About The Coffee Pot
In 1927, Bedford businessman Bert Koontz decided that a normal sign was not enough to catch motorists traveling the Lincoln Highway. He built an entire roadside building shaped like a coffee pot.
The structure stands about 18 feet tall and roughly 22 feet wide. Brick and framing created the basic form, while sheet metal completed the oversized kitchenware appearance. The early business served food and drinks, giving the architecture a wonderfully literal relationship to what customers could buy inside.
The Coffee Pot later went through several uses and eventually deteriorated badly enough to face demolition. Preservation efforts saved it. The Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor acquired the structure, moved it across the road to the Bedford County Fairgrounds area, and restored it in 2004.
Today the building survives as a landmark rather than a normal daily coffee shop. Visitors can photograph it from the fairgrounds entrance area, but interior access may depend on events or local scheduling. It remains a nearly perfect example of the era when roadside businesses made the entire building into the advertisement.