Google Map of London Coffee Houses

London Coffee Houses of the 17th & 18th Century

Inspired by the recent Atlas of the Rhode Island Book Trade I decided to create a map of the London Coffee Houses of the 17th & 18th centuries.

In their heyday there were over 2,000 coffee houses in London. Much has been written about the importance of the coffee house as providing a public sphere for discussion and debate that was largely free from class distinction. Many of modern day London's most important institutions were formed from meetings that first took place in the coffee houses of this time, including the Stock Exchange, Lloyds of London and the Royal Academy.

This Google Map shows the (often approximate) location of some of the most influential of the coffee houses of the 17th & 18th centuries. In creating the map I used Esa's Google Maps API v3 Sidebar with makeMarker() template. I used the Styled Maps function to make the map grey-scale and for the markers I used an image from google-maps-icons.