Tribute to USA Coffee

Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Peets, Tim Hortons, and Caribou prove that the world loves its coffee. With coffee houses being both a past and present place for meetings, political discussions, tutoring sessions, and hang out places, coffee plays a tremendous role throughout history. My love of Tim Horton's coffee helped with my all- nighters of studying history and my third cup today inspired this post. Enjoy.

The Tontine Coffee House (1794)

This coffee house, "was the center of commercial activity in New York City... was established as a merchants exchange- a place where merchants and brokers could meet and trade goods with one another."¹ Stockbrokers began to meet at The Tontine Coffee House and would "trade stocks and bonds into the early years of the 19th century."² Thus, this was the original place of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. 

City Tavern/ Merchant's Coffee House
  This tavern/ coffee house is the historic location that fed, "Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Paul Revere....In 1834, a fire badly damaged the Merchant's Coffee House... Eclipsed as a center of the business world, the Tavern was burned down in 1854."³ This tavern/ coffee house represents the importance of coffee in the lives of the Founding Fathers, business innovation, and political debate. 

The First Dunkin Donuts: 1950 (Quincy, Massachusetts)

The first Starbucks: 1971 (Seattle)

The first Tim Hortons: 1964 (Hamilton, Ontario)

The first US Tim Hortons was in Amherst, NY in 1985.⁴

1. Stephen Wheeler. "The Tontine Coffee House: Early Home of the NYSE". NYSE Euronext, 2012. 
2. Ibid. 
3. "City Tavern". Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia, 1995-2013. http://www.ushistory.org/tour/city-tavern.htm
4. "Tim Hortons US Fast Facts. 2010-2012. http://www.timhortons.com/us/en/about/us-facts.html