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Tavern Scene by Flemish artist David Teniers c. 1658
A Dutch tavern scene by Jan Steen, late 17th century

A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food, and in some cases, where travelers receive lodging. An inn is a tavern which has a license to put up guests as lodgers. The word derives from the Latin taberna whose original meaning was a shed, workshop, stall, or pub.

In the English language, a tavern was once an establishment which served wine whilst an inn served beer and ale. Over time, the words "tavern" and "inn" became interchangeable and synonymous. In England, inns started to be referred to as public houses or pubs and the term became standard for all drinking houses.




Until the late 18th century, the only places for common people to eat out were inns and taverns.





German tavern circa 1470


Great Britain[edit]

Main articles: Pub and Inn

The word tavern is no longer in popular use in the UK as there is no distinction between a tavern and an inn. Both establishments serve wine and both serve beer/ale. The term 'pub' (an abbreviation of 'public house') is now used to describe these houses. The legacy of taverns and inns is now only found in the pub names, e.g. Fitzroy Tavern, Silver Cross Tavern, Spaniards Inn, etc. The word survives also in songs such as "There is a tavern in the town".[4]

The range and quality of pubs varies wildly throughout the UK as does the range of beers, wines, spirits and foods available. Most quality pubs will still serve cask ales and good food. In recent years there has been a move towards "gastro" pubs where the food is of excellent quality.

Pubs are still popular meeting places but they are declining in popularity.[citation needed] This is attributed to economic conditions, the narrow profit margins permitted to pub landlords by brewing companies, the inexpensive sales of alcohol in supermarkets, and the banning of smoking in public places.[citation needed]


In Italy, in the agricultural region of the southern Veneto, 1848–1875, taverns in the small towns were gathering places where the sharecroppers and tenant farmers learned of socialist and anarchist ideas, and formed groups to fight for independence from Austrian rule. Certain cafés were identified with the political ideas of their regular customers.


Reformers who denounced the terrible effects of heavy consumption of alcohol on public disorder, health, and quality of work, made periodic attempts to control it in Mexico City in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The poor frequented the pulcherías where pulque, made from the maguey plant, was sold. After the legalization of the more potent aguardiende in 1796, the poor could also afford the viñaterías where hard liquor was served, and drunkenness increased. The taverns played an important social and recreational role in the lives of the poor. Influential citizens often owned the pulcherías and opposed reform as did owners of the maguey haciendas. Tax revenues from alcohol were important to the government. These factors, added to lax enforcement of the laws, resulted in the failure of tavern reform.[5]

North America[edit]

The Vera Cruz Tavern in Vera Cruz, Pennsylvania

Americans drank heavily, for rum was cheap. In 1770 per capita consumption was 3.7 gallons of distilled spirits per year, rising to 5.2 gallons in 1830 or approximately 1.8 one-ounce shots a day for every adult white man.[6] That total does not include the beer or hard cider that colonists routinely drank in addition to rum, the most popular distilled beverage available in English America. Benjamin Franklin printed a "Drinker's Dictionary" in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, listing some 228 slang terms used for drunkenness in Philadelphia.

The sheer volume of hard liquor consumption fell off, but beer grew in popularity and men developed customs and traditions based on how to behave at the tavern. By 1900 the 26 million American men over age 18 patronized 215,000 licensed taverns and probably 50,000 unlicensed (illegal) ones, or one per hundred men.[7] Twice the density could be found in working class neighborhoods. They served mostly beer; bottles were available but most drinkers went to the taverns. Probably half the American men avoided saloons, so the average consumption for actual patrons was about a half-gallon of beer per day, six days a week. In 1900, the city of Boston (with about 200,000 adult men) counted 227,000 daily saloon customers.[8]

Colonial America to 1800[edit]

Taverns in the colonies closely followed the models of the mother country. They were supervised by county officials who recognized the need for taverns and the need to maintain order, to minimize drunkenness (and avoid it if possible on Sundays), as well as to establish the responsibilities of tavern keepers.

Earliest hotels[edit]



The historic White Horse Tavern in Newport, Rhode Island, in the United States.

Taverns were essential for colonial Americans, especially in the South where towns hardly existed. In the taverns the colonists learned current crop prices, arranged trades, heard newspapers read aloud, and discovered business opportunities and the latest betting odds on the upcoming horse races. For most rural Americans the tavern was the chief link to the greater world, playing a role much like the city marketplace in Europe and Latin America.




In the colonial era, about two-thirds of the taverns were operated by women—especially widows. Local magistrates—who had to award a license before a tavern could operate—preferred widows who knew the business and might otherwise be impoverished and become a charge to the county.[11] Women and children were not, however, welcome as fellow drinkers. The drinkers were men—and indeed often defined their manliness by how much they could drink at a time.

