01/17/2025
On several Ogunquit-related FB pages, a recent flurry of activity has centered around an enduring interest in our historic tea rooms. For review, you may find the following reprint from p. 264 enlightening.
A Word About Tea Rooms
The tea room idea, which proliferated in Ogunquit in the twenties and thirties, was initially a British institution. In England before 1900, it was not considered proper for a woman to go into a public restroom and dine alone. In America, in the 1910s, there was a widespread rule that "unescorted women would not be served." It is hard to explain why. The tea room started in London and quickly spread to America. When it arrived in Boston, it wasn't long before tea rooms were popping up in quaint colonial villages of eastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod. With its young and progressive temperament, the artists' colony at Perkins Cove proved to be a perfect nesting place for Richard Coolidge and Luigi Balestro to open their Chinese-inspired Dan Sing Fan. By the 1920s, Tea rooms were a full-blown craze in the community.
The sudden popularity was brought about by several social phenomena: the advent of the automobile, the temperance movement, and women's quest for equality. The suffragettes had opened the eyes of women to the right to vote and to drive a car and to own a business-- such as tea room. Many women were already used to preparing large meals for church and civic events and found it easy to enter the world of business by doing what they knew best. These were the enterprising women who could satisfy countless travelers passing through picturesque seacoast villages like Ogunquit.
Tea rooms in general became increasingly popular as they developed a reputation for light fare with fresh ingredients. In 1920, when the temperance movement culminated in prohibition, tee-totaling diners flocked to tea rooms that abandoned rich meats and firey beverages in favor of chicken salad and iced tea.
Tea rooms in Ogunquit included the Whistling Oyster (p.242), the Barbara Dean (p.161), the Blue Heron (p.168), the Bide-A-Wee (p.168), and the iconic Dan Sing Fan (p.261). All of the tea rooms were owned and operated by women, except for the Dan Sing Fan, a stylish, custom-built tea room overlooking nearly all of Perkins Cove with the ocean beyond, a view claimed by many to be the absolute best in Ogunquit. The well-financed owners understood the requirements of a successful establishment and set about to achieve success in a place they loved.
Although many original tea rooms across the country morphed into nightclubs and speakeasies with atmosphere, those in Ogunquit became full-fledged restaurants or passed to new owners who had different business plans.
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The Barbara Dean became a very successful restaurant that served breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals every day, and whose 1960s menu remained rooted in its early tea room offerings. It was often frequented by small parties of women wearing stylish summer dresses and white gloves. To a high-school student chef preparing Bagdad Bisque in the kitchen, the floral scents emanating from the dining room were unmistakable.
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Update: Although I refrained from including this factoid in the book, there was a solid reason why single women were refused service in American restaurants (taverns) in the early 1900s. Taverns were often raucous establishments frequented mostly by men who were active in political discourse and community affairs, and also liked hard drinks, followed by too many drinks, followed by men behaving badly at women’s expense. It was apparently simpler to put restrictions on women’s freedom than it was to alter men’s behavior. Sadly, that thinking is still with us. IMHO.
