History on a half shell: How Philadelphia was built on oysters

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In 1776, Philadelphia’s population of about 35,000 consumed millions of oysters a year. The colonial city was riddled with taverns and street vendors who sold oysters on the half shell. Residents could wade into the Delaware River, before it became industrialized, and pull oysters out of the water by hand.

Leftover shells were used to pave streets and packed into the hulls of freight ships as weight ballasts. They were burned for their lime and used to make mortar for Philadelphia’s early brick buildings.

“When they are digging for construction projects in Philadelphia, they’ll find layers of what they call middens,” said Stephen Nepa, a historian at Penn State Abington, referring to an underground layer of chalky, white powder.

“Basically, hundreds of thousands of oyster shells under the ground that have been compressed by time,” he said.

In 2022, Carpenters’ Hall did some excavation work as part of maintenance of the historic building, which was built in 1775, and found oyster shells underneath the floorboards.

“Some of the Founding Fathers who met here during the first Continental Congress — George Washington, John Adams — wrote about their interest and passion for oysters,” said Michael Norris, executive director of Carpenters’ Hall.

“Martha Washington had a cookbook, John Adams kept journals, Washington wrote letters,” he said. “In those documents, they would talk about things that they ate, things that they did, what the weather was like.”

John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that he ate 30 oysters in one sitting to stave off the effects of smallpox. Martha Washington’s cookbook, handwritten by the mother of her first husband and now housed in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, contains recipes for both pickled and stewed oysters. Frances Custis wrote to her new daughter-in-law that oysters should be boiled twice, rinsed in cold water between, “to plump and keep them from shrinking.”

A history of oysters in the U.S.

Oysters are an ancient food found globally. Before the arrival of Europeans, Indigenous people harvested oysters as a basic food staple, such as the Lenape, who left piles of shells along the Chesapeake Bay.

When British colonists arrived, they brought a taste for oysters from London, where they were once harvested from the River Thames. Oysters saved colonists from starvation.

At the time, oysters were cheap and plentiful, ubiquitously enjoyed by both the rich and poor in restaurants and on the street, making them a uniquely democratic food.

“When we think about revolutionary sentiment, especially here in Philadelphia, we think about the Continental Congress meetings. We think about the workings going on behind closed doors in Independence Hall,” Nepa said. “But the reality is that revolutionary sentiment has to make sense to people who are not privy to those meetings. It has to make sense to tavern keepers and blacksmiths and newspaper printers and people that sell and consume oysters.”

“It really begins in the taverns and the coffee houses and the chatter on the streets,” he said. “What we would today call water-cooler politics, but in this case it could be politics discussed around oyster stalls.”

National Oyster Day in Philadelphia

On National Oyster Day, Aug. 5, Carpenters’ Hall will celebrate Philadelphia’s centuries-long love affair with the oyster with a “Shells of Liberty Oyster Bash,” an afternoon of family-friendly activities followed by an evening of local beer pairings with oysters provided by Fishtown Seafood.

Fishtown Seafood owner Bryan Szeliga said the current market for oysters is a fraction of what it used to be. In 1880, when about 800 million pounds of wholesale oysters passed through Philadelphia, every American on average ate hundreds of oysters every year. Today, that number is about six.

But the brackish tide may be turning. Domestic oyster farming has seen a dramatic rebound over the last two decades, and Philadelphians are seeing more oyster happy hour specials on weekdays.

Fishtown Seafood, with stores in Rittenhouse Square, Haddonfield, New Jersey, and, of course, Philly’s Fishtown neighborhood, has been trying to grow a demand for oysters on weekends.

“Sundays were very slow, so we started doing dollar oysters on Eagles game day,” Szeliga said. “Now we have a number of superstitious Eagles fans who — particularly after last year’s Super Bowl win — come in every Eagles game day for their oysters.”

“Shell of Liberty Oyster Bash” starts at 3 p.m. outside Carpenters’ Hall for free oyster talks, oyster crafts, games and oysters on the half shell for purchase until 5 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., the bash moves indoors for a ticketed evening of shucking and pairing with Triple Bottom Brewing beer. Proceeds benefit the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.