The Friday Morning Club Cook Book

The Friday Morning Club was founded in 1891 by Caroline Severence, who had helped found a similar women’s club in Boston a few decades before. Sometimes called “The Mother Of Clubs,” Severence played an important role as a women’s organizer in the first half of the 20th century. She was an outspoken abolitionist and suffragist, and The Friday Morning Club, while a social club for middle and upper class women, had a distinctly political bent. Severence invited educator and activist Booker T. Washington to speak at the Club, and later hosted his wife Margaret for a three week visit. 

Cecelia Rassmusen wrote of Severence in the LA Times;

“[Severence] came to adulthood at a time when the washtub, water pump and cooking stove were the center of most women’s lives. She worked with all those things, married a successful banker and had five children.

But she also led a voter registration drive that made Angeleno women a surprisingly influential force in the post-Victorian era. Her efforts prompted the men of California to give women the vote in regional and state elections nine years before nationwide suffrage was instituted in 1920…

When she invited [Margaret Washington] to a club meeting, she challenged even her friends and fellow suffragists--asking why they invited Mexican women into their homes but not black women.

In turn-of-the-century Los Angeles, when women were excluded from politics and policymaking, they generally crusaded for equality through such genteel means as clubs and church groups.”

Located at 940 S. Figueroa St. (at 9th Street) in Downtown LA, The Friday Morning Club’s first official building was designed by Arthur Burnett Benton and built in 1900 (pictured). The Club incorporated and issued stock, becoming one of, if not the, first women’s clubs to finance its own building. Early members included City Librarian Tessa Kelso, writer Olive Percival, and surgeon Nannie C. Dunsmoor who was one the first female doctors in California.


As the Friday Morning Club grew, they sold this first, Mission Revival style clubhouse and all its furnishings to the Catholic Women’s Club, who dismantled the building and moved it to a new location where it still stands. To learn more, see the entry for the Gathered Crumbs cookbook, from the Catholic Women’s Club, in this Archive. 


A year before The Friday Morning Club Cook Book was released, the group built a new, Renaissance Revival-style clubhouse designed by the firm Allison & Allison. The 6-story building included two auditoriums that could hold nearly 2,000 attendees. 


By the time of this cookbook’s publication, The Friday Morning Club was the largest women’s club in California. In addition to political organizing and debate, the Club also hosted luncheons, concerts, and many other social gatherings. It’s numbers began to dwindle after WWII and The Club sold the Figueroa clubuouse to the Society for the Preservation of Variety Arts, who turned the auditoriums into the “Variety Arts Theater,” putting on plays, cabarets, and other live performances.


The Friday Morning Club continued to operate in a smaller form until the 1990s. Today, their Figueroa building is in the midst of a rennovation under new ownership by the church Hillsong LA. 


Note: Caroline Severence’s home, El Nido (“The Nest), at 806 West Adams was a common gathering place for Los Angeles activists. In 1950 it was torn down to provide land for the John Tracy Clinic, “a free nonprofit educational institution for deaf children founded by Louise Tracy, the wife of actor Spencer Tracy,” which also has a cookbook in this Archive.

 

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Black & white portrait of Caroline M. Severance, Rebecca Spring, Susan B. Anthony, from "The mother of clubs: Caroline M. Seymour Severance" (estimated date of photo, 1906)

 

Historical architectural photos via USC Digital Archive (original clubhouse), the LAPL Photo Collection (second clubhouse), and Google Maps (2020 view)

 

Also pictured, Olive Perceval in her garden. See the "Pictured Recipe" section of this entry for more on Perceval's Roseleaf Conserve

I made Olive Percival’s Roseleaf Conserve! 

 

I have long been an admirer of Percival, who was an author, artist, doll collector, bibliophile. toy inventor, hat and bookplate designer, and wonderfully eccentric Los Angeles figure. While her renaissance woman qualities may imply a life of leisure, Percival came from modest means and worked as an insurance Clerk for most of her adult life.  However, while her name may be unfamiliar to most Angelino’s today, she was well-known amongst her creative peers, such as sculptor Julia Bracken Wend and writer/adventurer Charles Lummis (who also has recipes that appear in this Archive).

