When the Prime Minister — and Many Others — Came for Tea in Palisades
It was October 1929 when Ramsay MacDonald, then Prime Minister of England, spent several hours over tea and gingerbread in Ella Post Speer's Blacksmith Tea Shop on Oak Tree Road facing Palisades' then grassy green. The Prime Minister and his party had planned to have tea at Dean Robbins's on Woods Road, but, due to some misunderstanding, the Robbins weren't home to receive the group. So the group went to the only public place in town for tea, The Blacksmith Tea Shop, which Ella Speer had converted earlier that year into a tea room.
After a cursory check of the establishment by an American Secret Serviceman and a British Embassy staff person, the shop was deemed safe. No police escort, sirens, or cavalcade of cars accompanied such a foreign dignitary then, only two cars. The party consisted of the Prime Minister, Lillian Wald of the Henry Street Settlement House, the Secret Service and British Embassy men, and later Dean Howard Robbins (of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine) and his wife. Ramsay MacDonald, according to the late Ella Speer, lingered over this tea, and wanted to stay on for supper, but was told he had to get back to New York. As he left, he told young Miss Speer that he felt "at home” and then recited "Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands…", only to be greeted outside the door by a cluster of local people, who had just learned of his visit.
While Ramsay MacDonald, who modestly signed his name and 10 Downing Street, London in the guest book, was probably the most important public figure to patronize The Blacksmith Shop, the guest book indicates a wide range of New York Westchester, Northern Valley and Rockland County and even out-of-state and foreign patrons in the three years of the tea room's operation from May 1929 to October 1931. Many local and out-of-town artists, actors and actresses. and authors frequented the tea room, including Katharine Cornell, Helen Hayes, and Maude Adams, artists like Charles and Ella Lamb, publishers such as Scribners and Lippincott as well as Hollywood figures like Nat Bergcure, then director of Paramount Pictures, and A. A. Forsyth. Socialites such as the DuPonts and public figures like Mrs. Dwight Morrow also came for tea or lunch, but most of the patrons were regular folk from nearby, often bringing a visiting friend from Pittsburgh or New Orleans. For those coming from New York City, Connecticut, or Westchester, this meant a ferry ride as the George Washington Bridge had not yet been built. The shop was open for luncheon and tea on week days and luncheon, tea, and supper on Sundays from late May to the end of October, as the shop had no central heat.
The popularity of the tea room was due to the inviting atmosphere that the 25-year-old Piermont resident Ella Speer created. An artist herself, graduating at seventeen from New York's School of Design where she later taught and practiced textile design, Ella Speer retained the feel of the blacksmith's workshop with its large open hearth and darkened. walls, yet introduced colorful curtains, tablecloths, and flower arrangements. Also a creative cook, Ella produced simple and satisfying American food like chicken salad, gingerbread, ice tea, and cakes, one of the most popular was her butterscotch cake. She made all the cakes and many of the other items, aided by a small, competent staff
The most important reason for the success of the tea room, no doubt, was the vivacious and friendly nature of this hard-working young woman, who was trying to help her mother stay in their large house on 9W in Piermont. Ella Speer loved people, especially her many friends in Rockland and Bergen Counties. In those early Depression years, the shop was a financial success, so much so that Frank Shattuck, head of Schrafft's, made her a very generous offer to join his staff. Instead, it was her marriage to Major Daniel W. Colhoun of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission that ended her career as a tea room entrepreneur. She always looked back with fondest memories of those years on the green in the Blacksmith Tea Shop.
Ann, who lives in Washington, DC, is a niece of the late Ella Speer Colhoun, who died at the age of 96 in June 1999 in Glyndon, Maryland. Ann, daughter of Ella's sister, Margaret Speer Satterthwaite, lived on the other side of the green from the Blacksmith Shop in 1933, and her grandmother, Margaret Post Speer, lived from 1937-1959 on Woods Road and Washington Spring Rd. in a house her daughter, Ella, designed and built.