Solomon Rokowsky | NYC Building History

Fraunces Tavern: The Lower Manhattan House Where Washington Said Farewell

By Solomon Rokowsky

Fraunces Tavern at Pearl and Broad Streets

Photograph by Lyla0724, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fraunces Tavern is a three-story brick house at the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets, and it is older than the country that came to treasure it. The Landmarks Preservation Commission calls it the earliest of the eighteenth-century buildings still standing in Manhattan. What visitors see today is also a careful 1907 restoration.

The house was built in 1719 by Etienne (Stephen) De Lancey as his residence. The Fraunces Tavern Museum says De Lancey asked the Common Council for an extra three and a half feet of land so he could build "a large brick house." Samuel Fraunces bought the building in 1762, and the commission says it became the Queen's Head Tavern in 1763. The New York State Chamber of Commerce was founded there in 1768.

Fraunces Tavern at Broad and Pearl Streets, photographed between 1900 and 1906

Fraunces Tavern at Broad and Pearl Streets, between 1900 and 1906, before the restoration. Detroit Publishing Company, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The best-known day came on December 4, 1783. Nine days after the last British soldiers left American soil, George Washington invited the officers of the Continental Army to the Long Room to say goodbye. The museum also records that from 1785 to 1788, when New York was the national capital, the building housed three departments of the Confederation Congress: Foreign Affairs, War, and the Board of Treasury.

Engraving of Washington's farewell to his officers after a painting by Alonzo Chappel

"Washington's Farewell to His Officers," an engraving after a painting by Alonzo Chappel, 1866. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

By the end of the nineteenth century the building looked little like the house De Lancey built. The museum says serious fires struck in 1832, 1837 and 1852, and that after each one the owner rebuilt and added to it. Two floors and a flat roof were added, and the upper floors were divided up.

Engraving of Fraunces Tavern at the corner of Broad and Pearl Streets, 1893
Fraunces Tavern before the restoration, from a book published in 1893. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

In 1904 the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York took title. The museum says it hired William H. Mersereau, a Staten Island architect, in 1905. He studied the building closely. After the plaster came off the south wall he found the original roof line, because the bricks above it were a different size from those below. The museum says original Dutch yellow brick survives on the Broad Street side, along with three red-brick jack arches, and that large sections of the red English brick on Pearl Street are original. The commission's report notes the same Holland brick in the west wall.

The restored building opened as a museum and restaurant on December 4, 1907, the anniversary of Washington's farewell. The commission designated it a landmark on November 23, 1965.

A fireplace inside Fraunces Tavern
A fireplace inside Fraunces Tavern. Photograph by Lyla0724, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The building has had a harder modern history too. The museum's chronology says a bomb exploded in the 101 Broad Street building of its five-building complex on January 24, 1975, killing four people.

Who owns Fraunces Tavern today?

The Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York still own 54 Pearl Street, according to the museum. The museum operates on the second and third floors. The first floor is leased to a tenant who runs the restaurant. In the 1940s through the 1960s the Sons also bought four neighboring buildings that became part of the museum complex.

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