And what post on the Wellesley Tea Room would be complete without an expanded discussion on the afor

Does anyone else find it odd that Wellesley a town with three colleges, two if you don’t count Mass Bay is somehow not really a college town? Not in the same way that Amherst and Northampton are college towns. You can live in Wellesley and go days, even weeks, without noticing the two internationally renowned schools vacation rentals hawaii kohola that lie within the town’s borders. Um how is that possible??? vacation rentals hawaii kohola Are we so self-absorbed that we can t see what s on the other side of our big backyards? (Please don’t answer that.)
In all fairness to us townspeople, vacation rentals hawaii kohola it’s not entirely our fault. Babson College, for example, has done a great job of isolating itself on the southern edge of town since it moved from Washington Street in Wellesley Hills to its current campus in the early 1920s. vacation rentals hawaii kohola Additionally, it isn’t like these colleges have competitive sports teams that the community can rally around. (Sorry, Wellesley College Blue and Babson College Beavers.)
But maybe we re at least a little bit responsible for the awkward relationship between Wellesley College and the area around Wellesley Square. Something’s wrong if you can eat a bagel at Bruegger’s vacation rentals hawaii kohola or play a round of nine holes at Nehoiden and have no idea that Wellesley vacation rentals hawaii kohola College is mere feet from you. It s also a problem that some Wellesley College students can survive quite happily for at least a month without vacation rentals hawaii kohola once stepping vacation rentals hawaii kohola outside the campus walls.
See, it wasn’t always vacation rentals hawaii kohola like this. For more than 75 years from the time Wellesley College opened in 1875 until the 1950s Wellesley Square and Wellesley College were very much joined at the hip. Perhaps the single greatest reason for this was that, for most of this time, much of the student body lived off-campus in large dormitories that lined Washington Street south of Wellesley Square.
Four of the Wellesley vacation rentals hawaii kohola College dormitories that lined Washington Street Clockwise from top left: Washington House at 600 Washington Street (from 1941 Legenda); The Elms at 637 Washington Street (from 1935 Legenda); Eliot House  at the east corner of Cottage Street Washington Street razed in 1953 (from 1907 Legenda); Noanett at the east corner of Weston Road Washington Street razed in 1964 (from 1907 Legenda)
Just imagine the roads clogged with students walking or riding their bikes to and from campus. And it wasn’t confined to this stretch of Washington Street. Wellesley College students were all over the Square .
Wellesley College students out and about town Clockwise from top: Riding on campus just inside the south gate on Washington Street (from 1941 Legenda); Standing in line to buy textbooks at the Hathaway House Bookshop (from 1948 Legenda); Waiting to catch the train at the Wellesley Railroad Station (from 1931 Legenda)
And the center of activity for at least the first few decades of the 20th Century was the Wellesley Tea Room (later known as the Wellesley Inn). Its origins actually date to the fall of 1897, when two recent Wellesley College graduates, Mary Esther Chase (‘96) and Clara H. Shaw (‘97), rented a few rooms in a nearby business block and opened a small tea room. The exact location of the Wellesley Tea Room is difficult to pin down my best guess given the limited records of the Tea Room is the original Partridge Block, vacation rentals hawaii kohola which stood on the south side of Central Street directly to the west of the Village Church vacation rentals hawaii kohola graveyard.
At first, the Tea Room was nothing more than a place where their friends could come to socialize over tea and dessert, as there was no such gathering spot on campus. But it quickly became a sensation with the entire student body. Perhaps vacation rentals hawaii kohola it was the freedom that came with hanging out off-campus, away from the house mothers that watched over all the young women with the eyes of hawks.
As you can probably tell, at this point in time only three years after opening the Wellesley Tea Room had become a full-fledged restaurant. And by 1901, it also had six bedrooms for visiting alumnae of the college (and of Dana Hall, whose students embraced the tea room with equal adoration).
This success, no doubt, was a testament vacation rentals hawaii kohola to the leadership and business acumen of Mary Chase. (Her co-founder, Clara Shaw, had left for Chicago after one year.) With little to no experience in the hospitality vacation rentals hawaii kohola industry, Chase had turned the Tea Room into one of Wellesley s most popular establishments. This included presiding over a staff of more than a half dozen servants (which included a cook, who was described by the Mansfield Daily Shield as a “typical old-time southern vacation rentals hawaii kohola mammy with a gift in the matter vacation rentals hawaii kohola of Maryland biscuit” other national newspapers that wrote about the Wellesley vacation rentals hawaii kohola Tea Room and, later, the Wellesley Inn, often included similar racial epithets to describe the staff, almost vacation rentals hawaii kohola all of whom appear to have been African-Americans originally from either vacation rentals hawaii kohola the South or New York City).
