inity Church, on Broadway. The
observatory may have been added later]

The King's Arms was built of wood, and had a front of yellow brick, said
to have been brought from Holland. The building was two stories high,
and on the roof was an "observatory," arranged with seats, and
commanding a fine view of the bay, the river, and the city. Here the
coffee-house visitors frequently sat in the afternoons. It is not shown
in the illustration.

[Illustration: BURNS COFFEE HOUSE AS IT APPEARED ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

It stood for many years on Broadway, opposite Bowling Green, in the old
De Lancey House, becoming known in 1763 as the King's Arms, and later
the Atlantic Garden House]

The sides of the main room on the lower floor were lined with booths,
which, for the sake of greater privacy, were screened with green
curtains. There a patron could sip his coffee, or a more stimulating
drink, and look over his mail in the same exclusiveness affected by the
Londoner of the time.

The rooms on the second floor were used for special meetings of
merchants, colonial magistrates and overseers, or similar public and
private business.

The meeting room, as above described, seems to have been one of the
chief features distinguishing a coffee house from a tavern. Although
both types of houses had rooms for guests, and served meals, the coffee
house was used for business purposes by permanent customers, while the
tavern was patronized more by transients. Men met at the coffee house
daily to carry on business, and went to the tavern for convivial
purposes or lodgings. Before the front door hung the sign of "the lion
and the unicorn fighting for the crown."

For many years the King's Arms was the only coffee house in the city; or
at least no other seems of sufficient importance to have been mentioned
in colonial records. For this reason it was more frequently designated
as "the" coffee house than the King's Arms. Contemporary records of the
arrest of John Hutchins of the King's Arms, and of Roger Baker, for
speaking disrespectfully of King George, mention the King's Head, of
which Baker was proprietor. But it is generally believed that this
public house was a tavern and not rightfully to be considered as a
coffee house. The White Lion, mentioned about 1700, was also a tavern,
or inn.

_The New Coffee House_

Under date of September 22, 1709, the _Journal of the General Assembly
of the Colony of New York_ refer