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North Royal Street

The Gadsby’s Tavern complex consists of two adjoining buildings: a two-story brick tavern raised on the site by 1785, and a three-story brick hotel addition built by tavern keeper John Wise Person John Wise b. 1762 · d. 1815 Alexandria tavern keeper and landowner who built the 1792 City Tavern addition on North Royal Street. Wise leased the property to John Gadsby in 1796 and continued to operate other … in 1792 ^[1] Source 1 Miller, Artisans and Merchants, 1991 Book . Together they formed the largest and most ambitious hostelry between Baltimore and Richmond. In 1796 Wise leased the combined property to the English-born innkeeper John Gadsby Person John Gadsby b. 1766 · d. 1844 English-born innkeeper who operated the City Tavern and City Hotel in Alexandria from 1796 to 1808 and later ran the National Hotel in Washington. His Alexandria establishment … , who gave the establishment its enduring name.

Under Gadsby’s management the tavern became the social center of federal-era Alexandria. George Washington danced his final Birthnight Ball there on February 11, 1799, ten months before his death at 3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway Place 3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway Five-farm plantation on the Potomac owned by George Washington from 1761 until his death in 1799; home to Washington, his family, and more than three hundred enslaved people. … ^[2] Source 2 Powell, History of Old Alexandria, 1928 Book . Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the Marquis de Lafayette, and countless lesser travelers passed through the taproom and ballroom during the early years of the republic.

Gadsby departed for Baltimore and Washington in 1808. The property continued as a hotel under a succession of operators and was formally renamed the City Hotel in the early nineteenth century ^[3] Source 3 HABS Alexandria survey Government record . The American Legion purchased the buildings in 1929 and sold them to the City of Alexandria in 1972; the complex is now operated as a museum by the city’s Office of Historic Alexandria. The original pine floors in the second-floor ballroom remain substantially intact.