In 1848, the journalist Benson Lossing made a pilgrimage to the sacred sites of the American Revolution. He was preparing his two-volume Pictorial Fieldbook of the Revolution, a combination of a historical account and a patriotic travelogue. He visited Boston, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg, but also battlefields in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In Williamsburg, he paid his respects at the site of the Capitol and stopped in at the Raleigh Tavern.
Lucky for us that he did. For, as he related of the Apollo Room interior, “had my visit been deferred a day longer, the…room could never have been portrayed.” Carpenters were then at work turning the rear wing of the tavern into a ballroom. Worse yet, not long before he arrived, “the front part of the old Raleigh Tavern had been torn down, and a building in modern style was erected in its place.” Lossing lamented the destruction of the Raleigh, comparing it, in its importance, to Faneuil Hall in Boston.
Virginia Governor John G. Pollard speaks at the official opening of Raleigh Tavern in 1932.
Nonetheless, though the building itself was in the process of being demolished, Lossing’s account and his drawings fixed it firmly in the pantheon of sites associated with the nation’s founding. So, too, did Lossing’s views of the tavern become canonical, influencing the historians and architects preparing its reconstruction in 1930. (Sometimes they put too much faith in his drawings; sometimes, not enough. But that’s a story for another time.)
Just over a century later, the Raleigh Tavern began its second career as an icon of Williamsburg. On September 16, 1932, the reconstructed tavern was opened to the public for the first time. To mark the occasion, Virginia Governor John G. Pollard addressed a crowd of 400 from a flag-draped podium set up in the newly empty lot to the west of the Apollo Room.
The Tap Room of the Raleigh Tavern, as furnished in the 1930s.
After the speeches, which included a nervous acknowledgement that a sitting governor and a respected minister were opening a tavern during prohibition (Pollard urged the attendants to enjoy walking in the footsteps of the founders of the nation by “carefully avoiding the tap room”), the doors were finally thrown open by Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin, giving the public its first taste of reconstructed Williamsburg.
Though work around town had been progressing steadily since 1929, the Raleigh was the first fruit of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Reverend Goodwin’s unprecedented effort to restore an entire town. In the previous three years, 48 colonial buildings had been restored and 64 reconstructions had been newly built but none had yet been opened for public viewing. As an exhibition, the reconstructed Raleigh was soon joined by the Governor’s Palace, Capitol, Courthouse, Jail, and the Ludwell-Paradise House. In the 1930s, no visitor to Williamsburg could fail to make a stop at the Raleigh.
This detail from a 1939 streetscape by Singleton Moorehead shows the north side of Duke of Gloucester St. with the Raleigh Tavern in the center.
Despite the Raleigh’s historical importance, a formal interpretive program was slow to develop. In these early years, the restoration’s priority was more “show” than “tell,” asking visitors simply to enjoy the visually appealing qualities of a Georgian-era townscape. The architecture, it was thought, would speak for itself. The beauties of the restored George Wythe House, the reconstructed Palace, and other favored sites, along with their associated gardens and outbuildings, would stimulate patriotic thoughts and deepen visitors’ appreciation for the virtue, intelligence, and good taste of the founding generation.
1930 view from the rear of the Apollo Room wing at the Raleigh, showing the modern kitchen added at left, intended to support the tavern’s planned operation as a working restaurant. The kitchen was removed in 1951.
The Raleigh was a key part of this scene, and visitors were asked to draw their own conclusions about the role of the building and its architecture in the progression of the nation’s history. Its status as an exhibition building was intended to be temporary, in fact. Within two years, it was intended to be operated as a restaurant, so a modern kitchen was built off of the north side of the billiard room, in a colonial-styled shell.
