public houses--inns, taverns, ordinaries, and
coffee houses. The inn was a modest hotel that supplied lodgings, food,
and drink, the beverages consisting mostly of ale, port, Jamaica rum,
and Madeira wine. The tavern, though accommodating guests with bed and
board, was more of a drinking place than a lodging house. The ordinary
combined the characteristics of a restaurant and a boarding house. The
coffee house was a pretentious tavern, dispensing, in most cases,
intoxicating drinks as well as coffee.

_Philadelphia's First Coffee House_

The first house of public resort opened in Philadelphia bore the name of
the Blue Anchor tavern, and was probably established in 1683 or 1684;
colonial records do not state definitely. As its name indicates, this
was a tavern. The first coffee house came into existence about the year
1700. Watson, in one place in his _Annals_ of the city, says 1700, but
in another 1702. The earlier date is thought to be correct, and is
seemingly substantiated by the co-authors Scharf and Westcott in their
_History_ of the city, in which they say, "The first public house
designated as a coffee house was built in Penn's time [1682-1701] by
Samuel Carpenter, on the east side of Front Street, probably above
Walnut Street. That it was the first of its kind--the only one in fact
for some years--seems to be established beyond doubt. It was always
referred to in old times as 'Ye Coffee House.'"

Carpenter owned also the Globe inn, which was separated from Ye coffee
house by a public stairway running down from Front Street to Water
Street, and, it is supposed, to Carpenter's Wharf. The exact location of
the old house was recently established from the title to the original
patentee, Samuel Carpenter, by a Philadelphia real-estate
title-guarantee company, as being between Walnut and Chestnut Streets,
and occupying six and a half feet of what is now No. 137 South Front
Street and the whole of No. 139.

How long Ye coffee house endured is uncertain. It was last mentioned in
colonial records in a real estate conveyance from Carpenter to Samuel
Finney, dated April 26, 1703. In that document it is described as "That
brick Messuage, or Tenement, called Ye Coffee House, in the possession
of Henry Flower, and situate, lying and being upon or before the bank of
the Delaware River, containing in length about thirty feet and in
breadth about twenty-four."

The Henry Flower mentioned as the proprietor of Philadelphia'