On July 4, 2026, the United States turns 250. The semiquincentennial — America250, as the official commemoration calls it — invites a particular kind of looking back. Most of that looking happens in textbooks and on monuments. But in Manhattan, some of the oldest American history is still being served on a plate, poured into a glass, and set down at a table that was already old when the last few generations of New Yorkers were born.
These are restaurants and taverns that have outlasted fires, depressions, world wars, Prohibition, and the relentless churn of New York real estate. A few of them predate the country itself. To eat at any of them is to sit, for an hour or two, inside the same rooms where the republic's story actually unfolded. Here are nine that are still open, still cooking, and still worth the trip in the city's — and the nation's — anniversary year.
Fraunces Tavern (1762) — Where Washington Said Goodbye
No restaurant in Manhattan carries the weight of the founding era quite like Fraunces Tavern. The brick building at 54 Pearl Street in the Financial District dates to the early 1720s, and Samuel Fraunces opened it as a tavern — then called the Queen's Head — in 1762, fourteen years before the Declaration of Independence. It was here, in the Long Room on December 4, 1783, that George Washington gathered the officers of the Continental Army to bid them farewell at the close of the Revolutionary War.
Today the building operates as both a restaurant and a museum, with Revolutionary War artifacts displayed alongside a menu of colonial-leaning American fare and full-bodied ales. For a 250th anniversary, there is no more literal place to start: this is a table where American independence was, in a very real sense, toasted into being.
The Ear Inn (1817) — A Tavern on the Old Shoreline
A few blocks from the Hudson in what is now Hudson Square sits a small Federal-style townhouse known as the James Brown House — built for a Revolutionary War veteran and tobacco merchant — that today operates as the Ear Inn. The bar proudly displays "Est. 1817," the year city records first show alcohol served from the ground floor, and it ranks among the oldest drinking establishments in Manhattan. (The ground floor began life as a tobacco shop and settled into its long, uninterrupted run as a saloon later in the 1800s.)
Its origin story rhymes with the city's geography: when the house was built, the shore of the Hudson reached within a few feet of the front door, and the bar served the sailors and dockworkers of the old waterfront before landfill pushed the river a block and a half west. The quirky name came in the 1970s, when owners painted over part of a neon "BAR" sign to read "EAR" and sidestep a landmarks review. Cash-only, unpretentious, and barely changed, it remains a working portrait of old New York.
Delmonico's (1837) — The Birthplace of the American Restaurant
If Fraunces Tavern represents the country's political founding, Delmonico's represents its culinary one. The Delmonico brothers began with a confectionery in the 1820s and, by 1837, had opened what is widely regarded as America's first fine-dining restaurant. The concepts that feel inevitable now — the printed à la carte menu, the wine cellar, the trained waitstaff, the private dining room — largely entered American life through its doors near the corner of Beaver and William Streets.
The kitchen's legacy is just as remarkable. Eggs Benedict, Baked Alaska, Lobster Newburg, and the Delmonico steak all trace their origins here. After decades of wear and a recent restoration, the dark-wood dining rooms once again gleam, and the steak that bears the restaurant's name remains its signature.
McSorley's Old Ale House (1854) — Good Ale and Sawdust Floors
In the East Village, McSorley's Old Ale House lays claim to being the oldest Irish saloon in New York and one of its oldest continuously operating bars, dating its founding to 1854 (some historians argue the building came a few years later, but the city's landmarks commission has largely backed the 1854 date). John McSorley opened it as a workingman's saloon, and remarkably little has changed since: the floors are still strewn with sawdust, the walls are a dense museum of memorabilia where nothing has been removed since 1910, and the menu of choices runs to exactly two — light or dark ale, served two mugs at a time.
The roster of past drinkers reads like a history syllabus, from Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant to Teddy Roosevelt and, much later, John Lennon. For its first 116 years it admitted only men, relenting in 1970 after a landmark discrimination case. To step inside is to step into a near-perfectly preserved 19th-century bar.
