Hiram Haines' Coffee & Ale House is currently a weekend only venue. Open Friday and Sat. with dinner specials, and live music on Sat. Open Sun. 2-7pm.
Poe’s Honeymoon Retreat
Our historic Coffee House began as a luxury hotel and “restorative” in 1814, operated by French émigré, Richard Rambaut and his young wife, the Countess de la Rochefoucauld. In 1829 it was taken over by Petersburg poet and editor of the American Constellation, Hiram Haines. Haines’ wife, Mary, was a childhood playmate of Edgar Allan Poe, and renewed their friendship when Poe moved to Richmond to edit the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe and Hiram Haines quickly became friends, and Haines’ Coffee House soon became a gathering place for poets and journalists of the region. When Poe married his cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836, the suite of rooms upstairs provided an ideal honeymoon retreat. The couple is said to have stayed here for two weeks before returning to Richmond. Haines and Mary operated the coffee house until late in 1836, when, beset by financial problems, it closed. Haines died in 1841 at the age of 39. In 2010, after 174 years, his coffee house reopened, reflecting an atmosphere in which he and his friend Eddy would feel at home.
