Lewistown Coffee-House offers refreshments in historic setting

In Colonial America, townspeople gathered in their community’s coffee house to enjoy a cup of coffee or chocolate, catch up on the town gossip and discuss business matters.

Today, Historic Lewes is putting a new twist on that tradition at the Lewistown Coffee-House on the historical society’s campus in downtown Lewes.

Rather than discussing business, coffeehouse manager Greg Burton expects customers will play a game of chess or cribbage, read the news on their laptops or just have a quiet conversation with a new friend.

Meanwhile, they might enjoy a cup of tea, Puerto Rican-grown coffee freshly brewed in a French press, or a delicious hot chocolate, a treat that’s already attracted a loyal customer following, many of whom buy packets to mix up at home after enjoying a frothy cup.

The Lewistown Coffee-House joins the Sussex Tavern as a destination for enjoying refreshments in a historic setting. The tavern began operating every Friday and Saturday just a few months ago, and it already attracts an often-boisterous crowd of regulars who enjoy a grog, cherry bounce or other Colonial-era cocktail. However, “It’s not exactly quiet,” Burton said. The Lewistown Coffee-House, he hopes, will offer a more tranquil alternative.

Open every Friday and Saturday – not just during tourist season – the coffee house and tavern are part of an initiative spearheaded by Historic Lewes Executive Director Andrew Lyter, who was looking for ways to attract visitors to the campus throughout the year. The organization is also offering a series of plays, talks, musical entertainment and similar events to entertain – and educate – both tourists and locals.

Burton says he’s taking a few historic liberties at the Lewistown Coffee-House.

While the first coffee house here in the colonies probably opened in Boston in the early 1700s, Historic Lewes has not yet uncovered any ledgers or other records to determine whether the town had its own coffee house in the late 1700s. If so, it would have been a place to discuss land sales and leases, incoming shipments to and from the Caribbean, Europe and Philadelphia, and similar business matters.

“It also probably just served coffee, not hot chocolate,” Burton said. Chocolate – made with water, milk, or sometimes port or Madeira wine – would be more likely enjoyed at home in Colonial America. He also offers bottled lemonade and iced tea, two drinks that 18th-century customers would likely recognize, while today, they might quench the thirst of a cyclist who just pedaled over from the Junction & Breakwater Trail.

Once a home built in the late 1700s in downtown Lewes, the coffee house building itself was moved to the Historic Lewes campus in the early 1960s. The frame, floor and rafters are the only original parts that remain. “The building was a blank slate,” Burton said. 

With a grant from the Mars Foundation, the building was remodeled in 2023 to become the Lewistown Coffee-House. Mars also provides the chocolate mix used to make the thick, spicy concoction based on 18th-century recipes. Flavored with cinnamon, vanilla, whole star anise, nutmeg, dried red pepper and orange peel, the resulting drink has much less sugar than the typical hot chocolate mix in today’s grocery stores, because sugar was a very expensive ingredient for Colonial Americans.

Burton hopes that coffee and chocolate lovers will find the coffee house a pleasant respite, especially since there aren’t a lot of places downtown to enjoy a good book and a nice hot drink. “I wanted to create a place where somebody can get out of the house, bring a laptop and sit, relax and read the newspaper – that is the goal,” he said.

The Lewistown Coffee-House is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays this winter on the grounds of the Historic Lewes campus on Shipcarpenter Street.