The First Coffeehouse in America: Boston, 1670, and What Came Next

Long before drive-throughs and laptop cafés, Americans gathered over coffee in smoky rooms full of newspapers, merchants and political argument. So where was the first coffeehouse in America? The trail leads to Boston. In 1670, a Welsh immigrant named Dorothy Jones was licensed to keep a house of public entertainment for selling coffee and chocolate, the first recorded license to sell coffee in the English colonies. The first establishment actually named as a coffee house in Boston, the London Coffee House, followed in 1689. Within a century, coffeehouses had become places where revolution was discussed, deals were struck and, in one famous case, a bank fraud was built in stone.

Key takeaways

• Coffee likely reached New England in the 1600s; the Dutch brought it to New Amsterdam around 1640.
• 1670: Dorothy Jones of Boston was licensed to sell coffee and chocolate.
• 1689: the London Coffee House, often called Boston’s first coffee house, opened.
• The Green Dragon in Boston and City Tavern in Philadelphia became meeting places of the revolutionary era.
• Boston’s seven-story Exchange Coffee House, tied to a banking fraud, burned in 1818.

In this article

1. How coffee arrived in the colonies
2. The first coffeehouse in America: Boston’s claim
3. Timeline of early American coffeehouses
4. Coffeehouses and the Revolution
5. The rise and fall of the Exchange Coffee House
6. FAQ

How coffee arrived in the colonies

Coffee came to North America through European trade networks. The New England Historical Society suggests it probably first reached New England with Captain John Smith’s exploratory voyage up the coast in 1614, while the American Battlefield Trust dates the bean’s real arrival to the 1640s, noting that the Dutch brought coffee to New Amsterdam (later New York) in 1640, though those beans were old and not very good. Early colonists drank far more beer, cider and, among the wealthy, tea.

Meanwhile in England, coffee was booming. Coffee houses spread rapidly from the 1650s, and within a couple of decades there were reportedly thousands, earning nicknames like “penny universities” (we tell that story in London coffeehouses and the penny universities). Colonists naturally copied the model.

The first coffeehouse in America: Boston’s claim

Dorothy Jones, 1670

Boston’s records show that in 1670 Dorothy Jones was approved to keep “a house of publique Entertainment for the selling of Coffee.” She was also permitted to sell chocolate. That makes her the first licensed coffee seller recorded in the English colonies, and her establishment the earliest documented place in America where you could buy a cup. According to the New England Historical Society, about four years later she added wine and cider to the menu, a reminder that early coffee rooms and taverns blurred together.

The London Coffee House, 1689

The first Boston establishment called a coffee house was the London Coffee House, which opened in 1689. After the Revolution reached Boston, it was renamed the American Coffee House, a small name change with a big message.

So which was first?

It depends on your definition. If “coffeehouse” means any licensed place selling coffee to the public, Dorothy Jones’s house in 1670 comes first. If it means a business that called itself a coffee house, the London Coffee House of 1689 takes the title. Both are in Boston, which makes Boston’s claim secure either way.

Timeline of early American coffeehouses

Coffeehouses and the Revolution

Colonial coffeehouses were news hubs. Ship captains, merchants and lawyers met to read papers, trade gossip and do business, so it is no surprise they also became political stages.

• The British Coffee House, Boston: a loyalist haunt. In 1769, loyalists lured the patriot lawyer James Otis there, where he was beaten with a cane; accounts say he was never the same afterward.
• The Green Dragon, Boston: built in 1701 and bought by St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons in 1764. The Sons of Liberty met there, and some historians suggest parts of the Boston Tea Party were planned under its roof, though that remains a suggestion rather than a proven fact.
• City Tavern, Philadelphia: built in 1773 on South Second Street and also known as the Merchant Coffee House. Delegates to the First Continental Congress met there, and an early public reading of the Declaration of Independence is said to have taken place on its steps. The building you can visit today is a 1976 reconstruction.

The 1773 Tea Act, designed to prop up the British East India Company, pushed many colonists to boycott tea and turn to coffee. It did not create American coffee drinking, but it gave the habit a patriotic flavor. We explore the longer arc of that shift in why Americans drink coffee.

The rise and fall of the Exchange Coffee House

The most spectacular early American coffee house was also a monument to fraud. In the early 1800s Andrew Dexter Jr. built Boston’s Exchange Coffee House, seven stories tall and a skyscraper by the standards of the day. The New England Historical Society calls it probably the largest, most expensive coffee house ever built.

Dexter financed his ambitions by taking over banks in remote parts of New England and issuing banknotes far beyond their gold and silver reserves, betting that few holders would ever bring the notes back. When Thomas Jefferson’s 1807 embargo on British trade threw New England into depression, people did demand hard money, the banks collapsed and the notes became worthless. Dexter fled to Canada. The building carried on as a banquet hall and coffee house until it burned in 1818.

A cup with history

Colonial coffee came mostly through Caribbean and Latin American trade, a history with a dark side that we cover in coffee and slavery. Today you can taste the region’s coffees as they deserve to be roasted: our Latin American Blend is a medium-dark roast with nutty notes and a gentle cocoa finish, and Guatemala Antigua brings dark chocolate, bright fruit and butterscotch. Explore more origins in our single origins.

First American coffeehouse FAQ

What was the first coffeehouse in America?

The earliest documented coffee seller is Dorothy Jones of Boston, licensed in 1670. The first establishment named a coffee house was Boston’s London Coffee House, opened in 1689.

Who was the first person licensed to sell coffee in America?

Dorothy Jones, a Welsh immigrant in Boston, in 1670.

Was the Boston Tea Party planned in a coffeehouse?

Some suggest parts of it were planned at the Green Dragon in Boston, where the Sons of Liberty met, but this is not firmly proven.

Did the Revolution make Americans switch from tea to coffee?

It helped. Boycotts after the 1773 Tea Act pushed many colonists toward coffee, though coffee was already being sold in Boston a century earlier.

Sources

1. Sip Sip Hurrah! How Coffee Shaped Revolutionary America, American Battlefield Trust.
2. New England Coffee Houses: From Fad to Revolution to Fraud, New England Historical Society.

Facts checked in October 2026.

Keep reading: History of coffee · London coffeehouses · Blends