30 bars checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
By claim, the oldest bar in the United States is the '76 House in Tappan, New York, which appears in state-by-state lists with a date of 1668. By evidence it is the White Horse Tavern in Newport, Rhode Island: a house of 1652, enlarged into a tavern by William Mayes in 1673, with a tavern licence recorded in 1687. The Tappan house sits on land deeded in 1753 and was built in 1754.
American tavern claims are usually easier to check than European ones and harder to defend. Colonial licensing was done town by town and county by county, and the paperwork often survives: a selectmen's vote, a court of quarter sessions, a licence to keep a house of public entertainment. That is why several bars on this page carry a precise founding day rather than a vague century. The difficulty comes afterwards. National prohibition closed the trade from 1920 to 1933; fire took the Palace in Prescott twice and gutted Longfellow's Wayside Inn in 1955; and colonial taverns that stopped being taverns spent generations as bakeries, stores, meat markets and private homes before anyone thought to restore them. So "oldest" in the United States nearly always needs a qualifier — oldest licence, oldest tavern building, or oldest business that never shut its doors. We grade all three, and we say which of them a particular claim is really about.
These three questions have three different answers, and most disputes on this page dissolve once you say which one you mean. The oldest licence still attached to a trading bar belongs to Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, where David How was licensed to keep a tavern in 1716 — though the inn closed from 1861 to 1897 and the building was gutted by fire in 1955 and rebuilt. The oldest tavern building is the White Horse Tavern in Newport. The oldest business that has simply kept trading is arguable, and the best candidates are Victorian rather than colonial: McSorley’s Old Ale House and McGillin’s Olde Ale House.
American bars often have better documentation than their British counterparts, because the National Register of Historic Places, state historical markers and county court records all name dates and sources. The Golden Lamb in Lebanon, Ohio, can point to 23 December 1803, the day Jonas Seaman paid four dollars for a licence to keep a house of public entertainment. Scholz Garten in Austin has an 1866 opening accepted by the Texas Historical Commission. Where a bar’s own date conflicts with the marker on its wall, we follow the marker: the Genoa Bar in Nevada advertises 1853, while the plaque by the door says Al Livingston built the place in 1863. Our full argument about the national title is in what is the oldest bar in America, and the state lists for Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania go further into the local records.
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Tappan, New York
The 1668 is not supported and does not come from the house, which claims a three-hundred-year-old structure: a land deed of 1753 and construction in 1754 are on record, and Orange County's supervisors are documented meeting 'at the House of Casparus Maybe' in 1756. Tavern use from the 1750s is well evidenced. The state licence names the house the Old 76 House, which is what the sign says, and Historic Tavern Inc as
Newport, Rhode Island
The National Register nomination, written by Antoinette Downing of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission on 25 July 1971 and entered on 3 February 1972, puts it plainly: probably built before 1673, the house was acquired that year by William Mayes, served first as a private residence and soon became an inn, and Mayes had been granted a liquor licence as early as 1687. The sign of the White Horse was
Bristol, Pennsylvania
The 1681 belongs to the Pennsylvania press, not to the inn. The Pennsylvania Independent, on 25 July 2024, has the house opening as the Ferry House in 1681 under Samuel Clift, who ran the ferry between Bristol and New Jersey, and quotes a state tourism official who says it is the oldest bar in Pennsylvania. The inn's own pages claim America's oldest inn and tavern and print no year. Wikipedia records inn use from
Sudbury, Massachusetts
The National Register nomination is the record behind the claim: Samuel Howe, a carpenter, is believed to have begun the inn about 1700 with two rooms, a taproom below and a guest chamber above, and his son David was granted a licence for innkeeping by the Concord Court in 1716, keeping Howe's Tavern until 1746. Ezekial Howe, landlord from 1746, renamed it the Red Horse and led two companies of Sudbury militia to
New Orleans, Louisiana
The 1722-32 is the bar's own: its about page, archived in December 2023, says the building was put up between 1722 and 1732 by Nicolas Touze and is reputed to be the oldest structure used as a bar in the United States. The present site loads nothing a reader can check. National Historic Landmark documentation dates the briquette-entre-poteaux building to the 1770s, and the Jean Lafitte smuggling story is
Annapolis, Maryland
