An Elegant, Bronze Time Capsule, Rediscovered at the New-York Historical Society, Awaits Its Opening

At 2pm on May 23, 1914, a group of men wearing cocked hats, white wigs, and knee-breeches, emerged from the Fraunces Tavern, walked slowly up Broad Street, and then turned down Wall Street towards the river, accompanied by the steady beat of a Continental drum corps. “Had George Washington’s statue on the steps of the Sub-Treasury come to life,” remarked one witness, “he would surely have thought that the old Revolutionary days had returned.”  But it was merely the advance guard of a parade celebrating lower Wall Street’s importance not just as a center of the tea and coffee trade, but also as a birthplace of the revolution.  Following behind were several hundred tea and coffee merchants, along with members (including almost forty women) of various historical and hereditary societies, and descendants of New York’s revolutionary leaders.  Cheered on by hundreds of spectators on the sidewalk and by office workers from windows high above, they finally reached the Jauncey office building at 91 Wall Street, where they gathered for the unveiling of a bronze plaque marking the site of the historic Merchants’ Coffee House, which had burned down 110 years earlier.