Maisie Brews a Business--1920 Tea Rooms

Tea rooms were enormously popular in the first half of the 20th century and are a fascinating aspect of women’s history. Most were owned or managed by women and in the 1920s especially, tea rooms became the fashionable places for women to meet friends in small towns, big cities and suburbs. Several flourished in Maplewood and South Orange, including the well-known Washington Inn.

At a Durand-Hedden program, historic interpreter Maureen O'Connor Leach took on the voice of a 1925 matron who was planning to open a Tea Room, and provided the audience with a view into the challenges faced by women who were stepping out of the home and into the business world. “Maisie’s” monologue referenced primary sources. She wore a tea frock sewn from a period pattern and used historically accurate accessories.

If These Walls Could Talk: Researching House Histories

Are you one of our community’s many “house-proud” residents curious about their home’s past? In February 2018, nationally known land title expert and educator Joe Grabas shared tips on the variety of ways to research a house’s history. Techniques range from architectural and archaeological analysis, to newspapers, census and genealogical records, wills, inventories, dendrochronology, liens, obscure sources, such as tavern records, coroner’s reports, bankruptcies, etc. The basics of a house’s story starts with the investigation of county land records to establish what is called the chain of title. Once this is done, homeowners can embark upon other avenues of research.

Asher B. Durand's Life in Art: From Jefferson Village to Maplewood

During his multi-faceted six-decade-long career, renowned Hudson River School founder Asher B. Durand truly lived a life in art - as an engraver and then as a painter, first of portraits and ultimately of landscape. In all three endeavors - engraving, portraiture, and landscape painting - Durand played a major role in the art of his time by creating resonant images that contributed to an emerging American national and cultural identity.

Born in 1796 in a homestead on the corner of what is now Ridgewood and Durand Roads, Durand left Maplewood to pursue his career as an artist in New York, but returned to the family property in retirement, and built an impressive house with a studio atop it. He lived there until his death in 1886. (The original family home burned down in 1843; Durand's new home was taken down in the early 20th century.)

The Durand-Hedden House was pleased to host a presentation by prominent art historian and Durand expert Dr. Linda S. Ferber. In 2007, Dr. Ferber organized the first major retrospective in thirty-five years devoted to Durand’s career: Kindred Spirits: Asher B Durand and the American Landscape for the Brooklyn Museum, where she was the Andrew Mellon Curator of American Art and Chief Curator from 1970 to 2005. From 2005 through 2013, she served as Vice President and Museum Director at the New-York Historical Society (now Emerita.)