National Dairy Kitchen Ladies Restaurant

National Dairy Kitchen Ladies Restaurant

Charlotte [NC] News, Jan. 3, 1900

Location: Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Opened/Closed: c. 1900

The political news is so depressing these days that I'm digging into history as a kind of reprieve.

This 1900 article on the opening of a ladies restaurant is a good illustration of the basic observations we've made about the history of women's spaces.

1) Because men tend to have the monopoly on societal resources (money, authority, expertise, etc.), it is not uncommon for men to open/own/control women's spaces. Notice that two men (Messrs. Rutledge & LeGallais) opened this restaurant.

2) When men open women's spaces, they often do as an after thought, as a way to make money off of women after the market for men is saturated. This is the case here. By there own admission, there were "several well kept restaurants in the city for men" which did not admit women. So these guys saw an untapped market for women diners who want an "a-la-carte lunch." (And yes, I fully recognize that they did not mean all women, just wealthy white women of leisure.)

3) When men open women's spaces, they do not really limit them to women--even though the men's spaces rigorously excluded women. Notice that this "ladies restaurant  is for "ladies or ladies with escorts." By escorts, they mean men. But as we know from other ladies restaurants we have examined, the "escort" rule was often broken, meaning it was not uncommon for more men than women to show up in a "ladies restaurant."

This is a persistent historical problem around women's spaces, and one that even feminists (especially of the "liberal" variety) are often unaware of (or consciously ignore).  In efforts to be all "inclusive," women will make all kinds of amends to include males, while they somehow miss (or don't care) that men are not doing the same. Notice the debate around bathrooms these days--it's all about women's bathrooms becoming "inclusive" to "all genders." Meanwhile, men's bathrooms carry on just as they always have.

Does that mean that I think ladies restaurants were somehow "bad" then? Nope. Even with all their limitations of social/economic class and race, even though it was men dictating the terms, it still opened up a space for women to dine together and talk. And that's the start of all kinds of good things.

Bresnahan's Ladies Cafe

Evening Star, September 19, 1900

Bresnahan's Ladies Café

Location: 426 Ninth Street, Washington, DC, USA

Opened/Closed: c. 1900


Especially after the Women's March on Washington, the pressure on women to be "inclusive" (include males) is big again--as if women had a long history of excluding males.

What a big joke.

In reality, that has rarely happened. Women have had the authority to exclude male from various gatherings for only very short periods of time in history and under very limited circumstances--all while men were quite comfortable making the dominant cultural institutions all male, or at minimum, with tiny, hard fought for token female representation, for centuries.

Sometimes, we get the cognitive dissonance thing--which is very popular today. We call an event or space something "for women, "but then let the men run amuck anyway.

While it's very popular today, it's not unique to today, as the ad for the Bresnahan's Ladies Café shows. Even while the power in Washington government was 100% controlled by men in 1900, men could still barge in and take over this little "high-class" ladies café.

So why bother with the name? Because it was a crumb, and you have to start somewhere. Even as women were barred from going into many Washington restaurants, cafe's, and bars, especially with no male escort, they could still go to Bresnahan's. Without a male escort. But they still had to put up with loud men taking up seats and tables anyway. (And yes, we're talking exclusively about wealthy white women who even had this limited "privilege.")

Sound like any "women's" places you know of? That is how persistent  and consistent the patriarchal domination of space has been over history. 

Barone's Variety Room

Barone's Variety Room

Location: 1116 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Opened/Closed: 1963

Since it appears that the old days are coming back, it's important to remind folks, especially our younger readers, just how the powerful responded to lesbian space.

This excerpt is from the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 1974. The quoted material is from Byrna Aronson, who was then an administrative assistant with the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We were in Barone's Variety Room (a lesbian bar) in March, 1968, and plainclothes police came in. I didn't see them. I leaned down to kiss my girlfriend on the cheek, and Captain Clarence Ferguson, in a pork-pie hat, tapped me on the shoulder and said 'You're under arrest.' And I said, 'What for?' He said, 'Sodomy.' I just started to laugh.

Twelve women were carted off in a paddywagon that night, Ms. Aronson among them. They were booked on a variety of charges. It was alleged (in graphic language) that several women had been making love on the floor, that others were drunk and disorderly, and that some had resisted arrest.

The next morning at their arraignment, a magistrate dismissed the charges. "But we were left with an arrest record. In Philadelphia, if you're booked, your records go to the FBI. And so anytime you apply for a job that requires any kind of security clearance, you're out of luck. One of the women arrested had such a job, and she lost it.

Barone's was closely associated with another lesbian bar named Rusty's. See our previous post on Rusty's here.