The claim
A weatherboarded tavern on a Charlestown corner, among the first buildings raised after the British burned the town in 1775, and named for Dr Joseph Warren, killed at Bunker Hill. Paul Revere's Masonic lodge met here and Washington visited in 1789. Saved from demolition around 1970, it again pours pints beneath low beams near the Freedom Trail.
What the records show
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 claims 1780 and the title of oldest tavern in Massachusetts. The federal register has now been searched by position rather than by name, which is what this page had not done: the tavern has no entry of its own, and its corner falls inside the Town Hill District, listed on the National Register on 10 May 1973 and bounded roughly by Rutherford Avenue and Main and Warren Streets. A district listing is a finding about a neighbourhood. It names no building, dates none, and so it neither supports nor disturbs the 1780; what carries the grade here is still the lodge meeting of 1783. A drinker can sit at the bar for a pint without taking a table, which the house says in its own words. The 1783 belongs to the lodge rather than to the tavern, and Masonic Genealogy is where it is published: the Massachusetts lodge-history wiki gives King Solomon's Lodge a charter dated 5 September 1783 under Grand Master John Warren, prints Eliphalet Newell's own account of the lodge being formed at his house, which he calls Warren Tavern, and meeting there for its first twenty years, and reproduces a 1989 article from the masonic magazine Trowel calling the tavern the birthplace of the lodge. The tavern's own history page carries 1780 and does not mention the lodge at all.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1780 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1780 | Present building | Building fabric |
| 1783 | First record of a drinking house here | Masonic Genealogy, the Massachusetts lodge-history wiki |
What to look for inside
- Named after Dr Joseph Warren, killed at Bunker Hill
- Paul Revere's King Solomon's Lodge met here
- Tavern use lapsed c. 1813-1972
Visiting
Warren Tavern is in Boston, United States, at 2 Pleasant Street, Charlestown, MA 02129. 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/Warren_Tavern
- historyofmassachusetts.org/warren-tavern-history/
- www.warrentavern.com/history
- www.warrentavern.com/
- mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/1/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-71.06331%2C42.37404%2C-71.06291%2C42.37434&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CAddress%2CCertDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html
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.
