ll later of New Jersey. The first landlord of the Crown was Thomas
Selby, who by trade was a periwig maker, but probably found the selling
of strong drink and coffee more profitable. Selby's coffee house was
also used as an auction room. The Crown stood until 1780, when it was
destroyed in a fire that swept the Long Wharf. On its site now stands
the Fidelity Trust Company at 148 State Street.

Another early Boston coffee house on State Street was the Royal
Exchange. How long it had been standing before it was first mentioned in
colonial records in 1711 is unknown. It occupied an ancient two-story
building, and was kept in 1711 by Benjamin Johns. This coffee house
became the starting place for stage coaches running between Boston and
New York, the first one leaving September 7, 1772. In the _Columbian
Centinel_ of January 1, 1800, appeared an advertisement in which it was
said: "New York and Providence Mail Stage leaves Major Hatches' Royal
Exchange Coffee House in State Street every morning at 8 o'clock."

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the North-End coffee house
was celebrated as the highest-class coffee house in Boston. It occupied
the three-storied brick mansion which had been built about 1740 by
Edward Hutchinson, brother of the noted governor. It stood on the west
side of North Street, between Sun Court and Fleet Street, and was one of
the most pretentious of its kind. An eighteenth century writer, in
describing this coffee-house mansion, made much of the fact that it had
forty-five windows and was valued at $4,500, a large sum for those days.
During the Revolution, Captain David Porter, father of Admiral David D.
Porter, was the landlord, and under him it became celebrated throughout
the city as a high-grade eating place. The advertisements of the
North-End coffee house featured its "dinners and suppers--small and
retired rooms for small company--oyster suppers in the nicest manner."

[Illustration: METAL COFFEE POTS USED IN THE NEW YORK COLONY

Left, tin coffee pot, dark brown, with "love apple" decoration in red,
New Jersey Historical Society, Newark; right, weighted bottom tin pot
with rose decoration, private owner]

_A "Skyscraper" Coffee House_

The Boston coffee-house period reached its height in 1808, when the
doors of the Exchange coffee house were thrown open after three years of
building. This structure, situated on Congress Street near State
Street, was the skyscraper of its day, a