Joseph Lee: Restaurateur, Caterer, Hotelier, Inventor

Restaurateur, Caterer, Hotelier

Joseph Lee rose to the pinnacle of success in Quincy in the late 1890s as the proprietor of the Squantum Inn. During his career as a restaurateur he had charmed presidents of the United States, Boston Brahmins, corporate heavyweights, and working-class families out on a Saturday night for one of his famous fried fish dinners. People loved Joseph Lee. What makes Lee’s story so remarkable is that he was born a slave in Charleston, South Carolina in 1849.

Lee worked in the kitchen as a child at the Lee plantation. He most likely learned culinary skills from his mother, who served as a cook. He came to Massachusetts shortly after the end of the Civil War. He stayed only six months because he joined the United States Coast Survey. For the next decade he honed his kitchen knives onboard ships, providing meals for the crews.

Lee returned to Massachusetts in 1877, where he opened the Hillside House at Weston. After that, he managed the Bellevue in Wellesley Hills until he was offered the job of managing the new Woodland Park Hotel in the Auburndale section of Newton. With six years of success behind him, Lee was able to purchase the Woodland Park Hotel in 1883. Over the next seven years he added a billiard room, bowling alleys, and 70 more guest rooms. Lee also provided catering services for weddings and parties. Ice cream and fancy cakes were his specialty – he even delivered ice cream to any part of Newton.

Lee married schoolteacher Christiana Howard in Philadelphia, in 1875. Mrs. Lee was born free in Sandy Spring, MD in 1850 and her family moved to Philadelphia by 1860. The 1880 US Census recorded the Lees living in Needham, MA as managers of a boarding house with five black servants and seven white boarders. The Lees, with their children Genevieve and Joseph Howard, were listed as “mulattoes.” Two more children followed: Therese in 1881 and Narka in 1889.

By then one of Newton’s wealthiest men, in 1891 Lee became proprietor of the Hotel Abbotsford on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. The Italian Renaissance hotel had a restaurant that Lee could make his own. The Boston Post reported on March 6, 1891, “Joseph Lee has supplied a location where the want has long been felt with a most desirable residence hotel. As evidence of its future success, one-half of the suites which range over the five stories of the hotel have already been secured to tenants.”

Unfortunately, the timing of Lee’s business expansion could not have been worse. A deep recession in 1891 adversely affected Lee’s businesses. In May 1892 newspapers around the country reported that the Lee had assets of $75,000 and debts of $103,194. The Detroit Plaindealer reported on May 13, 1892, “Mr. Lee has gone into insolvency. He was an enterprising colored man and strictly attentive to business, therefore his many friends regret this turn in fortune.” The Panic of 1893 and subsequent depression sealed Lee’s fate. Lee had to give up the Woodland Park Hotel and Hotel Abbotsford businesses.

A man of determination, Lee could not stay out of the retail restaurant business for long. In July 1897 he opened the Pavilion Restaurant at Norumbega Park. The grand elevated restaurant with seating for 250 people overlooked the amusement park and the Charles River. Lee stayed at Norumbega Park for only one season as a new opportunity developed in Quincy.

In the summer of 1898, Lee came to Squantum to manage the newly built 16-room Squantum Inn, located on five acres and overlooking Dorchester Bay. At the grand opening on July 30, 1898, a “who’s who” of local industrialists and politicians, including Mayor Sears of Quincy, were in attendance.

Lee made his money on never-ending corporate and political banquets. Customers found his hospitality irresistible. Diners could view the fish and game on hand, make their selection, and have it cooked to order.

When the Boston Jewelers’ Club held an outing on October 1, 1898, their next newsletter contained a short review, “At the Squantum Inn, where refreshment for weary travelers is furnished in the highest style of the art, an excellent dinner was spread.” The Boston Herald of September 11, 1899, also wrote glowingly, “The manager, Joseph Lee, is known by almost every epicure. His bountiful table, bright with linen and silver, and overloaded with good things, has made an enviable reputation among all hotel men.”

Although constantly absorbed with his businesses, Lee managed to devote time to several causes. In 1890 he traveled to Washington DC as a delegate from Massachusetts to the Colored Men’s National Convention. His name was offered for the finance committee at the convention. In the 1890s he served on the executive committee of the Massachusetts Hotel Association, and at the time of his death he was president of the Bachbens, the exclusive organization of Boston’s “colored society” men.

Lee managed the Squantum Inn for a decade until his death in Boston on June 11, 1908, at age 59. Of the many obituaries published, the most heartfelt came from the New York Age, one of America’s most influential African-American newspapers, on June 18, 1908:

Last Thursday afternoon June 11, at his splendid home, 528 Columbus Avenue, Mr. Joseph Lee, inventor of the bread machine and the proprietor of the Squantum Inn, passed away. After having gained a business reputation second to none for shrewdness, resourcefulness and square dealing, a member of that old and passing school of Negro businessmen always pointed to by friends of the race as an example of Negro capability, the death of Mr. Joseph Lee in the face of prosperous business prospects when he had hardly passed the prime of life, is a distinct loss to the race.

There was present a delegation of 20 of the oldest and wealthiest Faneuil Hall market men, whose personal and undying friendship he had won through long and honest dealing. Rich men and poor men, black men and white, all were represented, all knew and respected Joseph Lee as an able man and a true friend.

The story could have ended right here but for the drive and passion for hospitality of Lee’s wife, Christiana. No idle bystander, Christiana was a full partner in all of her husband’s business interests. In June 1909, with the help of daughter Genevieve, Christiana opened Lee’s Inn at the former Pratt Mansion, located around the corner from the Squantum Inn. And if it wasn’t broke, the menu didn’t need fixing. The fried fish dinner reigned supreme!

Mother and daughter operated the inn until Christiana’s death in 1916, at age 63. This ended 18 years of the Lees’ association with Squantum and 40 years of unparalleled customer service.

Inventor

Lee’s lasting legacy are patented inventions in bread and bread crumb machinery that led to international fame, great wealth, and belated induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2019. The quality of a restaurateur’s bread is the first impression a diner has of a restaurant and Lee was obsessive about the high standards he had for his bread. In the August 18, 1901, Boston Journal, Lee described his first invention in 1894, the Kneading machine:

I first became interested in the problem while at Auburndale. I asked myself if a machine could not be constructed which would do the laborious part of the work of bread making – the kneading – for I learned that my bread changed with every baker. With an industrious baker I had good bread; with a lazy baker, bread I did not want. I thought that an automatic baker to do the kneading would solve the problem, and then set about the construction of the present machine. It was successful from its inception, and my bread was uniformly good afterward.

Lee Catering Company could bake hundreds of breads a day that would have taken a dozen workers to produce. The Kneading-machine made Lee rich when he sold it to the National Bread Company for stock in the company and royalties. He followed up this invention with the Bread-crumbing machine in 1895. He used this machine to make breadcrumbs from day old bread that previously would have been discarded. At the Squantum Inn, Lee fried his fish with a coating of breadcrumbs that customers found superior to the coating of crumbled crackers that most chefs used at the time. Lee sold rights to the Bread-crumbing machine to the Goodell Company of New Hampshire.

By 1900 Lee’s bread machines were received so well they could be found at America’s leading hotels and catering firms. Lee never stopped tinkering with his inventions. He patented an improvement to the kneading machine in 1902. The kneading action more closely approximated the work of the human hand. Perhaps Joseph Lee could have been a physiologist too – if he put his mind to it.

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This article originally appeared in the fall 2020 issue of our newsletter, Quincy History.