Last year, the Dav sold more than 30,000 iced chai lattes, alone.

The coffeehouse has been an important cultural, intellectual, political, and recreational hot spot for people around the world since the fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire. So it’s only fitting that the perennially popular Davenport Lounge occupies a corner of the SIS building, where students, staff, faculty, and visitors gather throughout the day in the spirit of that delicious tradition.

The Dav is named after the Davenport Chapel, a small interfaith chapel housed in the original SIS building (the East Quad Building). Edith Andrus Davenport donated $40,000 to name the space in honor of her husband, Frederick. The chapel had seating for 40 with cherry wood pews, beamed ceilings, and a small organ and was to remain open at all times for worship and meditation. Two years after the Kay Spiritual Life Center opened in 1965, the space was converted into a lounge and study space. The Dav officially started selling coffee in 1982 and was relocated to the SIS building when it opened in 2010.

In 2017, a second student-run coffee shop, The Bridge, opened in MGC’s Butler Pavilion.