21. Fraunces Tavern Block

Location: Bounded by Pearl, Water, Broad Streets and Coenties Slip
Built: 1719-1883
Architect: Multiple
National Register Number: 77000957
Listed: April 28, 1977
Visited: August 5, 2007



Heterogeneity is the rule in most urban areas, but in the lowerest of Lower Manhattan, it runs amuck. Buildings cluster together in cliques based on style, purpose, and age, and as is the nature of cliques, none of the cliques communicate with each other except in the most unproductive ways; skyscrapers from the go-go Eighties bully the smaller, older buildings, who can't help but look shabby compared to their oafish cousins. So this block of sixteen buildings, eleven of which date from 1827 to 1833, look ridiculous compared to the Goldman Sachs Building across the street, and the Goldman Sachs building looks ridiculous next to the block. Everyone loses.

(Worth noting, 'cause I'm not going to be able to note it anywhere else: the Goldman Sachs building interests me almost entirely because it hovers over the bones of the 1641 Stadt Huys; additionally, part of Stone Street was demapped to build it, prompting the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to landmark the very street plan of New Amsterdam and Colonial New York.)

Taking them on their own terms, these little Federal Style and Greek Revival buildings don't look so bad, even if they lack the intimacy of Stone Street or the rusticity of South Street Seaport. Their uses were primarily commercial and tied to the nearby docks, perhaps explaining their chaste look. Today, it's some apartments, and restaurants and bars feeding skyscraper dezinens on their lunch hour; with their garbage laid out in the summer heat, it even reeks a little like Old New York might've.

The one building everyone cares about, though--the one that visibly stands out even among this set of relics--is this block's namesake, Fraunces Tavern. This is where George Washington bid farewell to his troops after the British finally evacuated Manhattan in 1783, essentially refusing the role of military emperor of the new country. Even with the Tavern, it is only slightly easier to imagine this place as it was when Washington left for Whitehall Ferry and left for a life of (interrupted) retirement than it is to imagine as it was before Europeans set foot on it, so thoroughly has the past been annihilated here. The front page of the museum's website speaks benignly of the "restoration" the building received at the hands of the Sons of the Revolution from 1904 to 1907. However, a chronology deeper within relates that a century of fire damage and unsympathetic redesign ("1890: The first floor exterior was remodeled with cast iron and glass storefronts. The original timbers were sold as souvenirs." Christ.) left the structure with an indeterminate relationship to its original appearance, which by that point wasn't even known; as a result, "the design was somewhat conjectural." The AIA Guide to New York City is so offended by this lack of authenticity that it peevishly dates the building by the new-old design, not its original erection, and harrumphs that the Tavern was a "highly conjectural construction--not a restoration--based on 'typical' buildings of 'the period.'" Furthermore: "Such charades enabled George Washington Slept Here architecture to strangle reality in much of suburban America." A puzzling statement. Most of my life I lived on Long Island, the suburbanest of suburban America, and if there was a lot of ersatz Colonial- and Federal-style buildings, they must've been hiding behind the strip malls and ranch homes because I sure don't remember them. (One exception: Sagtikos Manor, a place where George Washington really slept.)

There's a museum at the tavern now, dedicated in large part to colonial life and the details of Washington's farewell. When I was using my camera in the Fraunces Tavern's Long Room--that's where Washington gave his address--a docent heard me from another room and ran in, angrily telling me "no pictures, no pictures." This, sadly, is what I remember best about the museum a month after I visited. I did not see one single fucking sign in the museum that says photography isn't allowed. Not one. Maybe there's a sign in the bar or the restaurant, neither of which I entered, or maybe the docent is supposed to tell people photography isn't allowed as they enter the museum, and just forgot, or maybe it's just assumed people will know cameras aren't allowed, or maybe just fucking WHATEVER. In any case, stupid.