Beneath a teal awning just north of Harvard Law School, the proprietor of the Montrose Spa for the past 46 years laughs. He says he gets calls from the parents of law students during the holiday season asking if they can purchase gift cards to the spa for their daughters. Other times parents complain their kids have visited the spa too frequently when the inevitable credit card statement comes in with daily transactions at Montrose Spa.
The irony is that Montrose Spa offers neither massages nor facials. The only aroma therapies here are the tempting odors of Cuban sandwiches and hot coffee. This ‘spa’ is a hold out in a micro-cultural naming tradition local to Boston and its immediate suburbs. The origins of the spa naming tradition date back to downtown Boston about 140 years. While the spas today are convenience stores that sell Keno, soda, and beer, the original spas of Boston were soda fountains.
The name is confusing at first glace, but for some in the area, it is not unfamiliar. Town centers on the periphery of the city enjoy Barcas Spa and Victoria Spa of Watertown, Palace Spa of Brighton, Handy Spa of Belmont, West Medford Spa of Medford, Andover Spa Wine & Spirits of Andover, the Brookline Pizza Spa in Brookline, and Oakley Spa in Newton. Nearly all of these spas exist in communities to the West and Northwest of the city. Why only here? We would guess a mix of history and demographics.
During the 1800s, vacation looked a lot different. In both Europe and America, free-timers flocked to famous locales where water had special medicinal or recreational qualities. On the Continent, these included Bath and Tunbridge Wells in Britain, Karlsbad in the Czech Republic, Spa in Belgium, and Baden Baden (literally ‘bath bath’) in Germany. Americans had El Dorado Springs, Hot Springs, Saratoga Springs, and Palm Springs. The water at these towns could be thermal and hot, or mineral and bubbly. As tourists traveled to these places to soak for wellness, they also pumped the healing waters into bottles for internal use.
The waters from these springs became natural soda waters sold with healthful intent. Waters like Perrier and Vichy came from natural spring towns and became popular during the second half of the 1800s. Drinking the spring water (or spa water) entered the realm of popular health.
Contemporary to the development of mainstream spa tourism, science was getting close to replicating nature. At the end of the 1700s, Joseph Priestley figured out how to impregnate water with carbon dioxide, and businesses quickly followed, even claiming that the bubbly water could cure health issues like kidney stones.
Not only were artificially and naturally carbonated drinks sold by the bottle, but business-minded inventors developed products that could carbonate water on site. The soda fountain was born. Early carbonating contraptions could weigh over 3,000 pounds, but designs changed as the 19th century wore on. John Matthews, one of the soda fountain moguls of the era, hired a William Gee who designed the Monitor Crystal Spa. (Funderburg)
An 1879 advertisement in the Kalamazoo Gazette described the novel product. “The syrups are kept in glass, and in full sight of the consumer, and the arrangements for cooling are so perfect that you may be always sure of getting a cool, refreshing drink from the ‘Crystal Spa.’” The innovative selling point was that the body of the fountain was machined out of a solid piece of tin, reducing the supposed metallic contamination that other fountains on the market could cause.
This invention heralded the first direct connection between the American soda fountain establishment and the term ‘spa.’ Perhaps derived from this, Anne Cooper Funderburg also lists “spa fizz” as a classic soda fountain drink consisting of lemon, strawberry, and orange syrup in her book, Sundae best: a history of soda fountains. But Matthews sold his soda fountains around the country, so this invention alone does not explain the prevalence of the term in such a small region around Boston today.
Only 3 years after the Monitor Crystal Spa hit the market, another kind of spa was born. On Washington Street in Boston, near today’s Government Center, Charles Eaton opened Thompson’s Temperance Spa in either 1882 or 1885 (some sources disagree). The spa was a soda fountain that looked like a normal saloon–it just didn’t have any alcohol.
Eaton’s business proposal was new, but timely. Emerging soda technologies and burgeoning temperance attitudes could coexist in a social and casual space. April White quotes Eaton as saying, “temperance would be more surely advanced by encouraging places for the sale of non-alcoholic drinks, and, if possible, make the opportunity for sociability prominent.” The spa was an oasis away from booze.
Thompson’s was definitely the first soda-selling spa in Boston, and it is likely the inspiration for all that would follow in and around the city. It seems likely that Charles Eaton named his establishment a spa after the soda waters that he stocked. When the Eaton family sold their interest in the old company in 1946, Charles’s son Ezra Eaton told the Christian Science Monitor, “‘Spa’ was used because the original idea was to have on hand every kind of mineral water bottled at famous American and European Spas, from Poland Springs to Vichy.” We cannot say with certainty if the Monitor Crystal Spa soda fountain had anything to do with the name, but their closeness in time is intriguing.