Pete's Tavern (1864) — The Gift of the Magi Was Written Here
Just off Gramercy Park, at 18th Street and Irving Place, Pete's Tavern holds a claim few can match: it bills itself as the oldest continuously operating restaurant and bar in New York City, pouring without interruption since 1864 — including straight through Prohibition, when it carried on behind the front of a flower shop. The forty-foot rosewood bar, tin ceiling, and tiled floor are original.
Its literary credentials are equally rich. The writer O. Henry was a regular in the early 1900s and is said to have written "The Gift of the Magi" in one of the booths, which is still marked today. The menu leans Italian-American — chicken piccata, lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs — best paired with the house ale.
Old Homestead Steakhouse (1868) — A Meatpacking Survivor
Few restaurants have stayed put as faithfully as the Old Homestead Steakhouse, which has operated from the same location in the Meatpacking District since 1868. When it opened, the neighborhood around it was a working district of slaughterhouses and stockyards; the cobblestones outside have since become some of the most fashionable in the city, but the steakhouse has simply kept serving its enormous cuts of USDA prime, dry-aged beef. It is a reminder that survival in New York is its own kind of distinction.
Landmark Tavern (1868) — Hell's Kitchen's Own Time Capsule
Closer to home — a short walk west from Ninth Avenue — sits the Landmark Tavern, opened in 1868 by Irish immigrant Patrick Henry Carley at 11th Avenue and 46th Street. When it first poured a pint, there was no 12th Avenue at all: the tavern stood directly on the shore of the Hudson, serving the dockworkers and laborers of the old waterfront. The Carley family lived on the upper floors until Prohibition turned the third story into a speakeasy.
Today it endures as one of Hell's Kitchen's oldest continuously operating establishments, a wood-paneled Irish-American pub with potbelly stoves, fish and chips, corned beef and cabbage, and — according to neighborhood legend — a resident ghost or two. For anyone exploring the Hell's Kitchen dining scene, it is living proof that the neighborhood's table has been set for more than a century and a half.
Keens Steakhouse (1885) — Fifty Thousand Pipes Overhead
A few blocks south, near Herald Square, Keens Steakhouse opened in 1885 as a chophouse and the home of the legendary Pipe Club. Look up and the history is overhead: tens of thousands of clay churchwarden pipes line the ceiling, once smoked and stored by members including Teddy Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and Babe Ruth. The restaurant was men-only until the actress Lily Langtry successfully challenged that policy in 1905.
The draw on the plate is the mutton chop, an enormous cut broiled at a blazing heat and served nowhere else quite like it. Few rooms in the city pack this much Gilded Age atmosphere into a single meal.
Katz's Delicatessen (1888) — A Slice of Immigrant New York
No tour of old New York is complete without Katz's Delicatessen, slinging pastrami on the Lower East Side since 1888, when it first opened as Iceland Brothers. The hand-carved pastrami on rye is the headliner — towering, peppery, and unchanged in spirit across more than 130 years — but the matzo ball soup, hot dogs, and gruff counter service are all part of the experience. More than a deli, it is a monument to the waves of immigrants who shaped the American city and the American appetite.
Two and a Half Centuries, One Table at a Time
What ties these nine places together is not just age, but continuity — the rare achievement of staying open, staying recognizable, and staying good while the city around them was rebuilt a dozen times over. In a year when the country marks 250 years, they offer something no monument can: a chair to sit in, a meal to order, and the quiet sense of taking part in a story that is still being written. Hell's Kitchen's own Landmark Tavern is a reminder that this history is not confined to the Financial District — it runs right through the neighborhood, one table at a time.
Drink the Past, Then Pour the Present
And that story is still being written — a few blocks east of the Landmark Tavern's 1868 bar, Hell's Kitchen keeps adding chapters. Among them is UT47 Kitchen & Bar, where the old neighborhood's next round looks a little different: Korean-Mediterranean plates and a cocktail list built for right now rather than 1888. So drink the history at these nine landmarks — then wander back to 9th Avenue and taste what the neighborhood is mixing next.
UT47 Kitchen & Bar · 683 9th Avenue, Hell's Kitchen · Brunch daily 8AM–4PM · Happy hour 4–8PM · Korean tapas Friday–Saturday until midnight.
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