Two Pence Market sits at the corner of Eliot and Adams streets, with ample outdoor seating offered along both sides. Cassidy McNeeley photos
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For over a decade, Steel & Rye owner Dan Kerrigan stopped at 2 Eliot Street in Milton on his way home to make a deposit into the bank’s night drop box. It’s likely he never figured that one day he’d transform the bank into a café and grocery gathering place.
The brick building, located just over the Boston-Milton line at the corner of Adams Street across from the Milton stop on the Mattapan trolley line, first housed a Blue Hill Bank and Trust Company outlet in 1929, and was most recently a Bank of America branch before it closed in 2021.
Now, Kerrigan and his partners have reopened it as Two Pence Market, offering freshly baked bagels, prepared meals, seasonal produce from Allandale Farm and Wards Berry Farm, specialty groceries, wine, and even Toscanini’s ice cream.
Kerrigan’s friend and business partner, JD Wild, acquired the bank property in 2023.
Two Pence’s outdoor patio on the corner of Adams Street.
“We talked about this for a couple of years in the sense of what would fit in this neighborhood the most and what would add value to the community in the best way,” said the 46-year-old Kerrigan.
Having owned and operated Steel & Rye since 2012, his first thought was to plan another restaurant.
“We talked about doing a restaurant because that is what my business model has been,” said Kerrigan, who also owns Prairie Fire in Brookline. But, he said, “I walked away from that conversation; it didn’t feel like a natural fit for the building.”
As things turned out, Kerrigan and Wild, principal/co-owner of ELEVATED Realty, were on the same page.
“JD’s perspective was that Milton Village doesn’t need a restaurant. Lower Mills is here, Steel & Rye is here. No one is walking around the village saying we desperately need a restaurant,” Kerrigan said.
To Wild, who grew up on Martha’s Vineyard, the answer was clear: a neighborhood market.
“All of a sudden, it just clicked; it made so much sense,” Kerrigan said. “JD’s idea, got to give him credit. He grew up on the Vineyard, and every town has a special little market. They’re all kind of like a Swiss Army knife; you can use them for a lot of different things, so that was the idea for this.”
“It was either going to be things we make at Steel & Rye or products from local craft vendors, people around New England, that we think are really, really special. Anything you see in here we think is an excellent brand.
You could come here at 6:30 in the morning for coffee, bagels, a smoothie; you can come here for lunch; you can come here and pick up prepared meals at night; a little bit of grocery essentials. We have a spirit, wine, and beer shop,” said Kerrigan. “The idea is you could really use it in so many different ways, and that’s what creates that value for the neighborhood.”
When it comes to breakfast, Kerrigan’s go-to is a sesame bagel or the Morning Ritual smoothie made with espresso, banana, date, almond butter, vanilla, and cashew milk. For lunch, he prefers the bibimbap bowl with jasmine rice, seared tofu, and shiitakes, 5-minute egg, miso pomegranate Brussels sprouts, and shaved carrots and cucumbers topped with a spicy house-made sauce.
Each day, the lunch bar features what Kerrigan describes as “carefully sourced grains, rice, and vegetables. All local stuff. The idea is it’s a way to get really fast, really healthy, clean, hot meals.”
Alongside Two Pence co-owner and culinary director Brendan Joy, executive chef Alison Hearn oversees the culinary program and manages the day-to-day in-house operations in the kitchen, a former bank vault.
“There wasn’t a lot of options for where to put it, so this is where it went,” said Kerrigan, standing in the building’s basement. “We cut a doorway so that you didn’t feel trapped when you came in here. You can see the walls are 14 or 16 inches thick. Reinforced concrete everywhere.”
The millwork around the entire market is original, as are the 800-plus-pound chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The bank’s original fireplace also remains and has been relined so that it can fully function with wood-burning fires all winter long.
The market’s main focal point is probably the retail wine space, which, like the kitchen, was a vault.
Looking to maintain the bank’s character, owner Dan Kerrigan and his team transformed the bank’s original vault into a retail wine space.
“It’s just so special; you can’t build something like this anymore,” Kerrigan said. “This room is literally like two-inch-thick, steel-plated walls. These vault doors got to weigh a couple thousand pounds. To minimize this or get rid of this is kind of hiding away what the original character of the building was.”
“The idea with the renovation of the space was to truly respect what the building was and to adapt and reuse the space that made the original architecture shine and bring it back to life.”
While working through renovations, the team discovered old bank ledgers, deposit slips, and money bags, all of which are on display on the market’s walls.
Original elements of the bank exist outside the market, too, such as the night drop box out front and a vault alarm system at the building’s rear. These older elements meet the new with the addition of two outdoor patios, including a pergola-covered area.
“It’s not just a market but a house of hospitality, a gathering place for the community,” said Kerrigan, standing beside the patio. “Part of this location is that it’s on the Dorchester border and it is part of the Dorchester community. I think ultimate success would be people breaking down that invisible line [between Dorchester and Milton] and coming on over, which we’re already seeing.”
He added, “Business has been fantastic. Truthfully, the community has been so supportive. We’re figuring out what the market should be. Right now, I think we’re offering and operating at a fraction of what this will become. It’s a brand new business. The business is seven weeks old. It’s actually an infant, and we’ll keep growing and developing and learning what it needs to be to really truly add value.”
Cassidy McNeeley photos
Copyright © 2026 Boston Neighborhood News, Inc. This content may not be re-published or re-used without written permission.
