Thursday, June 11, 2026 – Tomorrow: Celebrate America’s 250th at Frances Tavern!

By admin

Path to Liberty

Relive the Drama of

250 Years Ago at the

Fraunces Tavern Museum

Thursday, June 11, 2026

The Broadsheet

ISSUE # 1696

Take away the orange cones out front, the skyscrapers in the background, and electric lights, and you can almost see Fraunces Tavern in 1776.

Imagine the cobblestoned corner of Pearl and Broad Streets in the summer of 1776, where important visitors mingle with the locals at a busy tavern. Men known as the Sons of Liberty drop in for refreshment and libation. General George Washington dines with his officers. Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and others well known to Americans 250 years later meet to make their revolutionary plans. Rebellion against England is heating up, and Fraunces Tavern is at the center of it. Today, Fraunces Tavern, owned by the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, is the oldest surviving building in Manhattan. Still a popular watering hole at ground level, the building has hosted the Fraunces Tavern Museum upstairs since 1907. In conjunction with this year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the museum is offering an exceptional lineup of exhibitions, lectures, and programs. Tomorrow, Friday, June 12, the Fraunces Tavern Museum will observe Flag Day (which technically falls on Sunday), starting with a parade that winds through Lower Manhattan and concludes at 54 Pearl Street. There, the museum will throw open its doors with $1 admission.

Flag Day will be celebrated in style tomorrow at the Fraunces Tavern Museum (54 Pearl Street), where a Friday open house offers admission for $1.

One of New York’s longest-running parades, the Flag Day Parade will begin at City Hall Park at noon with marching bands and VIPs, and proceed down Broadway, gathering members of the public as it winds south and concludes at a grandstand in front of Fraunces Tavern around 12:30pm. Beneath a four-story American flag, student winners of the annual Flag Day student essay and art contest will be honored.

At the museum, “Path to Liberty: The Emergence of a Nation” is a chronological, multi-year, multi-installment, multi-gallery special exhibition commemorating the United States Semiquincentennial, and featuring documents, artifacts, and works of art that tell the history of the American Revolution from 1775 to 1783, with a focus on what occurred in New York and the surrounding areas.

“This is our core semiquincentennial exhibit,” says Scott Dwyer, director of the Fraunces Tavern Museum and the Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York. “It will rotate content throughout the year, but this installment is focused on the battles of New York at the beginning of the Revolution, and how the struggle for independence nearly ended before it began.”

This was a reference to a series of engagements—in Brooklyn, Kip’s Bay, Harlem, White Plains, and Washington Heights—fought between August and November of 1776, when George Washington managed to recover from multiple defeats and continue the struggle.

“The British thought this would lead to a very quick victory and were not prepared for a long war,” Mr. Dwyer says. “People at the time, and even today, discounted the Continental Army. But in addition to the home court advantage, they knew how to fight and where to do it. The context and the terrain were utterly foreign to the British. And the Americans had more skin in the game, more reason to fight than the British. This showed in their strength and resolve and courage.”

He cites the intrigue engaged in by Samuel Fraunces, who owned the tavern and hosted meetings of the Sons of Liberty, but fled when the British captured New York in 1776. “The British found him in New Jersey, brought him back, and made him work as an indentured servant in his own restaurant,” Mr. Dwyer recounts. “He used this as an opportunity to collect intelligence by eavesdropping on the British officers who dined there, and also to smuggle food to Americans taken prisoner by the redcoats.” Fraunces was later honored by Congress for foiling a plot to assassinate George Washington, and for gathering evidence about the treachery of Benedict Arnold.

After the Revolution was won, George Washington famously bade farewell to his troops at Fraunces Tavern, and the building was later used as the first offices of the federal Departments of State, War, and Treasury.

“New York and Lower Manhattan were really at the center of the American Revolution,” Mr. Dwyer adds. “That’s the story this exhibition aims to tell.”

“Path to Liberty: The Emergence of a Nation” is part of the Fraunces Tavern Museum’s broader Liberty 250 program, which will commemorate the semiquincentennial throughout the year. For more information, please click here.

Matthew Fenton

Women of Distinction
Honored by Rebecca Seawright

Roosevelt Island Group Presentation
Kristi Towey,
Dr. Michal Melamed, Arlene Bessenoff
Nina Lublin, Felicia Ruff
 (No Phtos Zora Boyadzhieva, Melissa Wade)

CREDITS

The Broadsheet
Judith Berdy

PHOTO OF THE DAY

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