America’s 250th anniversary has sent travelers to the same addresses where colonists once raised mugs and raised hell, and several of those addresses are still serving drinks today.
In 1776, New York City had roughly one tavern for every 60 residents, while Colonial Boston’s ratio ran slightly higher at about one per 100 Bostonians. The sheer density reflected how central these establishments were to colonial life. Patriot groups including the Sons of Liberty held their meetings at taverns, militias recruited soldiers there, and military supplies were sometimes stored under the same roofs as fermenting casks. Paul Revere’s own correspondence described the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston as a meeting place where participants worked to keep their gatherings secret, and the tavern functioned that way for much of the war.
Fraunces Tavern, still operating at the corner of Broad and Pearl Streets in Lower Manhattan, is among the most historically dense stops on any such itinerary. Through the 1770s, the Sons of Liberty met there to coordinate New York’s protests against British taxation. On June 18, 1776, George Washington attended a party at which guests made 31 toasts, consumed 109 bottles of wine, and ran up a bill worth about $26,000 in today’s money, not counting the additional charge for broken wine glasses. It was also where Washington said farewell to his officers in December 1783, just days after the British left New York on Evacuation Day.
Farther afield, the White Horse Tavern in Newport, Rhode Island, dates to 1652 and was once managed by a licensed pirate. A Man Full of Trouble in Philadelphia, the only surviving Colonial-era tavern in that city, reopened to the public in December 2024 following a restoration that returned its bar to its original 18th-century location.
For New Yorkers planning a summer itinerary around the anniversary, Fraunces Tavern requires no travel at all.
