Tea Rooms

In the late 19th century, a handful of tea rooms and shops emerged as public places of refreshment in the United States, marking the movement of a tradition of the home parlor into the marketplace. Often run by women and patronized largely by women, tea rooms provided employment, helped define the feminine in dining customs, and assisted in integrating women into public life.

By 1910, tea rooms could be found clustered in cities, towns, and resort areas of the Northeast and upper Midwest and also throughout the rest of the United States; for example, Memphis, Louisville, and Reno. By 1935, there were 18,000 tea rooms nationally, accounting for 12 percent of all restaurants.

The earliest enterprises were the creation of “gentlewomen in reduced circumstances,” who saw a chance to make a living with their hostess skills and social connections at a time when women of means were beginning to seek leisure outside the home. Even today, an aura of upper-class elitism, often interpreted as British, surrounds the custom of afternoon tea and the tea rooms in which it is consumed. In addition, the tea rooms of today have remained resolutely feminine, with owners acting as hostesses who welcome guests as though in their own homes.

Women have always made up the primary customer base for tea rooms. Except for some hotels, department stores, and candy store chains that operated tea rooms, most have been run by women. Tea rooms have furnished attractive business opportunities for traditional women, whether home based or trained in home economics. Another sign of their social and economic significance is that in the 1920s, the rapidly expanding restaurant industry paid close attention to tea rooms, by then grown into small restaurants, as a way of learning how to cater to increasing numbers of women patrons. Tea rooms helped establish popular features of restaurants, such as outdoor dining, candles, flowers, hostesses, specialty breads, novelty names, themes, and costumed servers.

Historically, the appeal of tea rooms for women have paralleled those of taverns or saloons for men: Both offer a “license” for self-indulgence and an escape from the world. The meals and refreshments provided by tea rooms are traditionally out-of-the-ordinary luxuries that are special in their ingredients, preparation, and presentation. As a space, the tea room has been appreciated as a quiet, charmingly decorated, and immaculate setting, offering a refuge from the grit, commercialism, and aggressive environment of the city. A singular aspect of the tea room in its early years was that it was alcohol-free. This, along with women managers, servers, and customers, allowed respectability for women unescorted by men at a time when lone women were assumed to be morally suspect or engaged in prostitution. By the 1920s, women could go anywhere, and tea rooms expanded into lunchrooms, with patronage that included working women and some men. Even after the repeal of Prohibition in the 1930s, many tea rooms declined to serve alcoholic beverages.

Generally, tea rooms were conceived as catering to “ladies,” or the cult of “ladyhood,” traces of which can still be found in tea culture today. A lady was known for having a delicate appetite and refined tastes. The food [Page 826]that best epitomized this was the thin, crustless lettuce sandwich, sometimes tied with pink ribbons. Tea rooms have always served meat dishes, but meat that is large, messy, or bloody is unlikely to appear on a menu. Other common characteristics of food in tea rooms are small portion size, whiteness, creaminess, lightness, and copious garnishing. Fancy salads and desserts, once thought incapable of being made properly by anyone but a lady, have long been tea room staples.

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