The spa name also corresponded to an emerging notion of therapy, wellness, and even recovery associated with spas and so-called temperance beverages. At the time, Americans were seeking recreation and recovery at natural springs and also from interesting new drinks. Soda companies appeared by the hundreds, many of them local to Massachusetts, advertising health qualities. Moxie Nerve Food, invented in 1885 by a doctor practicing in Lowell, Massachusetts, just 30 miles north of Boston, was an early popular soda that occasionally advertised itself as a cure for alcoholism. Indeed, this was the first era that alcoholism was commonly viewed as a medical condition. The emergence of patent medicines like Moxie soda and Thompson’s Spa captured the soda-curated, sober-curiosity of the final decades of the 1800s.
Thompson’s Spa would go on to be one of the most influential restaurants in Boston until its final demise in 1968. It has been widely reported that the business was profitable after just 6 months of business and was making $50,000 a year by 1895. The chain grew with new locations around the city and when it sold to the Sheraton Corporation (yes, the hotel one) it had 10 locations, housed 187 lunch counters (they had many small paneled rooms in each location), and served 17,000 breakfasts each morning. (The Christian Science Monitor Apr 17, 1946) The spa made it into the weather section of the paper on a daily basis because it had installed a massive thermometer on its Washington street window—the unofficial temperature of Boston.
Naturally, others in Boston soon started to copy Eaton, his business model, and his lunch counter’s name. In 1893, there are reports of a spa opening in Point of Pines in nearby Revere. In April of 1898, the Boston Journal published a notice that the new Bromfield Spa was installing an Onyx soda fountain in the Jewelers’ Building on Washington Street. This new spa was just across School street from Eaton’s main location! The mimicry was hardly concealed, and apparently, the copycat could not compete so closely with the archetype; the Boston Daily Advertiser lists the Bromfield Spa Corporation in its section on Suffolk County Insolvency in December the same year it opened. (Boston Daily Advertiser, vol. 172, no. 140, 10 Dec. 1898)
As new lunch counters followed Thompson’s Spa, the term became emblematic of Boston’s lunch counters and soda fountains. Already, in 1895, other Americans were noticing the unique regional usage of the term spa. The New York Herald reported on what is likely Thompson’s Spa with a caustic tone that is all too familiar between the two cities, “There is in Washington street an eating house known as a “temperance spa,” to which at noon time all sorts of conditions of men resort. If it were in the Bowery the place would be known vulgarly as a ‘hand out’ But because it dispenses only such comforts as pie and coffee and ‘sinkers’ and hand and.[sic] But in Boston it is called a ‘spa.’” (New York Herald, 15 Dec 1895) The article continues, “Strictly speaking, the ‘spa’ is a place of sacrifice to the devil of dyspepsia, which is the big devil of Boston.” Perhaps this is New York using the “devil” language of temperance to mock the sanctimoniousness of its northern and puritanical neighbor.
By the 1910s, the spa concept was caught up in the then successful Temperance Movement. A church in Boston’s South End, Morgan Memorial, hosted a “temperance spa.” “A former barkeeper is in charge and makes it his business to cheer up his patrons and encourage them to give up alcohol altogether, as he has already done. The spa has been found most effective in rescuing men who are down and out.” (Springfield Republican, 9 Nov. 1914) The church even wanted to build a temperance tower full of dorms and staffed with doctors to help alcoholics. Rehab and spa are concepts not too far apart even in 21st century English.
More conservative Bostonians, however, still felt that the soda fountain was a temptation to the pious. The Boston Journal, reporting on a meeting of the Church Temperance Society in 1907, had this to say about temperance spas: “Forms hardly less insidious and gripping are listed at nearly every so-called temperance spa. The truly temperate man is normal in his habits; he has no more to do with some of the liquids dispensed at the soda fountain than with the appetizing and expensive cocktail.” (Boston Journal, 19 Nov. 1907)
Whatever the real reason that Eaton named his soda fountain a spa, the success of his business cemented the term in Boston’s history. The longevity of his business (1882-1968) made sure that generations of Bostonians associated this soda fountain and lunch counter business model with the term spa. Copy cats helped to generalize the name away from Thompson’s. The Temperance Movement and eventual Prohibition made sure the establishments were without competition for a little while.
When we take a closer look at the spas that dot the suburbs today, we will find that nearly all of them derive their name from the era when Thompson’s Temperance Spa still piped hot coffee directly to spigots at every table.
Today, the spas that we have speckled around the downtowns of a couple of suburbs come from this complicated mix of bubbly water, sugary syrup, and sober business. The business model may have morphed over the 20th century, but they all have certain similarities. Each of the modern spas sports a classic and understated awning–often worn with time–scripted with the simple offerings within: lottery, tobacco, beer, wine, delicatessen, ice cream, ATM.
