36 Lynde Street — building no longer standing
For years in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a tearoom at this address served as an informal headquarters for the Thought and Work Club of Salem, founded by author, editor, and journalist Kate Tannatt Woods (1836–1910) in 1891. Its stated purposes were to “encourage women in all departments of literary work, to promote home study, and to secure literary and social advantages for its members.” The club motto was “Lofty thoughts and kindly deeds.”1
Classes held at the tearoom for members of the all-woman club included such subjects as languages, art history, and literature. The organization lasted nearly a century, and also sponsored an annual series of lectures, concerts, dramatic presentations, and other programs that were held at various churches and halls in Salem.
One of the club’s most memorable events was a talk on conditions in India and missionary work given by the noted Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda in August of 1893, who stayed in Kate’s home on North Street. When Kate learned that the local ministers she had invited to hear the Swami speak were critical of his ideas, this quite “disturbed the liberal-minded lady.”2 Kate Woods served as president of the Thought and Work Club for eight years.
Sources
1 By-laws of the Thought and Work Club, 1891.
2 David R. Proper, Swami Vivekananda in Essex County (Salem, Mass., 1967), 45.