The Maryland Historical Trust's survey file for the property dates it to about 1754, built as a tavern and boarding house on the Ship Carpenters Lot that Governor Francis Nicholson set aside about 1696 for shipwrights, and known first as the Inn for Seafaring Men. The Middletons' fifty-year tenure was reported often in the Maryland Gazette, and George Mann ran the house through much of the Revolution, lodging
Savannah, Georgia
The 1753 is the house's own, and its own history page shows how the year is reached rather than cited: Savannah had become a seaport, the Trustees' Garden was being turned into a residential quarter, and so one of the first buildings there "was naturally an inn & tavern for visiting sailors". That is an inference, and no licence, deed, directory or newspaper has been traced for an inn here in the 1750s. What is
New York City, New York
Samuel Fraunces opened the Queen's Head here in 1762 and Washington's farewell to his officers in 1783 is well documented. But the building later had many non-tavern uses and was largely reconstructed in 1907; a 2021 study found more original brick than assumed. 'Continuous since 1762' is not accurate. Two registers were read on 17 September 2026 in place of the encyclopedia the page had been leaning on. New York
Bedford, Pennsylvania
The stone building is dated about 1762 in its National Register listing, built by the Indian trader Robert Callender, who sold it in 1779 to Jean Bonnet and his wife; documented inn use begins there, and the Pennsylvania marker has Bonnet and his heirs keeping it from 1779 to 1815. A meeting of Whiskey Rebellion men here in 1794 is recorded. So the 1762 belongs to the walls and 1779 to the trade. The house is a
Baltimore, Maryland
The 1775 is published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation's magazine, which says the tavern that originally occupied this colonial building was founded in 1775 and that the building has been a bar ever since; Wikipedia attaches the year to the Fountain Inn, the saloon's predecessor. No primary record was found, and nothing the bar publishes was traced. The popular story that this was Edgar Allan Poe's
Essex, Connecticut
The inn's opening by the Griswold family in 1776 is its own tradition and no licence has been traced; what is recorded on the state marker is that the house was here at the time of the British raid on Essex in 1814. Wikipedia has the Tap Room building beginning as a schoolhouse of about 1735, moved to the site. Six families have owned the inn in its history, the present one the Pauls, for about thirty years, and the
Bardstown, Kentucky
The 1779 is traditional, and the National Register nomination that lists the building says so itself: 'According to tradition, since the first guest arrived in 1779, the Tavern has never been closed', with General George Rogers Clark's use of the cellars given as local tradition and the visit of Louis Philippe in October 1797 as legend. A Kentucky state marker dates the stone portion before 1790, suggests it was
Boston, Massachusetts
Eliphelet Newell built the tavern soon after the British burned Charlestown, and King Solomon's Lodge, whose charter Paul Revere signed, met here in 1783-84. Tavern use lapsed about 1813 and the building served as a bakery, a club and a warehouse; the Boston Redevelopment Authority restored it in 1971 and it reopened as a tavern in 1972, so the trade is not continuous even though the house is. The tavern itself
Hancock, New Hampshire
The inn says on its own pages that it has been welcoming locals and travellers since 1789 and is regarded as New Hampshire's oldest, and its reopening announcement and the press repeat both. The National Register nomination for the Hancock Village Historic District, entered on 8 March 1988, is the reason this is graded C rather than higher: it says the building was put up as a tavern for Noah Wheeler and that 1789
Boston, Massachusetts
The 1795 is the tavern's own, printed at the head of its website as 'America's Oldest Tavern: First Pour 1795' and cited here from a 2019 copy because the live site refuses readers it does not recognise. Wikipedia notes the foundation by town crier Jimmy Wilson rests on tradition. The business has moved several times to reach 45 Union Street and it stopped trading during Prohibition, so 'oldest continuously
Lebanon, Ohio
On 23 December 1803 Jonas Seaman paid four dollars for a licence to keep 'a house of public entertainment' on the site. The present brick building dates from 1815, so the site, not the structure, goes back to 1803. The county history of Warren County published in 1882, whose general chapters were prepared by Josiah Morrow, adds two things and complicates a third. Jonas Seaman is listed there among the pioneers who
New Orleans, Louisiana
Nothing states 1807, the year this row used to claim. The bar's own page, on its operator's site, says the building was built in 1806 and calls the house one of the city's prominent historical landmarks; New Orleans Historical puts the stuccoed corner building at about 1806 and among the oldest structures in New Orleans. Neither dates drink. The ground floor began as a grocery, Wikipedia has a bar there by about the
New York City, New York
The Federal-style James Brown House is first recorded in 1817; records show a tavern in the ground-floor shop from at least 1835, probably earlier. The name 'Ear Inn' dates only from 1977, when the B of the old BAR sign was painted over.
