or the hosts of lower and middle-class city dwellers who lived in rooms never intended to be separate domiciles the choices for food were: making do with whatever could be prepared on a small stove or a fireplace; taking board as well as room from the landlord; purchasing prepared food to bring home; or eating out. Every city had a multitude of small, cheap eating establishments catering to this clientele and hungry passers-by as well.

This handbill is a good—and amusing—documentation of this modus vivendi. A cleverly humorous poem grandiloquently extols the food to be had “at hard pan prices” in Robert Brown’s New York Coffee House and urges the reader to join those who “wood up” there. Mr. Brown clearly had his regular customers, as he offers “table board” for a fixed weekly price.

It should be noted, perhaps, that this handbill doesn’t have to be construed as a New York item; many businesses tried to suggest a fashionable air by invoking the metropolis’ name then as now; in point of fact (as well as I can determine) this particular “New York Coffee House” was probably in Boston. Use as impromptu note paper in camp or fold one up and put it in your wallet to remind you of where you had that good meal the last time you passed through...wherever! A copy of this pasted to a fence or lamp post brings the street or camp scene to life and provides a silent witness to the larger world outside the reenactment camp or restored house; powerful out of all proportion to its size, it can be tinder and fuel for first-person interpretation of issues otherwise impossible to recreate in our impressions.