IN INDIANAPOLIS, AT least, you could say the current interest in afternoon tea has deep roots in one of the city’s cultural anchors: the L.S. Ayres department store at the bustling corner of Meridian and Washington streets. Many Hoosier parents or grandparents have stories about shopping for clothes, furniture, appliances, artwork, and even collectible stamps at the retail behemoth that opened in 1905. But the store’s uncontested star tenant was the Tea Room. “It really was the center of activity for the store,” says Susannah Koerber, chief curator and research officer at the Indiana State Museum. The restaurant filled a then-new niche, providing a stylish but reasonably priced place where women, for many years mostly middle class and up, gathered.
High above the sales floors, the eighth-floor L.S. Ayres Tea Room became a full-blown social hub. It was a power center for “ladies who lunch,” club meetings, and civic groups. Models glided between tables wearing the store’s latest fashions, radio shows broadcast live from the dining room, and families folded a tearoom meal into their holiday traditions, pairing a visit to see Santa with Chicken Velvet Soup, Pecan Balls, and a stop at the children’s Treasure Chest. “It was also a good way to sort of socialize the kids,” Koerber says, “because it was a little more formal—definitely a place where you had to use your manners.”…