The Ear Inn

326 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013

Grade B · Building datedTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Ear Inn claims 1817. The records say 1835.

Claimed: 1817
First record: 1835
Building: no single date

The building. Late 18th century; first recorded 1817 — we give it no single date because 1817 is the first record; the house is "late 18th century".

Pub website Directions

Prohibition
Speakeasy
Food

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 18 years the pub claims but no document confirms. Solid: 191 years on record.

The claim

A tiny Federal-style brick house near the Hudson in west SoHo, built for James Brown, an African-American veteran of the Revolution, and a tavern since at least the 1830s. It survived Prohibition as a speakeasy with a brothel upstairs. The name came in 1977, when half the B on its neon BAR sign was blacked out to make EAR.

What the records show

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. The 1835 is Wikipedia's, in its article on the James Brown House, and the sentence carries no footnote of its own: the article says records show a tavern in the shop from at least that year and that it was likely a bar even earlier, and the citation at that point — Albert Amateau's piece in The Villager of August 2003 — covers the second half of the sentence rather than the year. No licence, directory or deed for 1835 has been read here. The same article has Thomas Cloke, an Irish immigrant who bought the house in 1890, running a tavern and selling beer and spirits to sailors and longshoremen.

Dated evidence for The Ear Inn, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1817	Claimed founding	The pub
1835	First record of a drinking house here	Wikipedia, on a tavern in the ground-floor shop from 1835

What to look for inside

Built for Revolutionary War veteran James Brown
Name created in 1977 by painting over part of the BAR sign
NYC Landmark since 1969

Visiting

The Ear Inn is in New York City, United States, at 326 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

theearinn.com Directions in your maps app

Sources

Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026

Run this pub? There is a badge for it

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.

Above: the record · Below: what readers rememberThe record ends here

Raise a glass

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One per person. It is a show of hands, not evidence.

A glass is one per person, and it never changes a date or a grade — it is a show of hands, not evidence.

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The snug

What people remember about the Ear Inn

Nobody has written about this pub yet. These are readers’ own recollections, not our records — we check documents, not memories, and a memory never moves a date or a grade.

Were you a regular here?

We are after the things a record cannot hold: the landlord’s name, what was behind the bar, the room that is not there any more, the year the fire was moved. One paragraph is plenty.

The snug opens shortly. Until it does, send it to hello@oldpubs.com and we will put it on this page with your name on it.

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