Gadsby's Tavern, Alexandria: Where the Founders Ate, Drank and Argued

Gadsby's Tavern today, in Old Town Alexandria. Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress.

Gadsby's Tavern Museum, in the heart of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, preserves a place where the political and commercial figures of the 18th and 19th centuries spent hours eating, drinking and debating the issues of the day.

Building history

• The site: the current building was the fourth tavern on the property. Maryland-born John Wise bought the plot from Edward Owens in 1782 and built the present Georgian-style structure.
• Two taverns in one: the property is two connected taverns, the first built in 1785 and the second in 1792, meant to serve a growing hospitality trade as Alexandria's port on the Potomac River prospered after the Revolutionary War.
• The Gadsby name: Englishman John Gadsby leased Wise's City Tavern in 1796, renewed the lease in 1802 to take in the smaller 1780s tavern, and ran both until 1808, when he moved to Maryland. His name stayed.

Inside

• The public dining room is set with period furniture, serving pieces and the food of a Southern town near the Chesapeake Bay — oysters on the half shell and Virginia ham.
• The assembly room and the large ballroom, with its detailed woodwork and colonial blue paint, hosted cotillions and exclusive social events. George Washington attended several birthnight balls in his honor there, and Thomas Jefferson held a banquet celebrating his inauguration in 1801.

The tavern's front in a Harris & Ewing photograph. Library of Congress.

Who came — and who worked

• Guests: wealthy merchants, plantation owners and craftsmen were regulars. Founders traveled hundreds of miles to take part in the political gatherings of the Confederation years, and Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lafayette and Aaron Burr all frequented the tavern.
• Women: upper-class white women generally entertained at home; lower-class white women came to do domestic work.
• Black Alexandrians: enslaved and free Black people cooked, cleaned and did other work, mostly in the outbuildings of the rear courtyard. Only the political elite had a voice in the political process.

The Potomac Company

One group that met at Gadsby's was the Potomac Company, backed by George Washington and authorized by Maryland and Virginia in 1785 to improve the upper river — above all, a canal around Great Falls and widening of the Potomac to reach farmland farther west.

In November 1785 its directors advertised that "100 Negroes are wanted on hire" — hiring enslaved people from their owners was a common way to find workers. Slavery was a heated question at the time; at Gadsby's, and in Alexandria generally, enslaved and white laborers often worked side by side.

A capital next door

Once the nation's capital was placed on the Potomac, Alexandria and Gadsby's Tavern took on a larger role in the social and political life of the time.

Sources

Based on "Traveling Through History at Gadsby's Tavern," an abridged article, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Photographs: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, and Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication; they replace the page's uncredited photograph.