The claim
A corner tavern at Irving Place and 18th Street that claims to be New York's oldest continuously operating bar and restaurant. The city's landmarks record dates the brick building to 1846-47 and describes it as a store with apartments. It kept pouring through Prohibition behind a fake flower shop. O. Henry lived nearby and wrote it into a story, though the famous booth is legend.
What the records show
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 matter of licensing rather than of what the room is: Pete's keeps a long front bar and serves at it. On the building, this page said an 1829 structure was documented, and the city's own record does not agree. New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission building database, read on 17 September 2026, holds the corner as 66 Irving Place, also known as 131 East 18th Street, named in the database as Pete's Tavern: a brick building of 1846-47 put up for C. Witscher, original use mixed commercial and residential, described as a store with apartments, standing in the Gramercy Park Historic District. Its footprint sits on the corner the tavern occupies. So the fabric predates the 1864 claim by under twenty years rather than by thirty-five, and it was built as a shop with rooms over, not as the Portman Hotel.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1864 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1829 | Present building | Building fabric |
What to look for inside
- Disguised as a flower shop during Prohibition
- Appears in O. Henry's 'The Lost Blend'
Visiting
Pete's Tavern is in New York City, United States, at 129 East 18th Street, New York, NY 10003. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete%27s_Tavern
- www.petestavern.com/
- data.ny.gov/resource/9s3h-dpkz.json
- data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/gpmc-yuvp.json?build_nme=Pete%27s%20Tavern
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026
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Free to put on your own site, no permission needed. It shows what the pub claims and what the records support, and it changes when the data does.
How to use it, and how to change what it says — if you have a document we have not seen, we would like to read it.
