Near the southern tip of Manhattan sits Fraunces Tavern, a 300-year-old gem of a building teeming with history tied to the birth of a nation.
What You Need To Know – Near the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City sits Fraunces Tavern, a 300-year-old gem of a building teeming with history tied to the birth of a nation – Today, its patrons can enjoy food and drinks in the same spot George Washington and other Founding Fathers once did – Widely considered the oldest surviving building in Manhattan, Fraunces Tavern has been the backdrop of a number of historical moments, but none more significant than a dinner on Dec. 4, 1783, when Washington thanked and bade farewell to his Continental Army officers – Fraunces Tavern was also the site of the Birch Trials that freed 3,000 Black loyalists, and it served as the country’s first governmental executive building after the Revolutionary War
Today, its patrons can enjoy food and drinks in the same spot George Washington and other Founding Fathers once did. Upstairs is a museum where they can learn more about America’s fight for independence and the small role the New York watering hole played in it.
“It never gets old. I pinch myself when I think about what we have here,” said Eddie Travers, who, along with his business partners, has leased and operated the expansive bar and restaurant area at Fraunces Tavern since 2010. Since 1905, the building at Pearl and Broad streets has been owned by the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, a Revolutionary heritage society, which operates the museum.
A rich history Widely considered the oldest surviving building in Manhattan, Fraunces Tavern has been the backdrop of a number of historical moments, but none more significant than a dinner on Dec. 4, 1783, when, nine days after the British evacuated New York, Washington thanked and bade farewell to his Continental Army officers in the Long Room. From there, Washington headed to the Continental Congress in Annapolis, Maryland, where he resigned as commander in chief.
“With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you,” Washington told his officers, according to the memoirs of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge, who was in attendance. “I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”
Scott Dwyer, executive director of the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York and the Fraunces Tavern Museum, said, “People were crying, were embracing each other, and this was finally the peace that they all had hoped for in the victory of the war.”
Earlier in 1783, Fraunces Tavern was the site of the Birch Trials, joint American-British proceedings that ultimately freed 3,000 Black loyalists. British forces had promised them freedom in exchange for their service in the war. It was one of the largest emancipations of Black people in the U.S. prior to the Civil War.
From 1785-95, the space served as the nation’s first governmental executive building, housing the departments of Foreign Affairs and War as well as the Board of the Treasury.
In 1804, according to historians, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr dined together at Fraunces Tavern a week before their infamous duel, which left Hamilton dead.
Samuel Adams, John Hancock, John Jay, Henry Knox and Paul Revere were among other Founding Fathers who patronized the tavern, historians say.
Not always a tavern Fraunces Tavern was built in 1719 by Stephen DeLancey as a private home. The three-story building changed hands a couple of times before Samuel Fraunces purchased it in 1762 and established a tavern there.
It served as a community center where travelers and locals would gather. Several clubs and organizations held meetings in the building. It was a hotbed of patriot activity leading up to the war, including meetings of the clandestine pre-Revolutionary group the Sons of Liberty.
“People got their mail delivered to the tavern,” Travers said. “People stayed in the rooms upstairs in the tavern. And I guess Samuel Fraunces was a really good chef, and that’s why all the patrons used to come here, I guess, and have their good libations. And it wasn’t safe to drink water at the time, so they had to come to their local bar to enjoy this.”
Early in the war, it was not unheard of for rebels and loyalists to mix at Fraunces Tavern, Dwyer said.
Shortly after leasing the building to the Confederation Congress, Fraunces sold the tavern. It served as a watering hole again from 1788 to 1795. During the 1800s, it was predominantly a boarding house with a bar on the first floor.
The Fraunces Tavern building has endured its share of trauma through the centuries. In 1775, a British warship fired an 18-pound cannonball through its roof. It suffered three fires from 1832 to 1852, each time resulting in rebuilding with modern additions that left the structure less resembling its original form.
As older buildings were quickly being replaced in New York in the early 1900s and the Fraunces Tavern site was threatened with demolition, the Daughters of the American Revolution and preservationists teamed up to try to save it. Eventually, the city took it through eminent domain and briefly designated it a park to protect it.
After the Sons of the Revolution purchased the building more than 120 years ago, the group hired an architect to return the structure to its original, colonial appearance, requiring extensive research and site analysis. No images remained of the building from before the first fire, and it had seen significant changes in the years after. The restoration was completed in 1907. In 1965, it became one of the first sites designated a protected New York City landmark.
“So much is still original to the space,” Dwyer said.
For example, large sections of red and yellow exterior bricks from the 1719 building remain. The Long Room has its original ceiling and walls still intact. And original beams of the structure can be seen in exposed areas of the basement.
When substitutes were unavoidable, the Sons of the Revolution did the best it could, such as bringing in wood from an 18th century barn as flooring.
