s first
coffee house, was postmaster of the province for a number of years, and
it is believed that Ye coffee house also did duty as the post-office for
a time. Benjamin Franklin's _Pennsylvania Gazette_, in an issue
published in 1734, has this advertisement:

_All persons who are indebted to Henry Flower, late postmaster of
Pennsylvania, for Postage of Letters or otherwise, are desir'd to
pay the same to him at the old Coffee House in Philadelphia._

Flower's advertisement would indicate that Ye coffee house, then
venerable enough to be designated as old, was still in existence, and
that Flower was to be found there. Franklin also seems to have been in
the coffee business, for in several issues of the _Gazette_ around the
year 1740 he advertised: "Very good coffee sold by the Printer."

_The First London Coffee House_

Philadelphia's second coffee house bore the name of the London coffee
house, which title was later used for the resort William Bradford opened
in 1754. The first house of this name was built in 1702, but there seems
to be some doubt about its location. Writing in the _American Historical
Register_, Charles H. Browning says: "William Rodney came to
Philadelphia with Penn in 1682, and resided in Kent County, where he
died in 1708; he built the old London coffee house at Front and Market
Streets in 1702." Another chronicler gives its location as "above Walnut
Street, either on the east side of Water Street, or on Delaware Avenue,
or, as the streets are very close together, it may have been on both.
John Shewbert, its proprietor, was a parishioner of Christ Church, and
his establishment was largely patronized by Church of England people."
It was also the gathering place of the followers of Penn and the
Proprietary party, while their opponents, the political cohorts of
Colonel Quarry, frequented Ye coffee house.

The first London coffee house resembled a fashionable club house in its
later years, suitable for the "genteel" entertainments of the well-to-do
Philadelphians. Ye coffee house was more of a commercial or public
exchange. Evidence of the gentility of the London is given by John
William Wallace:

The appointments of the London Coffee House, if we may infer what
they were from the will of Mrs. Shubert [Shewbert] dated November
27, 1751, were genteel. By that instrument she makes bequest of
two silver quart tankards; a silver cup; a silver porringer; a
si