Tea Room History

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Revision as of 08:52, 27 October 2020 by Catherine Yronwode (Talk | contribs)
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The history of tea rooms can in one sense be considered a small portion of the history of restaurants, along with soda fountains, ice cream parlours, and coffee houses. However this viewpoint overlooks or ignores the real importance of tea rooms and what social historians have come to rightfully call "the tea room movement."

You see, in the late 19th and early 20th century, tea rooms were far more than places to sit down for a light lunch or a spot of afternoon tea. They were intimately entwined with some of the major progressive political campaigns of their era, namely, the abolition of slavery; the rights of women to own property, drive vehicles, and vote; the rise of Spiritualism and metaphysics as women-led religious movements; the rights of gay and lesbian people to exist; and the temperance plan to outlaw alcohol as a scourge whose victims were most often women and children abused by violent men.

The Ware School of Tea Room Management 15-lesson course, New York City, 1927. The Ware School course taught prospective entrepreneurs how to pick a tea room location, how to decorate the theme of the interior, what foods to offer, how to design business cards and menus, how to select employees, and how to purchase dining room and kitchen equipment. My copies of these booklets belonged to M. P. Mason, who made notes in a very neat pencil hand, among other things selecting Maddock China as the "Best" and Syracuse China as the "Next Best."

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catherine yronwode
curator, historian, and docent
The Mystic Tea Room

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