Willow Tearooms were restored years ago, so, yes, you can still get an idea of what he and Cranston did, which was basically bring strikingly modern design to Edwardian Scotland. But more importantly, here's the food: https://www.mackintoshatthewillow.com/menus/