Why Unescorted Women Were Not Allowed in Restaurants and Saloons.

Restaurants, as we know them today, emerged in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s. Before then, the main dining places outside the home were at inns and saloons where unaccompanied women were unusual and presumed to be of “ill repute.” The early restaurants, meant to be places of elegant dining banned unaccompanied women. A few restaurants provided private rooms where men could bring paid companions for dinner and after-dinner activities {i.e. dancing}. Hotels had to accommodate the occasional solo women traveler; some set aside special eating rooms with separate entrances just for them. Similarly, some restaurants allowed groups of women to reserve private rooms for luncheons. But in general and despite protests by early feminists, respectable restaurants discouraged women, especially if they were not with husbands or fathers, from dining or from dining in the central space.

The development over the nineteenth century of alternative eating places for women, a response to the growing number of middle-class women coming downtown to shop, particularly after the Civil War, at department stores, and to the growing number of women employed in downtown offices. 

Department stores themselves provided places for ladies’  lunch, but particularly distinctive was the evolution of candy stores, ice cream “saloons,” and tea rooms into restaurants with larger menus. The women’s eateries emphasized the lighter meals, salads, and sweets that restauranteurs thought were distinctively women’s fare and, importantly, excluded alcohol and thus the men interested in drinking. These were special accommodations for women. Even after the turn of the century, fashionable restaurants turned away unaccompanied women, especially later in the evening.

Marshall Field & Co. established its first tearoom in 1890. Two decades later, the store-operated seven separate dining facilities. The South Grill Room, seen here in 1909, featured Circassian walnut paneling, crystal chandeliers, and a marble fountain. It was later renamed the Walnut Room and still operates today in Macy's State Street Store.

Marshall Field's — Ahead of the times. In 1890, Mrs. Hering shared her homemade Chicken Pot Pie with a hungry customer so she wouldn't leave to go home for lunch. She said she would bring some friends the next day to try the Chicken Pot Pie and shop. Marshall Field opened a small tearoom with 15 tables on the 3rd floor to keep women in the store, shopping, instead of leaving to lunch. "The South Tearoom" for ladies became Chicago's first full-service dining establishment within a department store and was a runaway hit. This was parlayed into Marshall Field's Walnut Room in 1937.

The turning point was Prohibition in the 1920s. Unable to make their profits on alcohol, many of the classic restaurants went out of business. “Free lunch” bars also closed. “The places that flourished in the new environment were luncheonettes, coffee shops, soda and hamburger places, roadside restaurants, Chinese restaurants, and other ethnic establishments — most of them welcoming female customers. Beginning in the 1920s, men showed up at what had previously been largely female preserves to consume sandwiches and other light fare served without alcoholic accompaniment.” Today, all diners are welcomed.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.