London Coffee House

London Coffee House, often called the Old London Coffee House, was a Philadelphia coffee house and merchants exchange in the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania. Located at the southwest corner of Market (formerly High Street) and Front Streets, it was one block west of the Delaware River waterfront. The coffeehouse was the scene of political and commercial activity, and was the site of slave auctions of Black captives recently arrived from Africa. Pennsylvania's 1780 Gradual Abolition Act made it illegal to import additional enslaved Africans into the state, but the law was a compromise that freed only the future children of those already enslaved in Pennsylvania.