Wright's Tavern

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Wright's Tavern
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark
Historic District Contributing Property
The house in 2007

The house in 2007

Wright's Tavern, Massachusetts
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location Concord , Massachusetts , United States
Coordinates 42 ° 27 '37.6 "  N , 71 ° 20' 55.7"  W Coordinates: 42 ° 27 '37.6 "  N , 71 ° 20' 55.7"  W.
Built 1747
NRHP number 66000793
Data
The NRHP added October 15, 1966
Declared as an  NHL January 20, 1961
Declared as  CP September 13, 1977

The Wright's Tavern (also Wright Tavern ) is a historic, former restaurant in Concord in the state of Massachusetts in the United States . The building played an important role at the beginning of the American Revolution and was therefore designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961. After the entry in the National Register of Historic Places five years later, the inclusion as a Contributing Property of the Concord Monument Square-Lexington Road Historic District followed in 1977 .

architecture

Blackboard on the outside of the house

The inn is in the center of town on the south side of Monument Square and is now owned by the neighboring First Parish Church. The building consists of an older part, built in 1747, and two extensions from the 19th century and the 1920s. While the oldest section is two and a half stories high and has a monitor roof , the first extension rises two stories and has a gable roof . The second, one-story extension with a flat roof served as an extension of the guest room for the hotel, which was located in the building at the time. The corners of the extension are adorned with two Ionic order pilasters . The entrances are on the northeast and southeast side of the main building.

Historical meaning

The inn was built in 1747 on land that Ephraim Jones had bought from the city for £ 30 (around £ 6,000 today). Since Jones was a member of the city council and also a captain of the local military, his restaurant quickly became a center of political, military and social activity. The city council held many of their meetings there, and Jones was also licensed to serve rum to the military. But there were also regular guests who did not belong to either of the two groups.

In 1751 Jones sold the inn to his competitor Thomas Munroe, who died in 1766. Eventually Daniel Taylor bought the house and rented it out to various tenants, until 1775 Amos Wright, after whom the inn is named to this day, took over the tavern as the new tenant.

On October 11, 1774, 300 delegates from the cities of Massachusetts, headed by John Hancock and Benjamin Lincoln, founded the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and claimed governance over the Province of Massachusetts Bay . While Congress used the First Parish Church meetinghouse for its meetings, smaller groups met for committee meetings in the neighboring Wright's Tavern. The congress, which initially lasted five days, met again for four weeks on April 15, 1775 and decided to suspend the tax payments to King George III. as well as the formation of an army.

Four days later, a British patrol was sent from Boston to Concord to seize colonial military equipment. However, Samuel Prescott was able to warn the colonists who met at Wright's Tavern to discuss countermeasures. After the end of the American War of Independence , the former inn was used, among other things, as a bakery and shoe shop until it was acquired by two Concorde residents in 1886 and given to the First Parish Church. A hotel, a residential building and a restaurant were then operated there one after the other. Today there are offices of the community as well as externally rented rooms.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Wright's Tavern  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Massachusetts. National Park Service , accessed August 14, 2019.
  2. ↑ cf. Rettig, p. 2.
  3. ↑ a b cf. Rettig, p. 3.
  4. ↑ a b cf. Rettig, p. 5.