Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs

Boston's taverns were not merely places to drink. They were the living rooms of the American revolution, where Samuel Adams plotted with fellow Sons of Liberty, where Paul Revere gathered intelligence, where the tea was thrown and the cause of independence was forged over pints of ale. Samuel Adams Drake's 1886 history documents these sacred spaces with the reverence they deserve: Cole's Inn where colonial merchants debated the Stamp Act, the Green Dragon where the mechanics who would become Boston's revolutionary cadre held their meetings, the Province House where governors once held court. The book lists taverns and their owners across the colonial and early republic periods, includes a 1722 Boston map folded within its pages, and reproduces the line drawings and photographs that render this vanished world tangible. Drake writes with the sadness of a man watching the old order pass, noting how the modern age has stripped the tavern of its civic purpose. For anyone who wants to stand in the exact rooms where American liberty was literally poured, this book is an act of historical resurrection.