But that restaurant never opened. By 1935, Rev. Goodwin recognized the real need to educate people explicitly about the importance of Williamsburg in the course of colonial and Revolutionary history. The Raleigh had a central role to play in this effort. The first guidebooks recited the tavern’s most auspicious moments in the Revolutionary spotlight: the meeting of the Burgesses there after being dissolved by two royal governors; its status as the most esteemed tavern in colonial Virginia and the resort of the fashionable gentry; the founding of Phi Beta Kappa in 1776; as well as its role in more intimate encounters, such as the courtship of “fair Belinda” by a young Thomas Jefferson.
An early guidebook for Colonial Williamsburg’s first buildings open to the public.
For many, contemplating such events from the sidewalk was enough; those wanting to dig deeper, and to look more closely, could pay an entry fee to tour inside the building, guided by a 16-page booklet.
The centrality of the Raleigh to the story of Williamsburg was further solidified in The Story of a Patriot, Colonial Williamsburg’s dramatic orientation film that debuted in 1957. The film, and the new Visitor Center in which it was shown, was meant to provide what chairman Winthrop Rockefeller called “a bridge of understanding over which Americans can walk from the twentieth century into the past.”
A scene in The Story of a Patriot in which patrons in the Raleigh Tavern’s Apollo Room bet whether George Washington can crack a walnut with his bare hand.
The Story of a Patriot shows the quickening of the patriotic enthusiasm of John Fry, a fictional planter and newly elected burgess who came to Williamsburg in the period of debate and dissension at the end of the colonial period. Key scenes play out in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh, where Fry meets William Byrd, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. The scenes in the Raleigh dramatized the lively mix of conversation and political debate of colonial-era taverns, while further sanctifying it as a sacred site for a modern audience.
Whether through guidebooks or film, generations of visitors to Colonial Williamsburg came to know why the Raleigh was an essential stop—here was the site where the dissolved House of Burgesses met in 1769 to draw up a boycott of British goods; and it was here, in May of 1774, that the infuriated Burgesses, dissolved once again, called for the first Continental Congress to coordinate activities of the colonies and to affirm Virginia’s sympathies with Massachusetts.
Interpreters reenact burgesses signing the nonimportation agreement at the Raleigh Tavern on May 18, 1769.
That the Raleigh has receded in importance for many visitors is a function of the great expansion of programming in Williamsburg since 1932. From the six sites open in 1935 to the dozens available for visitors today, it is no wonder that the Raleigh might get lost as just another stop along Duke of Gloucester Street.
It’s time to take another look. The generous gift of Cynthia and Robert Milligan in support of the porch reconstruction encourages us to think hard about the importance of the Raleigh Tavern both in the unfolding of the Revolution and in the progress of the educational program of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Guest Blogger: Jeff Klee
Jeff Klee has worked for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation as an architectural historian since 2004. His work includes original research on early American buildings, the design of reconstructions in the Historic Area, and scholarly publications and presentations. Outside CWF, he sits on the governing boards of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Here in Williamsburg, he served on the Architectural Review Board for nine years and is currently a member of the City of Williamsburg’s Planning Commission.
Jeff has degrees from Yale and the University of Delaware, where he completed his dissertation on Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood.
Dear Jeff:
It was very interesting to read this history of the Tavern. I wonder if much is known about Anthony Hay’s brief ownership of the Tavern and, if known, whether his skill with cabinetry resulted in any interior work there. Did the Tavern pass to his elder son, Thomas Penman? His younger son, by his second wife, Elizabthe Davenport, was George Hay, prominent Virginia attorney who prosecuted the case against Aaron Burr. He married Elizabeth Monroe, daughter of President James Monroe. His sister, Sarah Hay, married Henry Nicholson of the Wetherburn Tavern, so she must have inherited the tavern keeping genes. Whoever wrote that Williamsburg was a very small universe in those days was spot on.
Thank you.
