The '76 House

I Lived a Few Miles From The '76 House for Years Before I Realized What Was Sitting There

I knew about The '76 House for most of my life. It sits in Tappan, New York, only a few miles from where I live, and I had probably driven past it, heard people mention it and absorbed bits of its history for twenty years before I ever bothered to walk through the door. This is apparently what happens when history is local. Tell me there is a 250-year-old tavern three states away and I will start looking at hotels; put one ten minutes from my house and I will assume I have plenty of time.

I finally went inside about fifteen years ago with my wife and her grandparents, who were Revolutionary War reenactors. Her grandfather loved the place. I had always been interested in history, but until then The '76 House had existed in that strange category of nearby things you know are important without having made any effort to understand why.

The first thing I remember was the smell. Old places have one, especially buildings where wood has been burned in fireplaces for centuries. It is not a bad smell; it is just difficult to reproduce unless your candle company has found a way to manufacture two hundred years of smoke, damp coats, dinners, spilled drinks and human beings generally occupying the same rooms.

Then I saw the beams, the old floors, the fireplaces and the bar, and I wanted to know everything about the place. The '76 House, along with places like McSorley's Ale House, is probably responsible for a good portion of whatever condition eventually caused me to build Still Open America.

What Is The '76 House Actually Like Inside?

The best description I can give is part restaurant and part colonial homestead. I have probably been there ten or fifteen times now, and over the years I have seen more of the building than most people who stop in for dinner. I have gone for live music, sat at the bar, eaten in the dining rooms, gotten a tour through the kitchen from the owner, gone upstairs into the area where he once lived and, for reasons that seemed sensible at the time, participated in a ghost hunt that eventually involved standing inside a closet in the dark.

The front room near the entrance and fireplace is where I feel the age of the place most. The floors, beams, stairs, stonework and fireplaces all look genuinely old, although researching historic buildings has taught me not to certify anything simply because it looks capable of giving me tetanus. There are clearly newer and restored elements too, which is what you should expect from a building that has remained useful instead of being sealed behind velvet ropes.

The present stone house is documented to 1754, when Casparus Mabie built it after acquiring the property the year before. That date is important because The '76 House has accumulated older claims over the years, including dates like 1668 and 1686. The deed and construction evidence do not support them. Apparently a building from 1754 was eventually considered insufficiently ancient, which is a difficult standard to satisfy in New York.

The interesting part is that correcting the date does almost nothing to diminish the place. A stone house built in 1754 is still old enough that every person involved in constructing it has been dead for a very long time, and unlike many historic buildings, this one still has a kitchen, a bar and people arguing over dinner reservations.

What Does the 1772 Date Actually Mean?

This is where the history becomes more useful than the slogans. The building dates to 1754, while the strongest direct evidence I found for tavern use comes from a June 1772 newspaper advertisement identifying Casparus Mabie as a tavern-keeper. Another advertisement in 1773 described the house as having been occupied by people in the public business for years, so there is real documentary evidence that this was an eighteenth-century tavern rather than a modern restaurant occupying an old house and borrowing a convenient date.

What the evidence does not establish is an uninterrupted line of bartenders standing in exactly the same place from 1772 until Tuesday. There are gaps in the operating history, and I do not find those especially troubling. Once you research enough "oldest tavern" claims, everybody appears to have found a category they can win. One place has the oldest continuously operating tavern, another has the oldest building currently containing a tavern, somebody else has the oldest liquor license, and eventually George Washington gets involved. According to American tavern lore, Washington spent a remarkable portion of the Revolutionary War traveling from bar to bar giving future proprietors something to put on plaques.

The '76 House does not need the help. The history that survives scrutiny is already better than most of the claims people try to attach to old places.

Was Major John André Really Tried at The '76 House?

This is one of the more interesting questions because people actually search whether Major John André was tried at The '76 House, and the wording is close enough to the truth that it is easy to see how the story became simplified.

André was imprisoned here. He was not tried here.

He was the British intelligence officer involved in Benedict Arnold's attempt to surrender West Point to the British. After André was captured in 1780, he was confined at The '76 House before the military tribunal that tried and convicted him as a spy. He was later marched under guard from Tappan to the place now known as André Hill, where he was executed.

I knew the André story growing up because I was already interested in history. What I do not remember anyone emphasizing was how close all of it happened to where I lived. School history has a way of placing the Revolution inside a handful of famous paintings and textbook maps, and then one day you realize that a British spy involved in one of the most famous acts of treason in American history was being held a few miles from your house.