Fraunces Tavern’s resilience has continued to be tested in more modern times. In 1975, the Puerto Rican paramilitary group Armed Forces for National Liberation carried out a terrorist bombing attack that killed four people and injured 50 others there. And in 2012, superstorm Sandy flooded the building.
In the 1960s, Fraunces Tavern expanded to include four surrounding buildings. Today, it encompasses eight rooms and five bars, including a whiskey bar and piano lounge.
Museum tells the story The centerpiece of the museum is the Long Room, which is arranged as it was believed to have been during Washington’s farewell dinner. It’s decorated with period-appropriate tables, chairs, and dinnerware. On one plate sits a massive 18th-century oyster shell taken from the building’s foundation.
The museum has 8,000 objects in its collection, only a fraction of which are displayed at any given time. Some of the permanent pieces include a lock of Washington’s hair, a fragment of one of his teeth, a sliver of his original coffin, and a piece of the carriage that carried him to his inauguration at New York’s Federal Hall, the first U.S. Capitol.
“Here, time slows down a bit, and you can finally see connections to our Revolutionary War past, our early days in the city,” Dwyer said.
To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence, the museum last year launched a Liberty 250 program, which includes a rotating series of “Path to Liberty” exhibits. The current exhibit focuses on books that show how officers used daily orders to train, manage, and discipline soldiers, “turning ordinary colonists into a trained force capable of challenging the world’s most powerful army,” according to the museum’s website.
Also on the museum’s calendar are a dinner to commemorate the battles of Lexington and Concord, walking tours and lectures, as well as its annual reenactment of the Washington farewell dinner.
Who was Samuel Fraunces? Three hundred years after his birth, some of the biography of the tavern’s namesake remains a mystery. For example, researchers and historians do not know much about Fraunces’ early life, with the first documentation of him arriving in the U.S. from 1755, when he was in his 30s. There is also debate about his race – some have suggested he may have been Black, citing his nickname “Black Sam,” but Fraunces listed himself as a free, white male in the 1790 census. No definitive portrait of him exists today. Fraunces is believed to have immigrated from the West Indies.
Fraunces was an entrepreneur who opened several taverns during his life, as well as the Vauxhall Pleasure Garden in New York, an outdoor resort featuring a café, concerts, and a wax museum. He was also a chef who supervised the tavern’s kitchen, was known for his tasty desserts, and was a pioneer of the concept of “takeout” food.
He sided with the patriots during the war and fled when New York fell to Great Britain. But Fraunces was later captured and forced to work as a cook for a British general. He then used his position to sneak American prisoners table scraps, clothing, and money. He helped some escape and passed on intelligence, historians say.
Fraunces emerged from the war poor. He begged Washington and the new government for wartime compensation. That was when the government agreed to lease the tavern for two years for office space.
From 1789-94, after Washington was elected the first U.S. president, Fraunces served as the chief steward at his executive residences, following him from New York to Philadelphia when the U.S. capital city moved.
In a 1783 letter, Washington called Fraunces “a warm friend,” although the Fraunces Tavern Museum says their relationship appears to have been strictly business.
Fraunces died in 1795 at the age of 72 and is buried in Philadelphia.
Carrying on the legacy In 2010, Travers, a native Irishman who began tending bar at age 14, and his wife, a New York restaurant manager, were looking to buy a business of their own. The bar and restaurant portion of Fraunces Tavern was between operators.
Travers successfully made his case to the board of the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York that he and his Ireland-based partners would be the best fit to run the historic tavern. Before then, Travers had never been to Fraunces Tavern. Once he began exploring its history, it “just blew me away,” he said.
He recounted an American friend trying to explain to an Irish friend of his just how historic the business Travers acquired was.
“No, you don’t understand. It’s like they got the Taj Mahal,” the American friend said, according to Travers.
The tavern looked far different 16 years ago.
“There was dropped ceilings, there was sheetrock walls, there were buffalo heads on the walls,” Travers said. “So we just decided to peel back everything, expose the walls, expose these beautiful beams. The floors are not so beautiful, but they’re over 200 years old.”
Travers decorated the tavern to accentuate its Revolutionary-era past but also added touches of his homeland. He’s placed a greater emphasis on food. It remains a popular destination for locals and tourists alike.
“It’s amazing to be part of this,” he said. “I think we’ve done a good job in restoring it to its original glory.”
Earlier this month, George Polemeropoulos, who is originally from Saratoga, New York, stopped at Fraunces Tavern largely because of its history.
“I always wanted to visit it and read about this place,” he said. “I just wanted to see the history of America, and here it is, like 2½ hours south of where I grew up from.”
Travers said he has visited Fraunces’ grave in Philadelphia to pay tribute to the man who made a mark on both America’s founding and Travers’ own life 250 years later.
“We used to go down there and bring a hip flask and have a little toast to Samuel Fraunces for all his marketing he’s done for us over the years,” Travers said, laughing.
