Tontine Coffee House

Tontine Coffee House
A 1797 painting by Francis Guy. The building with the American flag is the Tontine Coffee House. Diagonally opposite (southeast corner, extreme right)[1] is the Merchant's Coffee House, where the stockbrokers of the Buttonwood Agreement and others traded before the construction of the Tontine. On the right is Wall Street, leading down to the East River.
General information
Opened	1793
Demolished	1855

The Tontine Coffee House was a coffeehouse in Manhattan, New York City, established in early 1793. Situated at 82 Wall Street, on the north-west corner of Water Street,^[2][3][4] it was built by a group of stockbrokers to serve as a meeting place for trade and correspondence. It was organized as a tontine, a type of investment plan, and funded by the sale of 203 shares of £200 each.^[5] The May 17, 1792, creation of the Buttonwood Agreement, which bound its signatories to trade only with each other, effectively gave rise to a new organization of tradespeople.^[6]