Set up in a former house at the foot of Wall Street on the very last day of 1792, the Tontine Coffee House was a successor of an earlier tavern and businessmen’s gathering-spot called the Merchants Coffee House

It function both as a tavern and a kind of shared work space for buyers and sellers of ships’ cargos, including coffee, sugar, Jamaica rum, and captive Africans intended to be sold into slavery.

Many of the brokers who would founded The New York Stock Exchange in 1792 put in time at the Tontine, which hosted the stock exchange beginning in 1793.

Alexander Hamilton would have been present at the Tontine Coffee House numerous times between its 1792 founding and his death in 1804. In 1795, Hamilton and his friend and political ally Rufus King convened a public meeting there to defend the unpopular Jay Treaty, a treaty with Great Britain negotiated on behalf of George Washington that many Americans thought put their young country at a decided commercial disadvantage.

Hamilton also attended a dinner here for fellow Federalist Oliver Wolcott Jr. thrown by New York’s Chamber of Commerce in February, 1801. At this reception, Hamilton was noted for making the following toast:

“May our Government never fall a prey to the dreams of a Condorcet, nor to the vices of a Cataline.”