Meeting place and community center[edit]


Mail stop and post office[edit]



Oldest taverns[edit]

Barroom Dancing, c. 1820, by John Lewis Krimmel

The oldest tavern is a distinction claimed by numerous establishments. Some establishments clarify their claims with oldest continuously operating tavern, oldest family-owned tavern, oldest drinking establishment, or oldest licensed; there are many ways to distinguish the oldest tavern. The first tavern in Boston, Massachusetts was a Puritan ordinary, opened in 1633, by one account,[13] but the date was actually 4 March 1633/4, which is more correctly written 1634; on this date John Winthrop recorded that Samuel Cole set up the "first house for common entertainment."[14]

The White Horse Tavern, in Newport, Rhode Island, is most likely the Tavern housed in the oldest building. The Blue Anchor, the first drinking establishment at Front and Dock Streets in Philadelphia, began operation in 1681. Jean Lafitte's Black Smith Shoppe in New Orleans, Louisiana some claim to be the oldest bar continuously operating before 1775. Lafitte himself was born in 1776.

Germania (German-America)[edit]



New York City[edit]


Kaplan (1995) proposes an escalation of tavern violence in antebellum New York City as a manifestation of a developing working-class male identity. This was due to the rapid growth of taverns, and their roles as centers of working-class social life. Brawling fostered a male identity that was centered on physical courage, independence, and class pride. Irish and German influences contributed to the violence,[clarification needed] as did racial and ethnic prejudice.[citation needed] Sexual assaults against women increased because women were working in factories and more exposed to these dangers in the city. (Male-on-male violence was common inside the tavern; rapes happened outside or around the back.)[citation needed] Women were regarded as depersonalized objects, and gang rapes were viewed as a form of male bonding.[16]

New England[edit]

The heavy Puritan heritage of New England meant that local government was strong enough to regulate—and close—rowdy places. But the power of ministers faded, and by the 1790s provincial leaders recognized that they could not eradicate hard drinking in taverns. From that point until after the American Revolution, the tavern was a widely accepted institution in Massachusetts.


Ethnic saloons[edit]


Dangerous criminal haunts[edit]

Old West saloons[edit]

  • Tavern
  • Gambling Den
  • Brothel




Roberts (2008) shows that in Upper Canada (Ontario) in the early 19th century, there was an informal ritual at work that tavern keepers and patrons followed. For example, the barroom were reserved for men but adjacent rooms were places where women could meet, families could come, and female sociability flourish. Meanwhile the local men and visitors such as travelers, doctors, tradespeople, and artists could express their views on topics of general interest.

Occasionally heated arguments would break into fights between religious or ethnic groups.[19] Despite efforts by social reformers to regulate taverns in Ontario, Canada, physical violence linked to drinking was common. Indeed, 19th-century masculinity, derived from earlier models of fur traders in the region, was often predicated on feats of strength and stamina and on skill in fighting. Taverns were the most common public gathering place for males of the working class and thus the site of frequent confrontations. Men's honor and men's bodies, socially and historically linked, found public, and often destructive, expression in the tavern setting.[20]

The term "tavern" was regularly used in Ontario, Canada until the mid-1980s, when it disappeared, having been replaced with the word "bar", for almost any restaurant type of facility that sold alcohol.



See also[edit]


  2. ^ Beverly Ann Tlusty (1994). "Gender and Alcohol Use in Early Modern Augsburg". Social History 27 (54): 241–259. 
  4. ^ Anon (1952). YHA Songbook. Youth Hostels Association (England and Wales), St Albans, Herts. Song 61: There is a tavern in the town.
  5. ^ Michael C. Scardaville (1980). "Alcohol Abuse and Tavern Reform in Late Colonial Mexico City". Hispanic American Historical Review 60 (4): 643–671. doi:10.2307/2513670. JSTOR 2513670. PMID 11632078. 
  8. ^ Kingston (1973) pp. 472–3.
  10. ^ Daniel B. Thorp (1996). "Taverns and Tavern Culture on the Southern Colonial Frontier: Rowan County, North Carolina, 1753–1776". Journal of Southern History 62 (4): 661–688. doi:10.2307/2211137. JSTOR 2211137. 
  13. ^ Nathan, Gavin (2006). Historic Taverns of Boston. iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-39370-1. 
  14. ^ *Hosmer, James Kendall (editor) (1908). Winthrop's Journal "History of New England" 1630-1649. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 
  15. ^ Perry Duis, The Saloon
  16. ^ Michael Kaplan (1995). "New York City Tavern Violence and the Creation of a Working-Class Male Identity". Journal of the Early Republic 15 (4): 591–617. doi:10.2307/3124015. JSTOR 3124015. 
  17. ^ Kingsdale (1973); Duis (1975); Rothbart (1993)
  18. ^ The New York Times, July 6, 1891
  19. ^ Roberts (2008)
  20. ^ Kevin B. Wamsley, and Robert S. Kossuth (2000). "Fighting it out in Nineteenth-Century Upper Canada/Canada West: Masculinities and Physical Challenges in the Tavern". Journal of Sport History 27 (3): 405–430. 
  21. ^ Lars Magnusson (1986). "Drinking and the Verlag System 1820–1850: The Significance of Taverns and Drink in Eskilstuna Before Industrialisation". Scandinavian Economic History Review 34 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1080/03585522.1986.10408056. 





North America[edit]


External links[edit]