Boston, Massachusetts
The 1826 is documented and is not a drinking house, which is why the grade here is C and the ranking leaves the house out. The nomination that made this a National Historic Landmark on 27 May 2003 sets out the sequence plainly: a dwelling in the early 1700s, a specialty store from 1742, and a restaurant from 1826, when Hawes Atwood opened his oyster house on the ground floor on 7 October. The house's own wording is
Lafayette, Indiana
The 1835 and the visits by Ulysses Grant, Mark Twain, Al Capone and Neil Armstrong are the saloon's own claims, published on its own pages with nothing behind them, and no independent record of a founding has been traced. Its own arithmetic does not hold either: the same page claims 1835 and 180 years in business, which are not the same thing. The federal register has now been searched by position: the building has
Long Grove, Illinois
The tavern calls itself, on its own front page, the oldest restaurant in continuous operation in Illinois, established in 1847; no founding document and no building date have been traced. Note the wording it chooses: restaurant in continuous operation, rather than a licence or a bar. The federal register has now been searched rather than left open, and it is empty here: within eight hundred metres of 135 Old McHenry
Groveland, California
The granite building is dated to about 1852, when it was the Granite Store, but the saloon's own marker and pages say it became a drinking house, Jake's Place, in 1896 under Giacomo DeFarrari, and the name Iron Door dates from 1937. So the claim to be California's oldest saloon rests on the building rather than on the trade. The house advertises itself as serving since 1852. Lunch runs from eleven and dinner to
Genoa, Nevada
The 1853 is published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation's magazine, which says the bar was built that year as Livingston's Exchange and is Nevada's oldest thirst parlor; the state tourism board repeats it. The 1974 historical marker on the building disagrees, saying Al Livingston built it in 1863 and Frank Fettic bought it in 1884. The 1853 date may reflect Genoa's settlement era rather than this bar.
New York City, New York
Historians note the site was a vacant lot in 1860-61, the building dates from no earlier than 1858, and John McSorley first appears in city directories in 1862. It likely opened 1861-62, not 1854, though it has traded ever since, serving 'near beer' in Prohibition. The city's own record now says much the same. New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission building database, read on 17 September 2026, gives 15
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Opened in 1860 by William 'Pa' McGillin as the Bell in Hand, per Wikipedia and the bar; its framed liquor licences on the wall run from 1871, and no 1860 primary record has been read. Both registers have now been searched, and neither holds the house. Within two hundred metres of 1310 Drury Street the National Register of Historic Places lists seven buildings — the Land Title Building on Chestnut Street, the
New York City, New York
The bar claims its first official drinking licence in 1864 and a grocery-and-grog trade from 1851-52, and neither has been traced to a record. The story that O. Henry wrote 'The Gift of the Magi' in a booth here is generally treated as apocryphal. On the trade today, New York State's register of active licences carries the house under its restaurant class rather than a bar class, held by 66 Irving LLC, which is a
Austin, Texas
German immigrant August Scholz opened Scholz's Hall here in 1866, accepted by the Texas Historical Commission and NRHP. The Texas marker states the current main building replaced the original around 1900, so the business is older than the fabric.
Prescott, Arizona
The 1877 comes from the marker the City of Prescott put up outside, which opens by saying the saloon's exact age is something of a puzzle and gives the first reliable documentation as an item in the Arizona Weekly Miner of 21 September 1877: Shaw and Standefer had fitted up the Palace in the most superb style. The original burned in 1883 and again in the great fire of 1900; the present building opened in 1901. The
New York City, New York
Wikipedia and the bar give 1880, when it opened as a longshoremen's bar; the literary reputation dates from the 1950s, and the bar was sold and renovated in 2019. No primary licence has been read. The federal register has now been searched by position, which this page had not done: the house has no entry of its own, and 567 Hudson Street falls inside the Greenwich Village Historic District, listed on the National
Denver, Colorado
Henry H. Zietz, a plainsman who had ridden with Buffalo Bill's scouts and was nicknamed Shorty Scout by Sitting Bull, opened a saloon at 1000 Osage Street in 1893 across from the Rio Grande railway yards, where he took railwaymen's pay cheques on a Friday and handed back a token for a lunch and a beer. That account, and the specific date 1893, are in the nomination the National Park Service accepted in April 1983
The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences, or in the public domain. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits. A pub with no licensed photograph shows an illustrated façade instead.
