North American Coffee Shops Continue European Tradition

According to Jon Thorn's The Coffee Companion, the first reference to coffee in North America dates to 1668, when it was described as being drunk with sugar or honey and cinnamon. Soon after this date, coffee houses were set up in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other towns.

In Boston, the two earliest coffee houses were the London Coffee House and the Gutteridge Coffee House, which opened in 1691. One of the most famous establishments was The Green Dragon, where the Boston Tea Party was planned in 1773. Boston also became the site of the largest and most expensive coffee-exchange house in the world, when in 1808 a seven-story building, costing $50,000, was built on the model of Lloyd's of London (see previous blog). But it was destroyed by fire only ten years later.

In New York, where coffee quickly replaced beer as the most popular breakfast drink, the first coffee house to appear was the King's Arms, which opened in 1696. This was followed by the Exchange Coffee House on Broad Street, which was built in 1730 and became a major trading centre. Later the Merchant's Coffee House became preeminent. It was here that the Bank of New York was formed in 1784 and the first stocks sold in 1790. The Tontine, located on Wall and Water Streets in New York was the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange for ten years.

According to Wikipedia, however, coffee houses did not achieve true popularity until the advent of espresso and pastry-centered Italian coffee houses in major U.S. cities. As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffee houses. Before the rise of the Seattle-based Starbucks chain, Seattle and other parts of the Pacific Northwest had a thriving counter cultural coffeehouse scene. Starbucks standardized and mainstreamed this model.