 

Percval shared the Friday Morning Club’s passion for Women’s suffrage - even defending equal voting rights forcefully in articles she wrote for the LA Times. She was also an outspoken critic of the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which kept Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Korean immigrants from buying land. 

 

It’s no surprise that Percival submitted a recipe featuring roses for this cookbook, as she was a serious gardener at her home, known as 'Down-hyl Claim,' in the Arroyo Seco area of LA.There, she hosted many outdoor gatherings and even “moon viewing” parties. In 1911, Percival published a book of poems entitled “Leaf Shadows and Rose-Drift; Being Little Songs From a Los Angeles Garden.” She also drafted a children’s guide to gardening, which was only published long after her death by the Huntington Library in 2005. The Huntington Library’s archive has hundreds of Percival’s photos, including many taken in the garden. 

 

As “Las Angelenas of LA History” noted in an essay about Percival  for KCET;

 

“With [Percival’s] many social commitments--a dinner with Jack London, a Spanish class with the second Mrs. Lummis, an exhibit at the studio of sculptor Alexander Calder (father to artist Alexander Calder, Jr.)--she felt most at peace in her garden. She tended her garden with a delicate and whimsical hand, ensuring it brought joy to both human and animal. Among the 250 varieties of plants, shrubs and vines in her garden, she favored her roses above the rest. After she died, a cherry red rose was patented the "Olive Percival Rose" and planted in the White House Rose Garden (though, the rose never met with commercial success).”

 

While garden roses may of been Percival’s favorite bloom, her 1911 poem “Sunset Skies,” takes a different stance; 

 

My garden is flaunting ten thousand roses

But perverse am I : I love the best

Those heavenly field of azaleas, iris,

Now abloom for all, above the West! 

 

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Black & white photo: Olive Percival hangs lanterns in her garden (522 San Pascual Ave) | Photo from The Children's Garden Book

ALLISON & ALLISON

Friday Morning Club Juniors Cook Book 

The Friday Mourning Club Cook Book 

Our Favorite Recipes

The Old Vanity Fair Tea Room Recipes gathered from far and near

 

HARRIET CHILD WADLEIGH

Friday Morning Club Juniors Cook Book 

Friday Morning Club Cook Book, The 

Landmarks Club Cook Book 

The Old Vanity Fair Tea Room Recipes gathered from far and near

 

CLARA BURDETTE

Danties That Are Bread In a Book: Shakespeare Club Cook Book 

The Ebell Club of Los Angeles Cook Book

Ebell Recipes

Friday Morning Club Juniors Cook Book 

The Friday Morning Club Cook Book

The Landmarks Club Cook Book 

The Old Vanity Fair Tea Room Recipes gathered from far and near

Southwest Cooks! The Tradition of Native American Cuisines

 

WOMEN’S SOCIAL CLUBS (Non-specific)

Best in Cooking in La Puente, The

A Book of Favorite Recipes by Members of La Crescenta Woman's Club

Circle Fare

Cook Book de Luxe

The Ebell Club of Los Angeles Cook Book

Ebell Recipes

Fashions In Foods In Beverly Hills (1929)

Fashions In Foods In Beverly Hills (1931)

Fashions In Foods In Beverly Hills (1963)

Friday Morning Club Juniors Cook Book 

Friday Morning Club Cook Book, The 

Hopping Good Cookbook, A 

Jr's II

The Old Vanity Fair Tea Room Recipes gathered from far and near

Patteran Cook Book, The

Rosemead Cook-book 

Superior Cook Book 

Treasured Recipes from California Kitchens

 

 

Due to their fragile nature, each book is being digitized by hand. If you have particular interest in a particular cookbook, please reach out via the Contact Page, so it will be given priority.