Gadsby's Tavern
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Gadsby's Tavern
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| Location | 138 N. Royal St., Alexandria, Virginia |
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| Coordinates | 38°48′20″N 77°2′38″W / 38.80556°N 77.04389°WCoordinates: 38°48′20″N 77°2′38″W / 38.80556°N 77.04389°W |
| Built | 1752 |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000913 |
| VLR # | 100-0029 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | November 4, 1963 |
| Designated VLR | September 9, 1969 |
Gadsby's Tavern is a historic commercial building at 138 North Royal Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Built c. 1785 and enlarged in 1792, the tavern was a central part of the social, economic, political, and educational life of the city of Alexandria, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963. Currently, the building is home to Gadsby's Tavern Restaurant, American Legion Post 24, and Gadsby's Tavern Museum, a cultural history museum. The museum houses exhibits of early American life in Virginia, and the restaurant operates in the original dining room, serving a mixture of period and modern foods.
Gadsby's Tavern consists of two buildings: one is the tavern built around 1785, and the other is the 1792 City Hotel. John Gadsby leased and operated them from 1796 to 1808, and it is his name attached to the location.
Gadsby's Tavern was not the first tavern in its location. Between 1749 and 1752, Charles and Anne Mason had begun a tavern business they called Mason's Ordinary on the lot. In the 1770s, Mary Hawkins opened a tavern on the lot now occupied by the Gadsby's buildings. The original lot where Hawkin's tavern sat extended from the southwest corner of Royal and Cameron streets to about mid-block on both streets. In 1778, the plot was subdivided, and Edward Owens purchased the lot on the corner of the two streets. With the end of the Revolutionary War, and the booming economy that followed, Marylander John Wise purchased the plot in 1782 from Owens, and built the existing Georgian-style tavern ca. 1785, and the Federal City Tavern in 1792. Englishman Gadsby leased the City Tavern, the most prominent tavern in Alexandria in 1796. He renewed the lease in 1802 to include the smaller 1780s tavern from Wise, and operated both until 1808 when he moved to Maryland.
John Wise died in 1815, and with his death the buildings went through different hands, being run as taverns, lawyers' offices, auction houses, and possibly as hospitals during the American Civil War.
In 1816, a 23-year-old woman succumbed to a disease contracted on the ship to Alexandria on which she traveled with her husband. On her deathbed, she made the people surrounding her swear an oath that they would never reveal her identity. The promise was kept; her grave, a table-like structure in St. Paul's Cemetery is marked "Female Stranger". Her ghost is said to haunt the cemetery and Room 8 of Gadsby's Tavern, the room in which she died. The unusual monument and story surrounding it have long been noted as a peculiar oddity of the town.
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