Cheapest Eating in Albany, at the Model Coffee Room (in the City Mission Building,) Cor. Rensselaer and Franklin Streets. by Albany City Temperance Mission - ca. 1876: The neatest dining room in the city, attentive waiters, clean food of the best quality, no rum, but the MOST DELICIOUS COFFEE.

[Model Coffee Room, Albany, New York, Temperance Bill of Fare, circa 1878] Cheapest Eating in Albany, at the Model Coffee Room (in the City Mission Building,) Cor. Rensselaer and Franklin Streets. The neatest dining room in the city, attentive waiters, clean food of the best quality, no rum, but the MOST DELICIOUS COFFEE. An illustrated card, with a lithograph of the City Mission Building on the recto and the "Bill of Fare" on the verso. 7.5 cm x 13 cm. Advertising "good meals from 6 to 21 cents" and "open at all hours," the bill of fare included a Sirloin or Porter House Steak for 20 cents. Liquor and tobacco were not sold. Smoking was not permitted. This rare surviving illustrated menu for the Model Coffee Room in Albany New York's Mission Building shows wear expected for its age and use. It has been cleaned and one edge and corner expertly mended. Described by H. P. Phelps in 1884 as "… a neat eating room, free from all bar-room influences, and where food is supplied at very low rates. Good meals from 6 to 25 cents. Coffee 3 cents." See: H. P. Phelps, The Albany Handbook, a Stranger's Guide and a Resident's Manual. Albany" Brandow & Barton, 1884. See also: The Albany Directory for the Year 1878, Containing a Directory of the Citizens, a Business Directory, Record of the City Government Its Institutions &c., &c. Albany: Sampson and Davenport, June 1, 1878, p. 354.