At These Five Coffeehouses, Small-Business Owners Embrace Their Historic Locations
When coffee was first mass produced in the United States in the 19th century, the aim was convenience. Early industry giants like Folgers put ready-to-brew grounds on grocery store shelves, and the later rise of chains such as Peet’s Coffee and Starbucks made the drink ubiquitous.
Since then, coffee culture has evolved into a so-called “third wave,” which emphasizes process as much as product—and coffee shops are where the careful craft takes shape.
“A lot of coffee shops today have a modern look,” says Valentina Killough, co-owner of Alkemy Coffee Co. in Flemington, New Jersey. “But because our coffee shop is in this historic building, we wanted to go more in that direction with our vibe. ... People are struck by that when they visit.”
Independently owned coffeehouses must find ways to stand out in a highly competitive industry. For Alkemy, that means bucking trends and opting for a location in a former pottery factory. Century-old architectural details at the rehabilitated Stangl Factory sold Killough and co-owner Benjamin Weinman on the space.
The 1920s redbrick complex, punctuated by three conical kilns poking out through its low-slung roof, once housed Stangl Pottery. Nearly 100 years later it sat vacant, until local general contractor George Eckelmann and community planner Frank Banisch purchased it in 2011 and hired architect Chris Pickell to transform the space. Now home to an art gallery, a pottery studio, and a weekly farmers’ market, it’s the heart of Flemington’s arts and culture scene.
photo by: Sean Banisch
An original kiln serves as the centerpiece of Alkemy Coffee Co.’s space at a former pottery factory in Flemington, New Jersey.
Alkemy Coffee Co. opened its doors there in April 2024. Weinman brought a passion for specialty coffee, while Killough’s background as a barista and certified aromatherapist allowed the couple to tap into the wellness movement. Cafegoers can choose from a selection of coffee and espresso-based drinks made with locally roasted beans; an herbal blend of medicinal mushrooms; or house-crafted teas that target digestion, focus, and inflammation. Customers can choose to sip their beverages while sitting at a table inside one of the factory’s massive original kilns.
“It’s like a cave. It’s all raw brick that’s never been treated,” says architect Pickell. “The kiln is a showpiece of the coffee shop.”
The kiln’s original brick shelving was repurposed into built-in wood-topped seating. The room’s circular footprint, about 12 feet in diameter, can fit a small group.
“It’s definitely something that we could have never created with any amount of money, because of the historic nature of it,” says Weinman.
In Lexington, Kentucky, coffee shop owner Rhett Constantine says his historic location—a late-19th century schoolhouse—also draws business.
“We’re really close to downtown Lexington, and there’s a couple Starbucks and some [other] big national chains downtown. But people find Old School Coffee and they think, ‘Wow, this is in a unique building.’”
Old School Coffee is one of a handful of businesses in the historic Dudley Square building, a public school built around 1881 that operated until the 1930s. The property was renovated into commercial space late in the 20th century, and when current owner David Burton purchased it in 2018, it was still in solid shape.
“The ceilings are 13 feet on the first floor,” Burton says. “It’s got a big, wide center hallway, a double staircase in the center of the building that goes up. It has an interesting feel to it.”
Old School Coffee can be found on the first floor, where the menu leans into the building’s educational origins: “School House #3” is a white chocolate–lavender latte, while “The Teacher” latte combines flavors of honey and vanilla.
“I didn’t have this dream to open up a coffee shop in an old school,” says Constantine, who started the business in 2019. “But this beautiful old school presented itself, and I kind of molded my branding around that.”
photo by: Old School Coffee
The Dudley Square building in Lexington, Kentucky, was once a schoolhouse.
Firehouse Coffee 1881, located in a former fire station at historic Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, similarly integrates the building’s origins into its brand identity.
“There’s two big garage doors, and you can clearly see it was a fire station,” says co-owner Matthew Horne. “There’s fire memorabilia everywhere.”
The Colonial Revival–style firehouse operated from 1881 until 2011, when the fort was deactivated. Today it’s part of the landscape of Fort Monroe National Monument. Administered by the National Park Service, the monument aims to preserve the 565-acre site, also known as “Freedom’s Fortress.” During the Civil War, thousands of enslaved people escaped to Fort Monroe through a legal loophole that allowed them to take refuge at the Union-held fort. (The National Trust has collaborated with Fort Monroe for years, including successfully advocating for the creation of the national monument in 2011 and awarding an African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund grant to the Fort Monroe Foundation in 2021.)
photo by: Fort Monroe Authority
Fort Monroe’s firehouse is now a coffee shop.