I have visited André Hill too. Most locals probably have not, and I suspect plenty of people drive around this area every day without realizing what happened in these places. I did the same thing for years, which is probably part of why Still Open America eventually became important to me. We are very good at turning remarkable places into scenery once we see them often enough.

Did George Washington Actually Come Here?

I have heard Washington stories connected to The '76 House for as long as I can remember. Local lore and plaques have long associated him with the area, and personally I find it hard to imagine that Washington was overseeing events in Tappan while André was imprisoned here and somehow never entered the building.

Unfortunately, "I find it hard to imagine" is not an archival citation.

I have not found documentation strong enough to make a specific Washington visit part of the verified record, so I leave it where it belongs: plausible, widely repeated and not yet proven to my satisfaction. If somebody eventually finds a diary entry, military document, letter or tavern bill that settles it, I will happily change the label.

The nice thing is that The '76 House does not really require Washington. A real British intelligence officer connected to Benedict Arnold was actually imprisoned here. That is already a fairly strong evening.

The Bar Is Tiny, Which I Like

For a reasonably large restaurant, the actual bar is surprisingly small. There is room for maybe four or five people to sit at it, and I have gone there just for drinks and live music without having dinner.

The place still feels more like a historic restaurant than a neighborhood bar, but when a band is playing, the little bar becomes one of my favorite spots in the building. It feels slightly absurd to be drinking a beer while live music plays in a house built before the French and Indian War had completely worked itself out, but that is the kind of absurdity I enjoy.

They also serve a house beer called Tavern Keeper's Ale, which is supposedly based on a recipe connected to George Washington. I apply the same caution to the beer recipe that I apply to the Washington stories generally, but I can confirm that the beer exists and that I have drunk it.

More importantly, it is served through an old-fashioned hand-pump rather than a normal CO2 tap. One night the bartender let me pump my own beer, which I enjoyed to an extent that was probably disproportionate to the achievement. Still, there are worse ways to spend an evening than standing in a 1754 stone building manually pulling a beer allegedly based on George Washington's favorite ale while knowing a British spy once sat imprisoned somewhere nearby.

Most bars have televisions. This one does not.

The Food Is Better Than the History Probably Requires

The history can make it easy to forget that The '76 House is still a working restaurant, and I would go there even if Major André had spent 1780 somewhere else. I have eaten there for family dinners, dates, holidays and casual meals, and I usually gravitate toward the pork chops.

The prices are on the higher side, although at this point saying a restaurant is expensive is becoming approximately as informative as saying New Orleans is humid. What matters more is that the food is actually good, which is something I think outsiders miss when they treat the building mainly as a historic attraction.

I have never reached the point where eating there feels so ordinary that I forget where I am. Somewhere during dinner I will look around at the old room and remember that André was confined in the building while the Revolution was still an unresolved problem. Somebody at the next table may simply be waiting for another glass of wine, while I am thinking about eighteenth-century espionage. My wife has had many years to adjust to this.

Robert Norden Told Me a Ghost Story

The '76 House has a haunted reputation, and one of the better stories I heard came directly from owner Robert Norden.

We were sitting at a high-top table one night while the band was taking a break. Robert is funny and easygoing, and when he told me what happened, it did not feel like somebody switching into haunted-restaurant sales mode. The place is already successful. He does not need to manufacture a ghost every time somebody orders dessert.

Robert bought The '76 House in 1980 and lived on the property for a period afterward. He told me his golden retriever used to growl at a particular door at night for no apparent reason. Dogs are useful witnesses in paranormal stories because they have no financial interest in whether the restaurant sells ghost tours, although they are frustratingly poor under cross-examination.

The story I remember best involved a customer near the fireplace beside the bar. Robert said that back in the 1980s they commonly poured complimentary sambuca after dinner. One night, before closing, he saw a man sitting at the table near the fireplace, told him he would be right with him and turned away to pour the sambuca. When he turned back, the man was gone.

The layout is what made the story interesting to Robert. According to him, the man could not have left that area without walking past him.

I believed Robert was sincerely telling me what he remembered happening. That does not mean I can establish that the customer was dead, alive or anything in between. What stuck with me was the sambuca detail. He could easily have said he turned around to pour a drink, but he specifically remembered the complimentary after-dinner sambuca and placed the story in a very particular period of the restaurant's history. It is the kind of unnecessary detail people often include when they are remembering something rather than polishing it.