Robert, thanks for your interest. Hay only owned the tavern for three years before he died but we know quite a bit about his time there, thanks to the Raleigh’s prominence in this period. George Washington, for example, frequently mentions dining at Mr. Hay’s. We also have a key document concerning the use and furnishing of the tavern in the probate inventory taken after Anthony Hay’s death in 1770, though I’ve seen nothing to indicate definitively that he made any of the pieces of furniture mentioned in that inventory. It would be surprising for him to have made significant changes to the paneling, in part because cabinetmaking and architectural joinery (while related in many ways) were different trades.
After Hay’s death, the next recorded owner is James Southall, who seems to have owned it until his death in 1800.
You are absolutely correct to suggest that this was a small social world-and the world of tavern-keepers in Williamsburg was even smaller!
What is the item on the left center of the floor of the Apollo Room in the first picture?
Good question. It’s far from clear, as the original is quite a small image, but I think I see a saw and an adze leaning up against a box (presumably for tools), seemingly included by Lossing to remind his readers that the room was being remodeled during his visit and that this site, like so many others associated with the Revolution, was at risk of destruction.
If these posts are supposed to make you homesick for somewhere you never lived, they sure work.
That’s a nice way to put it. Thank you for your comment!
Jeff
Thank you so much for publishing this and using the picture. Wow, so much to learn. My grandfather of the same name often talked about the Raleigh Tavern rebuilding and his father’s interest in it, as he came to Williamsburg in 1922. But I never knew specifics and I wish I had asked. It was such a crazy idea at the time.
One thing that he told me was important was that it was a VERY small town and everyone in the town spent a lot of time together, all very trusting and congenial, not just in the daytime but dinners, etc.
I think the idea of making the tavern the first big focus of efforts was to show that democracy could blossom in the most unlikely places, all very didactic.
and sorry for the dog pic..i thought the image upload was for the icon, not the post!
Mr. Pollard, thank you very much for your comment. I take it that you are a direct descendant of governor Pollard. You must know, then, that he was much more than a ceremonial ribbon-cutter in Williamsburg, as he was both mayor and head of the law school at William and Mary. He also developed a distinguished neighborhood in the 1920s, today known as Pollard Park, and now on the National Register of Historic Places. There is a fine nomination that details Gov. Pollard’s involvement in getting it built in the 1920s here: http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/Cities/Williamsburg/137-0478_Chandler_Court_and_Pollard_Park_Historic_District_1996_Final_Nomination.pdf
I hope that this is of some interest, and am very glad that you enjoyed the piece,
We have enjoyed many programs at the Raleigh. Musical concerts, lessons in Dance, and a very recent favorite “A Gathering of Hair”.. I hope though that after the work on the porch is completed that CW may continue on and fill it with more furnishings to make it as it was. As I said, we have been to the Raleigh many times and gotten very little information during those visits regarding the critically important events that took place there. I learned those things typically in reading literature on my own, and some literature associated with Williamsburg. I think it would be great if it becomes a site to be toured for the sake of it’s own importance rather than simply a building with few rooms large enough to serve as a location for various events not actually associated with the Raleigh. Not that they are terrible. Its just that the Raleigh should be up there with the Wythe House, Courthouse, etc., as sites where we learn about specific events in their context.
Many thanks for your comment, Jeff. We are about to begin a re-assessment of our historical programming at the Raleigh tavern. In line with your wishes, our intention is to develop a plan that is very much focused on the events in, and use of, the building in the 18th century. To do this properly will take time and involve people across the foundation but our goal is to debut the new program in 2017. So please stay tuned.
Would there be any way to purchase a copy of that 1939 Streetscape? That would be a great item to have framed. Would the Library be able to provide a copy?
Mr. Montana - Yes, it is possible to order a custom reproduction of the streetscape. Please contact our Visual Resources Librarian at vrc@cwf.org to submit a reproduction request.
This gives an interesting insight into the Virginia of the early 1930s as well as of Revolutionary days. Thank you. I’m looking forward to reading another article once the historically correct facade of the tavern is completed.
A fascinating article. Thank you.