The Historic American Bars That Have Seen It All |
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The Historic American Bars That Have Seen It All
As the country lurches toward 250, the most authentic place to raise a glass isn’t a museum—it’s a barstool that has outlasted three wars, Prohibition and a pandemic.
On the night of December 4, 1783, nine days after the British finally cleared out of New York, George Washington walked up a staircase on Pearl Street into a low-ceilinged room above a tavern, and told the men who had won him a country goodbye. He embraced each officer, walked out to the Battery and boarded a barge bound for Annapolis to resign his commission. The upstairs room is still there. The tavern downstairs is still pouring.
This is the part of America's 250th birthday that the brochures tend to skip. The Founding Fathers were not, by and large, museum people. They were tavern people—legislators who drafted resolutions over a Hot Ale Flip (a Colonial-era beer-and-rum cocktail), generals who quartered their officers inside inn rooms, presidents who walked a block from the White House for oysters. The country was assembled in rooms outfitted with bars, and a surprising number of those rooms are still in business. They survived British torches, Confederate cannon, Prohibition raids, urban renewal and Grubhub. Alas, not all legacies are meant to last forever. City Tavern in Philadelphia, the great Founding Father canteen, has been closed since 2020. McCrady's in Charleston, where Washington was fêted in 1791, didn't survive the coronavirus pandemic. But with these 19 bars, there's plenty to celebrate leading up to the Fourth.
The Best Bars to Celebrate the 4th of July
The White Horse Tavern
McSorley’s Old Ale House
McGillen's Olde Ale House
Gadsby's Tavern Restaurant
Tootsie's Orchid Lounge
The Palace Restaurant and Saloon
The Occidental Hotel & Saloon
54 Pearl Street, New York, NY 10004
The most consequential drinking room in American history sits on the southern tip of Manhattan—a Georgian brick walk-up that has been serving food and drink since King George II was on the throne. On December 4, 1783, Washington summoned his Continental Army officers, including Henry Knox and Baron von Steuben, to the second-floor Long Room and bid them farewell: "With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you." The Long Room upstairs is preserved as part of the Sons of the Revolution museum, but the ground floor operates as an independent bar and restaurant with a serious cocktail program and an annual reenactment every December 4. Tavernkeeper Samuel Fraunces—likely Black or mixed-race, called "Black Sam"—went on to become Washington's presidential steward. Order the punch.
The White Horse Tavern
26 Marlborough Street, Newport, RI 02840
The National Park Service calls it the oldest operating tavern in America, and the math backs it up: this gambrel-roofed clapboard was already a century old when the Revolution started. William Mayes pulled Newport's first liquor license here in 1687 to sell "all sorts of strong drink." The Rhode Island General Assembly met in the dining room, the criminal court convened upstairs, and Hessian mercenaries quartered inside during the British occupation from 1776 to 1779. The pinewood floor, 95 percent original and once treated with whale oil, has the spongy give of a thing that has held three-and-a-half centuries of weight. A 13-star flag hangs in the dining room, where the cavernous fireplaces are sized for cooking whole deer and the duck Scotch egg is the kitchen's trump card. So is the beef Wellington.
2 Pleasant Street, Charlestown, MA 02129
Named for Dr. Joseph Warren, the Sons of Liberty leader who dispatched Paul Revere on his ride and was killed two months later at Bunker Hill, Warren Tavern was one of the first structures rebuilt after the British torched Charlestown in 1775. Washington stopped in for refreshments in 1789 while visiting his cabinetmaker friend Benjamin Frothingham. Paul Revere ran the King Solomon's Lodge of Masons that met upstairs for two decades, with Revere himself as Grand Master. The ceilings are low enough that you can picture a six-foot-two Virginian ducking his head. Charlestown's Bunker Hill 250 programming is anchored here through 2026, and the locals still recite the line: there would be no July 4th without June 17th. Order the New England clam chowder and a pint of something local.
36 Main Street, Essex, CT 06426
"The Gris" opened the year of the Declaration, supplying food and lodging........