Tavern Stops Serving

Tue., Jan. 4, 2000

A tavern where George Washington tearfully took leave of his officers in 1783 closed indefinitely on Monday. Operators of the historic Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan, Robert and Jacqueline Norden, are unable to agree on terms of a new lease with the building’s owner, the Sons of the Revolution. The Nordens said the restaurant-bar is losing money. Among the oldest continually operated restaurants in the country, the tavern’s clubby bar has been a hot spot for Wall Street brokers and financiers. The yellow brick colonial was opened in the 1760s by Washington’s chief steward, a patriot named Samuel Fraunces. A meeting place, it later housed the administrative offices of the new nation, when New York was its capital.

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Tavern Stops Serving

Jesse Tinsley

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