Maybe ghosts also liked sambuca in the 1980s. Everybody else did.

Then the Bartender Showed Me a Photograph

At some point Robert asked the bartender on duty that night to show me a photograph on her phone. She scrolled through several images until she found the one he wanted me to see.

The photograph had been taken during a bridal shower or similar event. A couple was posing in the image, and moving past them was what looked to me like an older woman wearing a floral-patterned dress in a historical style. She appeared translucent.

My immediate reaction was less scientific than I would prefer to admit.

It was basically, "Holy shit."

I understand the ordinary explanations for strange photographs. Motion blur is real. Reflections happen. Digital cameras can create very convincing nonsense, and without the original file and metadata I cannot properly analyze what caused an anomaly in an image.

I can also tell you what I thought when I looked at it. If motion blur created the figure, it did an impressive job of producing what looked like a woman dressed in clothing appropriate to another period. All this was long before AI.

I think the photograph was legitimate in the sense that I do not believe somebody deliberately staged or fabricated what I saw. That is not the same as saying I know it was a ghost, and I am comfortable leaving the difference intact.

My Own Ghost Hunt Solved Nothing and Was Still Enough

Eventually I participated in a ghost hunt at The '76 House with my father-in-law. This gave me access to rooms I had never normally been in, which sounded exciting until the evening progressed to the point where I voluntarily entered a closet near the larger dining room with an EVP recorder.

I heard a whisper.

I could not understand what it said, but I heard something that sounded like a human whisper, and the recorder picked up a whisper as well.

There are plenty of possible explanations. The building is old. Other people were present. Sound travels strangely through historic structures. Equipment can capture noises you do not notice in the moment, and once people enter a building specifically expecting ghosts, the human brain becomes extremely willing to assist.

I did not come away with proof of an afterlife, but I did come away with a firm policy against standing inside dark closets inviting unseen occupants to communicate with me. That policy remains in effect until further notice.

The Oddest Thing About The '76 House Is How Normal It Can Become

I think locals probably take The '76 House for granted, and I include myself in that criticism.

People go there for dinner. Bands play. Somebody has a beer at the small bar. Families celebrate things. The kitchen gets busy. Somebody complains about a reservation. Meanwhile all of this is happening inside one of the relatively few surviving buildings where you can physically stand within a documented part of the American Revolution.

I do not think The '76 House suffers from being treated too much like a historic attraction. If anything, it is the opposite. The history can become background scenery because the place still works as a restaurant.

That is actually part of what fascinates me about it.

History usually becomes more respectable after we remove all signs of ordinary life. We put objects behind glass, lower our voices and add little signs telling people not to touch anything. The '76 House is still serving pork chops and hosting live music and you know what....I prefer that.

Researching It Did Not Ruin Anything

When I researched The '76 House for Still Open America, I corrected several things I had heard over the years. The building dates to 1754 rather than 1668 or 1686. Direct tavern evidence appears by 1772, but the available record does not establish a perfectly uninterrupted line of restaurant operations ever since. André was confined here before his trial, not tried inside the tavern. The Orangetown Resolutions, another story sometimes attached to The '76 House, were actually signed at the house of Casparus Mabie's brother Yoast.

None of those corrections bothered me because a fair portion of the history survives intact, and what survives is remarkable.

A stone house built in 1754 still stands a few miles from my home. It was operating as a tavern before the Revolution. John André was imprisoned inside it before being executed as a British spy. I can still sit at the small bar, eat dinner in the old rooms, listen to a live band and talk to the owner about a man who may or may not have disappeared beside the fireplace sometime during the Reagan administration.

I do not need the building to be from 1686.

I do not need George Washington to have slept upstairs.

There is enough.

The '76 House is one of the places that made me care about historic establishments in the first place. Once I started paying attention to places like this and McSorley's, I also started noticing how many others were gone. Buildings survive two hundred years and then somebody decides the land would be more productive with condominiums on it. Eventually there is a photograph in a local-history book showing what used to stand there, and everybody agrees it was a shame.

That bothers me more as I get older.

Maybe that is the simplest explanation for why Still Open America exists. The '76 House taught me that history is not always something you need to travel across the country to find, and it is not always sitting behind museum glass. Sometimes it is a few miles from your house, serving good pork chops, pouring beer and hosting a band on a Friday night.

For a long time I knew it was there.

Eventually I went inside.