Patreon From the Land of Tea Nov 2022 Old California Tea Rooms
From Mystic Tea Room
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[[File:Hale-Bros-Inc-Cafe-and-Tea-Room-San-Francisco-California-postcard-front.jpg|center|600px|thumb|Hale Bros. Inc. Cafe and Tea Room, San Francisco, California. Hale Bros. was a department store chain that originated in Sacramento, California and spread throughout the region. After the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, Hale Bros. boasted that their new building, which was completed and opened in 1912, was the "First Store rehabilitated since the great fire.". The tea room and cafe is done up in the popular Craftsman style of the period, complete with potted palms. The Hale Brothers Department Store building still stands at the corner of Market Street and Fifth, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.]] | [[File:Hale-Bros-Inc-Cafe-and-Tea-Room-San-Francisco-California-postcard-front.jpg|center|600px|thumb|Hale Bros. Inc. Cafe and Tea Room, San Francisco, California. Hale Bros. was a department store chain that originated in Sacramento, California and spread throughout the region. After the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, Hale Bros. boasted that their new building, which was completed and opened in 1912, was the "First Store rehabilitated since the great fire.". The tea room and cafe is done up in the popular Craftsman style of the period, complete with potted palms. The Hale Brothers Department Store building still stands at the corner of Market Street and Fifth, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.]] | ||
- | [[File:Hee-Jan-and-Co-Chinese-Restaurant-and-Tea-Garden-San-Francisco.jpg|center|400px|thumb|Hee Jan and Co. Chinese Restaurant and Tea Garden, San Francisco, California. One of many elaborate Cantonese-style buildings in San Francisco, this building also boasted a rather unexpected moving picture house on the ground floor. The advertised Kinetoscope was a one-person peep-hole viewer, not a projector. Introduced to the public in 1895, Kinetoscope Parlours were rooms filled with these machines, in which operators stood by to assist the customers in viewing short films that were accompanied by sounds played on synchronized photograph disks. The advent of film projection brought an end to the Kinetoscope in 1914, this giving us a date-range for this postcard. The text on the back identifies the card | + | [[File:Hee-Jan-and-Co-Chinese-Restaurant-and-Tea-Garden-San-Francisco.jpg|center|400px|thumb|Hee Jan and Co. Chinese Restaurant and Tea Garden, San Francisco, California. One of many elaborate Cantonese-style buildings in San Francisco, this building also boasted a rather unexpected moving picture house on the ground floor. The advertised Kinetoscope was a one-person peep-hole viewer, not a projector. Introduced to the public in 1895, Kinetoscope Parlours were rooms filled with these machines, in which operators stood by to assist the customers in viewing short films that were accompanied by sounds played on synchronized photograph disks. The advent of film projection brought an end to the Kinetoscope in 1914, this giving us a date-range for this postcard. The text on the back identifies the card as part of the Southern Pacific Railroad series "On the Road of a Thousand Wonders."]] |
===Santa Rosa=== | ===Santa Rosa=== |
Revision as of 07:25, 30 November 2022
In this installment of "From the Land of Tea," we take a sneak-peek look at an upcoming page that will eventually be on display to the public. As a Patreon supporter, you have access to the page one full year before the public does.
- Patreon Release Date: November 28th, 2022.
- Public Release Date: November 28th, 2023.
Please tell your friends that they can subscribe to my Patreon stream for $2.00 per week:
We return again to Rooms by Location. These are old postcards, and each one has a caption explaining it, and some have additional text. These images will eventually be on display at the Mystic Tea Room web site. As a Patreon supporter, you have access to them one full year before the public does.
To place this work in context, please read the following introductory pages
Contents |
California
The Tea Rooms of California vary greatly in style, but two aesthetic themes stand out from the rest: The Craftsman or Mission Style Tea Room and the Cantonese Tea Room. California had no Colonial tea room history to exploit, and no great connection to Jolly Old England, but at the height of the tea room craze, Mission style oak furniture, which had first become popular in California, could be found all up and down the coast, and lent itself well to the conversion of small homes, lodges, hotels, and shops into tea room spaces.
The influx of immigrants from China, began during the Gold Rush of the early 1850s and continued on as Cantonese workers came to provide labour on West Coast railroads during the late 19th century. When the development of the railroads was completed and families settled down, this wave of immigration left in its wake hundreds of Chinese tea rooms, restaurants, and gift stores, all along the Southern Pacific line, "On the Road of a Thousand Wonders."
The great earthquake and fire that destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906 struck just as the postcard craze was getting underway, and San Franciscans took great pride in showing the world their rebuilt tea rooms in the form of advertising postcards just as soon as they reopened for business.
Pasadena
San Francisco
Santa Rosa
catherine yronwode
curator, historian, and docent
The Mystic Tea Room