A Tavern Without a Bar
When dealing with an old house, there are many mysteries to unravel as you spend your time living in or at least loving the house. Who lived there in the past? What changes did they make? This post is going to focus on something particular to the Crocker Tavern House, but hopefully there are things here that all old house lovers can relate to.
When you first walk into the house knowing that it was a tavern in the 1700’s and 1800’s, the first thing you might ask is “where’s the bar?” Perhaps this is something you find yourself asking all the time?
Unfortunately, The Crocker Tavern’s bar was torn out at some point. We are not certain where it was, but have developed a theory from some some scraps of information and a plethora of assumptions.
First, one can assume the bar was on the ground floor. We can also assume that they wouldn’t put it in the kitchen. Next we will assume the bar looked like a typical colonial era bar- a shelf and counter that can be locked up behind a built-in cage. Check out some examples on Pinterest:
Then we will also assume that the bar was installed at the time of initial construction or soon afterward, so we expect it was in one of the original rooms of the house before any additions. Let’s take a look at a layout drawing done in the early 1900’s, but cropped to just show the original ground floor rooms.
If we eliminate the kitchen, that leaves us with the Sitting Room, Dining Room, and Parlor. While looking at these three rooms in this drawing, we see the Parlor has a built-in bookcase next to the fireplace. One possibility is that this bookcase may have been part of the original bar. This bookcase is no longer there, so that only gives us a few more places to look.
When reconstructing the past in an old house, one will often come to this next step- looking for markings or mount holes on the floors, walls, and ceilings. The house had new flooring put in during the 80’s or sometime afterwards, so we won’t find anything there. Additionally there is nothing out of the ordinary on the ceiling. However, further inspection of the wall behind the bookcase has a few clues.
This whole room is covered in wood paneling. It was often the case that the parlor was the room with the most adornment to impress visitors. In the area where the bookcase was, we do see a baseboard that may or may not be original to the house, but we also see that the wainscoting doesn’t continue through the area that would have been the back of the bookcase. Finally, we see some additional floorboards added to the area where the bookcase would have been. Seeing the lack of paneling implies that the bookcase was an original part of the room. Either that or someone tore out paneling to install it, which seems less likely considering how well preserved the rest of the house is.
That leaves us with our best guess. Eventually this room will get the wallpaper and some layers of paint removed. When that happens, maybe we will uncover more clues and do another round of guesswork.