The Cocoa-Tree was originally a coffee house on the south side of Pall Mall. When there grew up a need for "places of resort of a more elegant and refined character," chocolate houses came into vogue, and the Cocoa-Tree was the most famous of these. It was converted into a club in 1746.
The Grecian Coffee House, Devereux Court
It was closed in 1843. From a drawing dated 1809
White's chocolate house, established by Francis White about 1693 in St. James's Street, originally open to any one as a coffee house, soon became a private club, composed of "the most fashionable exquisites of the town and court." In its coffee-house days, the entrance was sixpence, as compared with the average penny fee of the other coffee houses. Escott refers to White's as being "the one specimen of the class to which it belongs, of a place at which, beneath almost the same roof, and always bearing the same name, whether as coffee house or club, the same class of persons has congregated during more than two hundred years."
Among hundreds of other coffee houses that flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the following more notable ones are deserving of mention:
