The bottom water temperature (BWT) distribution on the Mid-Atlantic continental shelf is characterized by a region of cold water, the Cold Pool, that occupies the inner and central shelf during summer and provides a habitat for the boreal ocean quahog (Arctica islandica), a long-lived (about 500 years) bivalve species. Time series of BWTs the ocean quahog experienced can be recovered from growth increments recorded in the shell using a growth-temperature relationship. This study combines spatial patterns of BWT variability with shell-derived temperature time series to reconstruct BWT on the Mid-Atlantic continental shelf. Spatial patterns of variability were obtained from an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of BWT distribution climatologies constructed using the 1993 to 2020 Global Ocean Reanalysis. The EOF analysis for the May to June climatology, when the Cold Pool is present, showed that most of the spatial variability was explained by the first three modes, which represented across-shelf variability in BWT, the Cold Pool, and along-shelf variability, respectively. The spatial patterns were combined with prescribed temperature time series of BWT at discrete locations on the Mid-Atlantic shelf to reconstruct BWT distributions. These reconstructions provide guidance for identifying the number and quantity of growth-temperature relationships needed to obtain temperature from the ocean quahog growth rates. The temperature time series derived from the shell growth rates, combined with the BWT spatial patterns and temperatures estimated from fossil shells, allow extending reconstructions to earlier times to assess decadal variability in BWT distributions on the Mid-Atlantic continental shelf.