Some of the spas, like Victoria Spa and Andover Spa Wine and Spirits are primarily liquor stores, belying some of the temperance history associated with the name. Most others no longer offer food like the old lunch counters did. Two exceptions: Palace Spa now houses a built-in Subway and Montrose Spa has a locally renowned sandwich menu.
Whatever wares they sell today, the names on these establishments are old in spite of the fact that the businesses have changed hands many times. Palace Spa was once worthy of the name ‘institution’ in Brighton. The daughter of its owner from 1948 until 1988 indicated that her father, Anthony Macolini, bought the spa with the current name, although most called it Mac’s, during Macolini’s ownership. When her father died in 2004, she told the Globe that the name Palace Spa came from the former presence of an old-fashioned soda fountain.
Tommy, the owner of Montrose Spa in Cambridge, has operated it for over 45 years, but also acquired the business with the current name. He says the name dates back to 1936 and considers the spa name part of a “Yankee town” legacy, listing off suburbs whose association with wealthy, liberal Boston is unmistakable.
A Facebook post in the “I grew up in Newtonville” page commemorates the shuttering of the Oakley Spa in 2022, stating the shop served Newtonville residents “With 3 generations and 100 years of service.” This puts its name antiquity back to 1922, although most residents seem to remember it as John’s, perhaps in a similar tradition to Mac’s for Palace Spa.
The antiquity of these establishments explains the origins of their otherwise bizarre name. At the time that these stores opened, Thompson’s Temperance Spa and other establishments furnished with large soda fountains were well known around Boston. As the communities on the outskirts of Boston copied the urban forebears, the name spa stuck. In these enclaves, local demand alone could support a small store for 100 years. This is not the case in the heart of the city where developers continually make sure the next new thing is being built. Take Thompson’s, for example, its last location on Tremont Street became Boston’s first McDonald’s in 1968.
This explains the presence of spas in these West-of-Boston towns, but the absence North and South of the city must have to do with a demographic bias against the spa in the first place. Perhaps the wine-drinking Italian Americans of the North Shore and the beer-drinking Irish Americans of the South Shore shunned the trendy temperance name from the very beginning. Of course, a statement like this would require more research to say with any confidence.
There you have it. The spas of Boston are tied up in over 140 years of local drinking history. From the earliest and most important soda fountain in the city, to progressive attempts at rehabilitating the alcoholic, the spa served the city with soda, hot coffee, and the occasional sandwich. The awnings printed with spa today still offer coffee, but for the most part, these are just your average corner stores proudly hinting at a largely forgotten linguistic quirk of the region.
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“Boston’s Scandal. Aristocratic Back Bay Resolves to Forget the Smith-Higgin-Son Elopement.” New York Herald, no. 349, 15 Dec. 1895, p. 4. Readex: Readex AllSearch, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=ARDX&docref=image/v2%3A11A050B7B120D3F8%40EANX-12B67031EC9E3208%402413543-12B67034B73F5F20%4030-12B6704264E8D658%40Boston%2527s%2BScandal.%2BAristocratic%2BBack%2BBay%2BResolves%2Bto%2BForget%2Bthe%2BSmith-Higgin-Son%2BElopement. Accessed 25 Nov. 2022.
“The Bromfield Spa. A Novel Quick Lunch Enterprise for Boston under Vermont Management.” Springfield Republican, 31 Mar. 1898, p. 13. Readex: Readex AllSearch, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=ARDX&docref=image/v2%3A11BC3DF3E61E32B5%40EANX-1204F2FD204D0330%402414380-1204F2FDC0B7DA68%4012-1204F2FFD24E6E90%40The%2BBromfield%2BSpa.%2BA%2BNovel%2BQuick%2BLunch%2BEnterprise%2Bfor%2BBoston%2Bunder%2BVermont%2BManagement. Accessed 27 Nov. 2022.
Funderburg, Anne Cooper. Sundae best: a history of soda fountains. Popular Press, 2002.
Herwick III, Edgar B. “Why Are Some Boston Area Convenience Stores Called Spas?” WGBH, 14 June 2018, www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2018/05/22/why-are-some-boston-area-convenience-stores-called-spas.
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Messenger, Donald OJ Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor. “Famous Thompson’s Spa Now Link in the Sheraton Chain: Friendly Warnings Boston Concern.” The Christian Science Monitor (1908-), Apr 17, 1946, pp. 5. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/famous-thompsons-spa-now-link-sheraton-chain/docview/515936287/se-2.
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White, April. “When the Temperance Movement Opened Saloons.” JSTOR DAILY, ITHAKA, daily.jstor.org/temperance-movement-opened-saloons/.
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