The 3,751-square-foot firehouse, managed by the Fort Monroe Authority, is one of dozens of historic buildings associated with the site. The station features original decorative cast-iron columns that support the garage area’s wood beams. Maintenance and restoration completed throughout the 1990s and early 2000s have kept the structure in sound condition.
Firehouse Coffee 1881 first opened in 2017, and since 2021, Horne and co-owner Patrick Jackowski have been at the helm. The menu contains all the usual espresso-based suspects, or customers can opt for a coffee made with locally roasted beans. Blend names like “Fortress” and “Chesapeake Bay” nod to the area.
Horne says running a business in a nearly 150-year-old building “forces you to be creative to come up with solutions for making the space work,” like hanging the shop’s chalkboard menu from the ceiling rather than mounting it on the station’s impenetrable original brick walls. Being situated within a significant historic site, Horne adds, “is definitely a draw for tourism.”
Local and national history are also key parts of the story for Gilly Brew Bar, a coffeehouse in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Founder and co-owner Daniel Brown says he wants people visiting his business “to see how far we’ve come from the stories that people typically hear about Stone Mountain.”
The city is often cited as the birthplace of the modern Ku Klux Klan. In 1915, white supremacist William J. Simmons held a ceremony atop Stone Mountain, the city’s namesake, declaring the Klan re-founded. Soon after, the 90-foot-tall figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were carved into the mountain’s north face, creating the largest Confederate monument in the United States.
Gilly Brew Bar is located inside an 1834 residence built by enslaved people for Stone Mountain’s first mayor. Brown and his family purchased the building in 2015 and turned it into a permanent home for the coffeehouse, which he intentionally called a “brew bar.”
“When you think of a bar, you think of people who are sitting to stay a while,” says Brown. “Although it was built for the mayor, I think it becomes more of our space now.”
Gilly’s menu includes the Lick Shot, a crowd favorite that combines ginger beer, lime, bitters, and espresso into an iced beverage. Customers can also add seasonal housemade syrups—flavors like honey-ginger or Cinnamon Toast Crunch—to a classic espresso drink.
photo by: Tina Somphone
Inside Gilly Brew Bar in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
“We don’t want to be predictable,” says Brown. “[In] our experience as a Black business, ... we face a lot of things that make us uncomfortable. The way we invite our customers into that is by changing the menus [often]. The philosophy around that is being comfortable with change.”
Across the country at Cooper-Molera Adobe, a National Trust Historic Site in Monterey, California, another 1800s building weathered decades of change before its current manifestation as a bakery and coffeehouse.
After the National Trust acquired Cooper-Molera in 1972, a volunteer-run museum shop operated in the circa-1829 corner store space. Following extensive rehabilitation efforts in partnership with local stakeholders, Cooper-Molera reopened in 2018 under a shared-use model, which combines historic interpretation with commercial operations.
One of those ventures is Alta Bakery & Cafe, opened in 2019 by co-owners Kirk Probasco and Ben Spungin in the former corner store. Probasco says customers frequently comment on the building’s original features.
photo by: See Monterey
Alta Bakery & Cafe serves coffee and food from a 19th-century adobe at Cooper-Molera.
photo by: Angela DeCenzo
Alta’s outdoor space helped the coffeehouse to survive the pandemic.
“Adobe walls are two-and-a-half, three-feet thick. The adobe was made on property,” he adds. “The deep windows [are] still the original glass that was put in in the 1800s; it’s still wavy. It’s pretty cool.”
Alta’s “coffee program,” as Probasco calls it, is classic and straightforward: Lattes, cappuccinos, and cortados abound.
“We make all our own syrups. We make everything from scratch,” Probasco says. “We don’t use blenders—we’re not a Starbucks nor Peet’s Coffee. We’re just a traditional coffeehouse.”
Whether located in a former fire station, a century-old schoolhouse, a past mayoral residence, an erstwhile pottery factory, or a nearly 200-year-old adobe, these coffeehouses have one thing in common: Their historic locations are part of their business identities.
“There’s just magic on that property,” Probasco says. “People feel as though they are walking back in time.”
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