History of The Coffee House, Part I

Published on: December 6, 2006

It all began in Old Constantinople ... or, did it?
The history of the coffee house, much like the history of coffee, is redolent with fable, saturated with myth, and couched in legends. Was coffee a known beverage during the 9th century in Persia? Did Egypt, Libya, and Abyssinia know coffee in the year 1000? Coffee historians are still debating. And, that's what makes the story of the bean as intriguing today as it was 50 years ago, and 500 years before that.

What we do know for sure is that the Ottoman Turks brought coffee from Yemen (or the Levant) to Constantinople in 1453, and in 1471, (some say 1475) the first coffee house was established, Kiva Han. It exists today, with the same name if not the heirs to the founders, a small shop on a nondescript cobblestone street in today's Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople. Kiva Han was a natural outgrowth for the surging popularity of coffee during the 15th and 16th centuries when thousands of acres of coffee trees were planted throughout the Arabian Peninsula and in Yemen and trade flourished. Especially in Turkey and Syria where coffee lovers in Damascus started that country's first coffee house in 1530.

At first coffee, like tea, was used for its medicinal purposes, then as enthusiasts became more and more adventurous with the bean, they segued from grinding the green bean to roasting it to its now-familiar luscious brown, then grinding it and boiling it with water to make coffee that is drunk in a similar style today throughout the area. The style is small cups of thick, rich coffee, water and grounds together, sometimes sweetened heavily, other times drunk for its edgy bitterness.

A good cup of coffee, no matter what technique is used to brew it, almost demands companionship, and in Kiva Han, men met to discuss the issues of the day, drink coffee "hot and black as the devil," play games, discuss business, and even listen to a poet or two. While it was men who sat in Kiva Han, it was the women who used coffee for "female troubles" and as an aphrodisiac. So serious was the claim that coffee was an aphrodisiac that Turkish men could be sued for divorce if they did not provide their wives with enough coffee, thus giving new meaning to "grounds for divorce."

Wherever it is served, on enjoys the society of the noblest and most generous men.
-attributed to an Arabic proverb

The reputation of coffee was soon spreading outward like caravans of camels on the Arabian pathways. In 1650, Baba Budan, a Muslim from India, allegedly hid coffee beans in his garments and planted them in Mysore where India's premier coffee plantations still grow. Also in 1650, a Turk known as "Jacob the Jew" opened the very first coffee house in Oxford, England and started such a huge trend that by 1698 London sported more than 2,000 coffee houses covering more retail real estate than any other industry. (Ironically, following governmental bans on coffee, Turkey's legion of coffee houses closed, and the rich coffee culture along with it for centuries.)

They have in Turkey, a drink called Coffa, made of a Berry of the same Name, as Black as Soot, and of a Strong Scent, but not Aromatical; which they take, beaten into Powder, in Water as Hot as they can Drink it: and they take it, and sit at it in their Coffa-houses, which are like our Taverns. This Drink comforteth the Brain, and Heart, and helpeth Digestion.
-Francis Bacon, from Sylva Sylvarum, summing up the traveler's tales

In England, however, the London coffee house, notably Will's and Button's, continued to weave its way into the very fabric of literary and commercial life so that by the 18th century, one could find writers John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Samuel Pepys, and Dr. Ben Johnson basking in the fireplace glow at the coffee house, where they gave new meaning to "wit." Here the best of conversation lasted until well past midnight not only among the literati but among such notables as Lord Clive, the Duke of Montague or Northumberland, theater legends David Garrick and Samuel Foote. Alexander Pope wrote famously in his Rape of the Lock that:

Coffee (which makes the politician wise,
And see thro' all things with his half-shut eyes)
Sent up in vapours to the Baron's brain,
New strategems, the radiant Lock to gain.

Businessmen were also enamored with the coffee house like Garraway's and John's and Lloyd's which was not only a coffee house but a shipping business that segued into insurance and remains a venerable institution today. At Lloyd's, shipping news was often the highlight of the conversation each day as it was the barometer of trade and commerce, especially with the emergence of the faster clipper ship that could travel in weeks what used to take months.

Conversation was both entertainment and educational in the London coffee house, so much so that students of all ages, men of all rank, were privy to the bon mots and advice spewed by business people, notables, and certainly writers of the era. And, for the price of a penny, one could stay at the coffee house all day, read newspapers, drink copious amounts of coffee, and avoid the wife, if one so desired. Many of these coffee houses became known as "penny universities" because the communities within were so rich and the price of admission, literally, was a penny.

The interior usually had one or more fireplaces, often an apothecary with many items made from coffee, and tables, chairs, and an air of conviviality. What you didn't see were games or sports, but newspapers, books, and an occasional writer, quill and inkwell at hand, trying his best to get his thoughts down quickly. Newspapers were not just read here, but debated along with critiques of London's growing cultural venues for art, theater, song, and dance.

Where men of differing judgments crowd,
And that’s a Coffee-House for where
Should men discourse so free as there?
-1665 Broadside, advertising a London coffee house

By 1848, many of these places had died off, as had many of its fondest patrons. The ladies, still denied access, turned to tea and elaborate tea gardens for socializing, and the British East India Company sailed the seas for the tea trade. Some of the more renown coffee houses became hotels, others taverns, still more simply shuttered their doors; the world of the London coffee house fell into the abyss of legend and memory.

IN JANUARY: Part 2 takes us to coffee houses throughout Europe; IN FEBRUARY: Part 3 explores Beatniks, Googie-mania, and modern American coffee houses.

FEATURED RECIPE: Beef Kaffenoff

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