Vintage American Tea Rooms

Tea rooms were enormously popular in America in the first half of the 20th century (See below for information about my book on the tea room craze, TEA AT THE BLUE LANTERN INN). Everyone, from schoolteachers to recent college graduates to homemakers, wanted to own one, or at least run one. They were THE fashionable places for women, especially, to eat and meet friends in small towns, big cities, suburbs, and in the countryside. They reflected the latest fashions in interior decorating, using a variety of artsy ploys to transform little cottages and bare shoprooms into places of wonder and delight. They also specialized in the kind of food women loved, particularly beautiful salads, dainty sandwiches, and delicious desserts.

The Mary Louise Tea Room, Los Angeles, California ca. 1920

The room looks as though it's been decked out for a special party, maybe a wedding shower or a bridesmaids' luncheon. Each place setting has a floral display. Dressed dolls surround the lavish be-ribboned centerpiece. Clear glass dishes appear at each place, with a stemmed glass of what looks like fruit salad. Behind the table to the right is a silver tea service on a tea cart.

The Mary Louise, with its Oriental carpet, chandelier, fresh cut flowers, and pink and white color scheme, is a good example of a high-class tea room of the early 20th century, many of which were found in premier hotels. They attracted the society elite, who found it convenient and charming to entertain their guests in tea rooms.

The South Grill Room, Marshall Field Department Store, Chicago ca. 1915

Marshall Field had one of the earliest tea rooms. In fact around 1920 Field's had not one tea room, but six. The South Grill (now the Walnut Room) was one of those that served afternoon tea, on wicker tables and chairs clustered around the fountain. Wicker furniture was extremely popular in the teens, and the tables and chairs pictured here borrow from the styles of the Arts & Crafts movement.

Among the many items on Field's afternoon tea menu were a basket of assorted sandwiches (perhaps delivered in a green basket with a pink ribbon as shown on this postcard); orange straws; chicken salad with thin bread & butter; sliced pineapple and cheese salad; and fig sandwiches.

The Tarbox Gift Shop and Tea Room, Location unknown, ca. 1910-1920

Does anyone know where the Tarbox was located? It would appear to be in New England, in an industrial area. The sign to the left of the cape-style building is elaborate carved wood. To the left of that is a large pot on legs, evidently a tarpot. Another small iron pot hangs from the corner of the building, near the roofline on the left corner.

Tea room owners, almost always women until the 1920s, were likely to seek out a building like this that was inexpensive to rent. Unless, that is, they could accommodate a tea room in their own house, which was often the case. The out-of-the-way tea rooms, as this one surely was, were often located in small towns, or along the major roads in the Northeast. A tea room such as The Tarbox would have depended upon customers arriving by car.

The Crumperie, Greenwich Village, New York ca. 1916-1926

Mary Alletta "Crumpie" Crump ran the Crumperie with her elderly mother for about 10 years. In that time, she moved the little tea room about six times. That was not unusual in Greenwich Village, where everything was very fluid during the Bohemian period of the teens and 1920s in which tea rooms were the enormously popular. The Crumperie drew many actors and (stage) theatre people from the area. Like other Village tea rooms it was a place to hang out, play a game of chess, or visit with friends from the neighborhood.

The Crumperie interiors were always decorated in a homey style with a quilt on the wall, and the bureau that you see in this drawing. When Crumpie was fortunate enough to secure a location with a fireplace, she placed a duck decoy on the hearth. In the Crumperie guestbook, one guest wrote:

The decoy duck sits by the fire
All day, and never seems to tire
He wears a feather in his tail
And eats the crumpets when they're stale.

The Mayfair, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1940s?

I don't have any specific information about the Mayfair, but it was one of the many city tea rooms the proliferated in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The majority of tea rooms were located in big cities, with New York leading the pack. But in the 1920s there probably wasn't a city of 50,000 or more in the United States that didn't have a number of tea rooms. Prohibition and the increased numbers of working women made tea rooms (and shoppes as they were often called) a standard restaurant type, serving lighter meals, more salads, sandwiches, and entrees like creamed chicken on toast. Other types of restaurants paid a lot of attention to the popular tea rooms because they wanted to get some pointers on how to attract the newly emerging women patrons.

If anyone knows anything about the Mayfair, I'd love to hear from them.

The Old Grist Mill Tearoom, Kennebunkport, Maine ca. 1940s

Uncountable numbers of gristmills were turned into tea rooms, along with other romantic old buildings like windmills and barns. They were probably inexpensive to rent, but beyond this they satisfied the quest for odd, romantic locations for tea rooms. Tea room patrons definitely loved "ye olde" buildings. They particularly liked fireplaces from the 18th and 19th centuries that still had all their fittings used for cooking (like kettles, riggings that held the kettles and swung them in and out of the fire, and bake ovens).

Tea room interiors in the countryside and in vacation areas tended to be decorated with old tools and implements on the wall, or rows of teapots on a shelf. Some proprietors installed corner cupboards and filled them with antique dishes. Many sold gifts such as jams, jellies, and homemade baskets, hooked rugs, or embroidered items.

MacDonald's Tea Room, Salem, Massachusetts 1935

This tea room was at 249 Essex Street in Salem. By the looks of it, it was in a long, narrow storefront. It is decorated in a "scenographic" style, mimicking a plaza in Spain. This was a style that was enormously popular in tea rooms of the period, and was a good way to disguise and add interest to a boring space. This tea room is the soda-fountain type that became popular in the late 1920s.

The back of this postcard says: "A Spanish Court Yard scene with the old home, the arched window and weather-beaten door. Looking out over the walls, one beholds a beautiful mountain scene with the green foliage intermingled. What a unique setting in which to enjoy the delicious food, ice cream, soda and candy served by this unusual shoppe."

Read More About Vintage Tea Rooms

I have written a book on tea rooms (TEA AT THE BLUE LANTERN INN: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE TEA ROOM CRAZE IN AMERICA, St. Martin's Press, December 2002). It is the result of a huge amount of research, spanning almost 10 years. I have collected many postcards, menus, business cards, and other memorabilia which illustrate the book beautifully and give a real sense of what old tea rooms were like. My book is in book stores and tea rooms (if not, ask them to order it!), or can be ordered online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell's Books.

The chapters of the book cover the various types of tea rooms that abounded in the first half of the 20th century: fashionable hotel salons, Greenwich Village dens and hangouts, New England inns and tea houses, city candy shop tea rooms, Russian tea rooms, fortune telling tea rooms, and, finally, the tea rooms that people remember best, those in department stores.

If you write to me I'll try to answer any questions you might have about tea rooms. Or, just let me know your tea room stories and memories. I have met quite a few people whose mothers, grandmothers, or aunts used to run tea rooms, or who "hung out" at them. I love hearing these stories!

Send me a message at:janw.javanet@rcn.com