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Tea Room

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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In the early 19th century and before, tea rooms were masculine spaces rarely proper for female company. But they were reinvented in the years after the Civil War to be fitting meeting places for respectable women. Often, they were woman-owned and operated. This tea room was in a house along Deerfield, Massachusetts' main street. Its image as an 18th century space was carefully constructed by the owner, Mrs. S. Wells. Ironically the house it was in was relatively very new, built in 1893, a year after the previous home, built around 1726, had burned. The tea room is furnished in a way that is supposed to evoke Colonial times (as is its name). The tea room lasted only one year, 1910-1911.

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