“Meet Me at the Brazilian Coffee House”

The Business Foray of Theodore Roosevelt's Children

Happy 2023, and cheers to another year of Missing Pieces! Attentive readers may have noticed that a new issue of Missing Pieces appears in their inboxes every first of the month at 8:00 a.m. This year, I’ll be changing things up, and you can expect a new issue the first Wednesday of every month at 10:00 a.m. As always, if you have any recommendations for topics, reply to this email or add a comment with your idea!

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Coffee shops are quite in vogue these days. For the price of a cup of coffee, you can get free WiFi and a place to work or socialize. They are places to meet up with friends, attend a book club or Bible study, or even work in today’s remote-friendly culture.

Coffee: From Plantation to Cup/Francis B. Thurber/Courtesy of the Science History Institute

Secretary of State William P. Rogers once stated in a congressional hearing in 1970, “[S]ometimes history repeats itself and sometimes it doesn’t.” In the case of our obsession with coffee shops, it’s the former. In fact, the first push to popularize coffee didn’t start in Seattle. Instead, it started in London almost four hundred years ago.

In the late 1600s, coffeehouses sprang up as the classier alternative to taverns at first in London but rapidly spread throughout Great Britain and the European continent. People could come to socialize or work at local coffeehouses, and they became places to gather information in the form of discussions, pamphlets, and newspapers.

Although WiFi didn’t exist in the 1600s, coffeehouses became known as the place to network, interact, and spread knowledge until tea became increasingly popular in Great Britain. By the 1800s, the heyday of coffeehouses declined significantly.

Just a century later in the early 1900s, coffeehouses like those of the 1600s made a resurgence due to increased trade in Brazil and other coffee-producing countries like Liberia and Puerto Rico. This time, however, New York City—not London—was the center.

Theodore Roosevelt’s son, Kermit Roosevelt, had lived in Brazil and Argentina in the 1910s. He wanted to open a coffee shop in the United States like those currently popular in Latin America and previously in vogue in Europe.

The American entrance to World War I in 1917 delayed his plans. However, when Kermit and his brothers, Ted and Archie, returned from the war in 1919, they were ready to get the business going. On November 15, 1919, the Brazilian Coffee House, the Roosevelts’ coffeehouse managed by Alfredo M. Salazar, opened its doors.

Simmon’s Spice Mill, vol. 43, January 1920/Courtesy of Google Books

The owners were all affiliated with Theodore Roosevelt in some way. A cousin, Philip Roosevelt; TR’s son-in-law, Richard Derby; and all three living sons—Quentin had died during the war—were directors of the coffeehouse. They ranged in age from twenty-one to thirty-one, and they had big plans for their coffeehouse, envisioning it as the first of many similar coffeehouses in cities across the US.

The Roosevelts’ coffeehouse wasn’t the first in New York City. Others had appeared in the city already, particularly in response to prohibition, which was set to take effect at midnight on January 17, 1920, with coffee as the alternative to alcohol—just like the original coffeehouses in London in the 1600s.

However, the Roosevelts’ coffeehouse was unique from other shops in that they served freshly ground coffee, rather than instant coffee. In fact, Salazar promised to teach anyone who came in and inquired how to roast the real Brazilian way—namely pouring boiling water over the ground coffee with a special strainer, which we’d call “pour over” today—according to a New York Times article, “Roosevelts Start Coffee House Chain.”

Although officially classified as a restaurant, the Roosevelts saw their coffeehouse differently. Even though they served traditional Brazilian dishes, pastries, and sandwiches, the focus of the business was not food. It was coffee.

And the Roosevelts intended for their coffeehouse to invoke the tradition of the coffeehouses of the 1600s, which the interior of the Brazilian Coffee House—allegedly designed by Ethel Roosevelt Derby—promoted with books and materials to encourage discussion and the exchange of knowledge.

For ten cents ($1.71 today), a patron to the Brazilian Coffee House could enjoy the “WiFi” of their day—side tables filled with copies of the Constitution and “Brazilian Coffee House” letterhead and ink as well as bookcases replete with books like the Century Dictionary, according to a December 7, 1919, New York Sun article.

A visitor could even look upon portraits of individuals who loved coffee like Voltaire, William Shakespeare, and even Theodore Roosevelt himself who according to the National Park Service drank about one gallon a day. Patrons could also view paintings depicting the making of coffee in Brazil like the illustration below.

Coffee: From Plantation to Cup/Francis B. Thurber/Courtesy of the Science History Institute

By 1921, the Roosevelts’ coffeehouse was renamed the “Double-R” due to some legal issues, moved a couple doors down the street, and had expanded to a second location—the Argentine at 726 Lexington. The Double-R would later expand to two additional locations—the Colombian and the Amazon. They also added another partner, their cousin, Monroe Douglas Robinson, hence the “Double-R.”

This New York Historical Society article includes a color advertisement depicting the inside of the Argentine coffeehouse—complete with green walls—and a menu of the treats and drinks one could purchase at any location.

From what I can tell, the Double-R seems to have been immensely popular in the 1920s. One patron, H. P. Lovecraft, even wrote a poem entitled “On the Double-R Coffee House” in 1925. Salazar, the manager, had hoped that the Roosevelts’ coffeehouse would be known as a place to meet, according to an article in Judicious Advertising, and it seems like his dream was realized:

“Suppose you want to meet someone down town, you say to him: ‘Meet me at the Brazilian Coffee House on 44th Street.’ Very well, you get there first and go in and order a cup of coffee—ten cents. Your friend is detained—you write some letters (Mr. Salazar indicated the stationery with the coffee house name in blue, on each side table). You wait perhaps a half hour, maybe an hour. Your friend comes; he has a cup of coffee, or he has nothing—just as he chooses—it is no matter. . . . We want to show people what a cup of coffee can mean, and we want to make this place a rendezvous.”

More importantly, though, in a time where women still faced many restrictions in society, the Roosevelts and Salazar wanted their coffeehouse to be a place for men and women, as stated in the Judicious Advertising article:

“Nor is the place essentially for the use of men, as were the London coffee houses of the time of Pepys. It is hoped that women will use the house for meeting places as well as men. Both Mrs. Derby and Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt are interested in promoting this phase of the establishment.”

Theodore Roosevelt’s widow Edith herself even frequented the Double-R. In fact, in 1923, when a fire broke out in a coffee roaster in the kitchen, she was the only one of fifty patrons who didn’t flee the coffee shop. Instead, she stayed behind to throw a canvas on two oil paintings of TR to ensure that they didn’t burn. Fortunately, there was little damage in the kitchen and none at all to the paintings.

Even though the Double-R prospered in the 1920s, the Roosevelts had moved on to other adventures by the end of the decade. Kermit and Ted started making plans to explore Southeast Asia, and Ted got more involved in politics.

As a result, the Roosevelts weren’t devoting the same amount of time into the coffeehouse as they had before and decided to sell it. The new owners, Zivko and Aneta Magdich, had a special interest in the success of the coffeehouse because they met at the Double-R! Since I first met my husband Cole at a coffee shop, I feel especially touched by the Magdich’s story.

I, for one, am grateful that coffeehouses had a renaissance in both the GAPE and today. I often write articles for Missing Pieces from my two favorite local coffee shops, Diver and Sundial, and my favorite coffee camper, Restored Coffee Co. If I’m at home, I might be stealing sips from Cole’s coffee—a blend from Bless This Cup, owned by my friend Brooke who I also first met at a coffee shop!