Red clapboard inn with brick chimneys and white sash windows, behind a stone wall and hedge

Longfellow's Wayside Inn

72 Wayside Inn Road, Sudbury, MA 01776

Grade A · DocumentedTrading · checked Sept 2026

Longfellow's Wayside Inn claims 1716. The records say 1716.

Claimed: 1716
First record: 1716
Building: no single date

The building. The National Register nomination has Samuel Howe beginning the inn about 1700 with two rooms, a taproom below and a guest chamber above; his son David added two more about 1716, and Ezekial Howe four at the rear after 1746. Gutted by fire in December 1955 and rebuilt, so much of what stands is later.

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Coaching inn
Literary
Food
Rooms

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Solid: 310 years on record.

The claim

A rambling red coaching inn on the old Boston Post Road, first licensed to the How family in 1716. Longfellow made it famous in Tales of a Wayside Inn, which opens with Paul Revere's Ride, and Henry Ford later bought and restored it. Rebuilt after a 1955 fire, it still serves travellers with a historic bar room, dining and rooms.

What the records show

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 Concord on 19 April 1775. Lyman Howe, the fifth of the family to keep it, was Longfellow's model for the landlord; after Tales of a Wayside Inn appeared in 1863 the Red Horse took the poem's name. The house then declined under heirs and tenants until Henry Ford bought it in 1923. It was not an inn between 1861 and 1897, and it was gutted by fire in December 1955 and reconstructed, so the standing fabric is largely later than the story.

Dated evidence for Longfellow's Wayside Inn, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1716	Claimed founding	The pub
1716	First record of a drinking house here	National Register nomination, on David Howe's licence of 1716

What to look for inside

Setting for Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
Bought by Henry Ford in 1923
Closed as an inn 1861-1897; rebuilt after 1955 fire
Grist mill on the grounds pictured on Pepperidge Farm packaging

Visiting

Longfellow's Wayside Inn is in Sudbury, United States, at 72 Wayside Inn Road, Sudbury, MA 01776. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

wayside.org Directions in your maps app

Sources

The clapboarded Wayside Inn with its dormers and porch, behind shrubs, photographed for a survey about 1935 — Then and now
Photographed about 1935, and today. A Historic American Buildings Survey photograph of about 1935, twenty years before the fire.
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The snug

What people remember about Longfellow's Wayside Inn

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