Fraunces Tavern Museum

54 Pearl St 2nd floor, New York, NY 10004, USA

New York

state

NYC

county

NYC

city

MUSEUM

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Fraunces Tavern is a museum and restaurant in New York City, situated at 54 Pearl Street at the corner of Broad Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. Fraunces Tavern has been owned since 1904 by Sons of the Revolution, which carried out a major conjectural reconstruction, and claim it is Manhattan's oldest surviving building. The museum interprets the building and its history, along with varied exhibitions of art and artifacts. The tavern is a tourist site and a part of the American Whiskey Trail and the New York Freedom Trail. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

SITE FEATURES

Restaurant, Gift Shop, Surviving Structures, Exhibits

On this site...

New York Mayor Stephanus van Cortlandt built his home in 1671 on the site, but retired to his manor on the Hudson River and gave the property in 1700 to his son-in-law, Étienne "Stephen" DeLancey, a French Huguenot who had married Van Cortlandt's daughter, Anne. The DeLancey family contended with the Livingston family for leadership of the Province of New York.

DeLancey built the current building as a house in 1719. His heirs sold the building in 1762 to Samuel Fraunces who converted the home into the popular tavern, first named the Queen's Head, and periodically known as Boltons Tavern or The Coffee House.

TAVERN

EST. 1762

Before the American Revolution, the building was one of the meeting places of the secret society, the Sons of Liberty. During the tea crisis caused by the British Parliament's passage of the Tea Act 1773, the Patriots forced a British naval captain who tried to bring tea to New York to give a public apology at the building. The Patriots, disguised as American Indians (like those of the Boston Tea Party), then dumped the ship's tea cargo into New York Harbor. In 1768, the New York Chamber of Commerce was founded by a meeting in the building.

In August 1775, Americans, principally the 'Hearts of Oak' – a student militia of Kings College, of which Alexander Hamilton was a member – took possession of cannons from the artillery battery at the southern point of Manhattan and fired on HMS Asia. The British Royal Navy ship retaliated by firing a 32-gun broadside on the city, sending a cannonball through the roof of the building.

A week after British troops had evacuated New York on November 25, 1783, the tavern hosted an elaborate "turtle feast" dinner, on December 4, 1783, in the building's Long Room for U.S. Gen. George Washington during which he bade farewell to his officers of the Continental Army by saying "[w]ith a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable." After his farewell, he took each one of his officers by the hand for a personal word.