Chase even led the Wellesley Tea Room through its transition into a stock-owned corporation, a move that would generate capital and allow for the necessary expansion of the business. It s hard not to be impressed by this. After all, the year was 1901. Not exactly a time when women even college graduates ran corporations. So it s no wonder that the 25-year-old Chase received national attention after raising $20,000 (over $500,000 in 2013 dollars) by selling vacation rentals hawaii kohola thousands of $5 shares to the public.
In 1902 after having long outgrown its original quarters vacation rentals hawaii kohola the Wellesley Tea Room used some of this money to purchase a large house on Washington Street opposite the end of Church Street. Up until that time, this dwelling was nothing remarkable just a simple farmhouse built between 1859 and 1866. Coincidentally, vacation rentals hawaii kohola however, the Wellesley Tea Room s acquisition of the house wasn’t the home s first connection to Wellesley College. From 1866 until 1868, it was the residence of the parents of Henry F. Durant, vacation rentals hawaii kohola the founder of Wellesley College. (Though Durant never lived there his estate was further along on Washington Street near the current entrance to Wellesley College.)
The second location of the Wellesley Tea Room. This house would become the core of the Wellesley Inn building. The dwelling to the right (the Hatch Estate) was later known as the Inn Annex. Source: Benner (1904)
Before moving vacation rentals hawaii kohola into their new quarters, Chase and the rest of her team spent two months renovating its interior and constructing several additions that nearly tripled the square footage. When the new Wellesley Tea Room held its grand opening in September of 1902, the guests saw a building that barely resembled vacation rentals hawaii kohola the original farmhouse. vacation rentals hawaii kohola And the first floor interior consisted of two separate spaces, each with different entrances from the outside. One half of the building, with its own large reception room and dining room was open to the public for both tea and full meals. But the other half along with the entire second and third floors was only accessible to Wellesley College students. In fact, from the time it opened until 1906, the upper floors served as a dormitory for nearly 20 students.
“Coming back from Boston at the fag-end of an afternoon’s shopping, vacation rentals hawaii kohola a group of students find it easier “to gain the timely inn” as their study of Shakespeare has taught them than to go on the mile further vacation rentals hawaii kohola to the college for refreshment. Again, when a student feels a trifle homesick, or is disheartened over an accumulation of “papers due,” the hospital inn looms up invitingly on her mental horizon and she starts off, sure of diversion and sure of the warmest welcome.”
“ [g]rapefruit with maraschino cherries, bouillon with whipped cream, broiled chicken on toast, French fried potatoes, asparagus tips, French peas, cranberry ice, fruit salad, café mousse, fudge cake and coffee. If they are having vacation rentals hawaii kohola some Harvard men out to dine, and want a hearty meal, the menu would be more likely to run after this wise: Mock turtle soup, sirloin steak with mushrooms, French vacation rentals hawaii kohola fried potatoes, celery, scalloped tomatoes, apple fritters, cheese and pepper salad, apple pie with ice cream and coffee.”
And what post on the Wellesley Tea Room would be complete without an expanded discussion on the aforementioned fudge cake. After all, this was the   famous Wellesley Fudge Cake     a rich chocolate cake with fudge-like chocolate frosting. Its popularity even inspired a rival fudge cake in a rival tea room in Wellesley Square. And then it went national, with recipes for the Wellesley vacation rentals hawaii kohola Fudge Cake appearing in newspapers and magazines all over the country. Here s one such example from a 1941 issue of  Life Magazine :
Mary Chase would end up stepping away from the Wellesley Tea Room following her engagement in the summer of 1903. (It s comforting to know that instead of staying at home, she ran a bungalow resort in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.) The Tea Room, however, would not suffer one bit in her absence newly minted graduates of Wellesley College filled her void and ran the business with equal success.
But the Wellesley Tea Room wouldn t last forever. vacation rentals hawaii kohola In 1914 six years after formally changing its name to the Wellesley Inn its Board of Directors sold the Inn to the Bransfield family, who would own and operate it for the next 46 years. Among the many changes the Bransfields made to the Inn were the addition of the portico over the main entrance as well as the acquisition of the adjacent house (as seen in the old photograph above) which occasionally had been leased for additional space beginning in 1903. This dwelling known as the Inn Annex was razed in 1964 to make room for the new Inn Annex seen below.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact year that the Inn transitioned from a college hangout to the place that we all remember. Even after the Bransfield family took over, the Inn remained a hotspot for Wellesley College students and their friends and family. But whatever clubhouse atmosphere remained probably dissipated following the 1952 construction vacation rentals hawaii kohola of Bates and Freeman Halls and the ensuing closure of the dorms along Washington Street. Wellesley College vacation rentals hawaii kohola students were now far less likely to