Union Oyster House
Union Oyster House is a restaurant at 41–43 Union Street in Downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Open to diners since 1826, it is among the oldest operating restaurants in the United States and the oldest known to have been continuously operating. The building, which is part of the Blackstone Block Historic District, was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 2003.
History
The building itself was built around 1716. In 1742, before it became a restaurant, Hopestill Capen's dress goods business, At the Sign of the Cornfields, occupied the property. In 1771, printer Isaiah Thomas published his newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, on the second floor. The restaurant originally opened as the Atwood & Bacon Oyster House on August 3, 1826.The Union Oyster House has had several famous people in history as regular diners, including the Kennedy family, John F. Kerry, and Daniel Webster. Webster was known for regularly consuming at least six plates of oysters. In 1796, Louis Philippe was living in exile on the second floor. He earned his living by teaching French to young women. Labor economist and Haverford College president John Royston Coleman worked here incognito as a "salad-and-sandwich man" for a time in the 1970s and documented the experience in his book The Blue Collar Journal.
, the restaurant was selling an estimated 60,000 plates of oysters each year.