Votes in the Parlor

Winter prints itself into stone. I learned new rhythms in the 1910s—the smell of coal smoke and printer's ink, pamphlets tucked beneath sleeves, a murmur at the threshold that wasn't gossip but intent. The door opened and I felt shoulders set with purpose, their weight a different kind of ceremony entirely.

A House Learns to Speak

By the early 1910s, Henry C. Davis and Naomi Lawton Davis were the names at the bell. The house functioned as many large Rittenhouse townhouses did in that period: family residence upstairs, professional suite below. Medical directories list Dr. Damon B. Pfeiffer at 1822 Pine Street by 1915, with additional physicians appearing in subsequent years. The building did double duty, healing bodies in the front rooms while daily life continued above.

But it was the women of the house who would make history. In 1911, newspapers singled out 'Mrs. Henry C. Davis, of 1822 Pine Street' for adopting the suffragists' tax resistance strategy—refusing to pay property taxes without the right to vote. That single printed line fixes activism to this exact threshold: petitions on the pier table, neighbors at the door, a cause that traveled from Pine Street into statewide debate.

Tickets to History

The activism continued through the decade and across generations. On January 8, 1915, the Evening Public Ledger announced that Equal Franchise Society luncheon tickets were available from 'Miss Martha Davis, 1822 Pine street.' Mother and daughter had transformed what had been society 'At Homes' into political organizing—the same parlors that received callers for tea now distributed tickets for suffrage benefits.

Think about what this meant. The Equal Franchise Society was fighting for Pennsylvania women's right to vote—a battle that would contribute to the Nineteenth Amendment five years later. And the nerve center of that local fight included this house on Pine Street, where a young woman sold tickets from the hall table and her mother defied the tax collector from principle.

The Dual Life of the House

The house's physical layout enabled this dual existence. The double parlors could pivot from waiting room to organizing space with a closing of pocket doors. The back corridor to Waverly Street allowed discrete movement—patients, activists, and household staff each had their routes. The medical registers of the period show Dr. Pfeiffer and later Dr. Stillwell Corson Burns (Surgery, 1916) practicing here, proof that the parlor-as-practice pattern coexisted with political activism.

This wasn't unusual for the era. Large Rittenhouse townhouses often housed both families and professionals, with the architecture designed to keep the two worlds separate. What was unusual was the activism—the deliberate choice to use a privileged address as a platform for social change.

An Ending at the Threshold

On May 21, 1918, an obituary appeared in the Philadelphia papers: 'Suddenly, at 1822 Pine St., ... NAOMI LAWTON, widow of Henry C. Davis.' It is the simplest kind of evidence—address, date, event—but it anchors the story in the only place that matters for a house history: this exact threshold.

The woman who had refused to pay taxes without representation, who had opened her parlors to the cause, breathed her last in these rooms. She did not live to see the Nineteenth Amendment ratified in 1920, but her work—documented in newspaper columns that name this address—contributed to that victory.