Bookbinder's 

A Taste of History

215 South 15th Street

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

From the late 1800s to modern times, hungry locals and tourists made Old Original Bookbinder's Restaurant a required stop when navigating the City of Philadelphia.  The restaurant, located dockside on the Delaware River, originally grew out of the life of the seaport, itself, when Samuel Bookbinder opened his restaurant business.  

The location thrived with the ingredients close at hand, including a river teeming with  schooners docked at the port with their cargo of spices.  The Chesapeake Bay offered its bounty of oysters, crabs and clams while fresh produce arrived daily from the fields and dairies surrounding Philadelphia.

Each noontime, Samuel's wife, Sarah would ring the restaurant's bell announcing the principal meal of the day.  Dockworkers rubbed elbows with sea captains, prosperous merchants and farmers all dining together to enjoy what was becoming a new tradition of seafood at Bookbinder's. 

The bustling little restaurant was passed to the Bookbinder children and stayed in the family until the depression era when it was acquired by John Taxin, a dynamic man, in 1935. His energy, personal magnetism and business savvy built the enormous success that Old Original Bookbinder's is today.  Taxin's daughter and grandson carried on the tradition of fine food and service, earning Bookbinder's the distinction as one of America's oldest continuous seafood restaurants.

The section of Old Philadelphia surrounding Bookbinder's Restaurant had charming cobblestone streets and restored colonial brick homes.  Visitors and celebrities touring the city regularly stopped at Old Original Bookbinder's to enjoy its legendary seafood.  When you dined at the restaurant there was a chance you'd be served at a table once occupied by Diamond Jim Brady, Babe Ruth, Tennessee Williams, Teddy Roosevelt, Al Jolson, Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher or Frank Sinatra.

The restaurant was rich with history.  The cobblestones at the Raw Bar were the original cobblestones from Walnut Street, worn down by the feet of the Continental and British armies.  The ship's wheel at the entrance was salvaged from a molasses schooner that met its fate on the high seas at the turn of the century.  Sarah's bell, although silent, remained standing inside the entranceway as a tribute to the uninterrupted tradition of great dining.

TODAY

Bookbinder's lives on, today, in Richmond's Tobacco Row in the beautiful American Cigar Building, circa 1901.  The Taxin family continues to own and operate it and is there daily to greet every guest.  They look forward to seeing you when in the Richmond, VA area!

2306 E. Cary Street

Richmond, Virginia 

(804) 643-6900