The Yoshidaya Liquor Store, once located on a corner of what is now Yanaka 6-chome, was a liquor store that remained in business from the Edo period up until 1986. It was moved to its current location by Taito City and opened to the public in May 1987 as an exhibition hall attached to Shitamachi Museum.
In 1989, the first-floor store and the second floor, as well as various tools and documents, were designated as Tangible Folk Cultural Properties by Taito City.
The building was erected in 1910 and partially renovated in 1935, when the staircase was replaced and new glass doors were installed at the front entrance, but it retains the architectural style of an Edo merchant house.
The front of the building has a structure (called "dashigeta-zukuri") common to merchant houses of the Edo period, with beams protruding from the eaves on both the first and second floors, and with the first floor's beams doubled to support the long eaves typical of merchant houses. The entrance has an "agedo" door that opens and closes by raising and lowering horizontal solid wooden panels and lattice panels, and whose wide frontage is convenient for transporting and selling products like sake barrels. The solid wooden panels and lattice panels were raised and lowered along the grooves dug in the center pillars.
Inside the store there is an earth floor that you can enter with your shoes on. On the first floor is a space for displaying and selling products, as well as an accounting office where the store manager would record the movement of products and money. In addition to sake, the store also sold products like soy sauce, salt, and sugar. The second floor was used as a room for the live-in store staff.