Old Oakland

“Your homecoming will be my homecoming” 

–E. E. Cummings 

Founder James Freeman’s modest coffee stand at Old Oakland’s farmers’ market was the beginning of Blue Bottle Coffee. Fifteen years later, we’re returning to this historic place with a spacious new cafe and training lab. Here, you can enjoy our single origins or blends, with a Liège wafel or toast, inside or at sunlit outdoor tables.  

In 1877, banker Ashmun C. Henry built the Henry House, described by the Oakland Tribune as “a first class hotel, suitable for families and transients...and handy to all lines of cars.” With its Italianate facade, Corinthian columns and glints of gold leaf, it attracted newcomers far and wide. Over a century later, our cafe on the ground floor of Henry’s exquisitely preserved hotel continues to welcome locals and adventurers alike.  

Inside, the architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson takes a cue from old-time perfume laboratories, where precision operates in the service of delight. Original brick walls and an exposed ceiling mix with baltic birch cabinetry and a gleaming espresso and drip coffee bar. A floor-to-ceiling glass wall separates the cafe from the training lab, where future baristas learn that coffee is equal parts chemistry and art.  

Isadora Duncan, creator of modern dance, once patronized the hotel where our upstairs headquarters are now. If you’re quiet enough, you may hear her leaps and turns, or perhaps that’s just the Sycamores rustling in the wind.