70. Fraunces Tavern
Location: 54 Pearl Street
Built: 1719; reconstruction and renovation, 1904-07
Architect: Unknown; William H. Mersereau (reconstruction)
National Register Number: 08000140
Listed: March 6, 2008
Visited: August 5, 2007 and May 24, 2008
Didn't I cover Fraunces Tavern already? I DID.
Wasn't it already placed on the National Register of Historic Places? WHY YES IT WAS--as one of sixteen buildings within the Fraunces Tavern Block historic district, anyway. You'd think that the National Park Service wouldn't need to re-landmark it as an individual building, but crazily enough, maybe because of the hundredth anniversary of its reconstruction, Fraunces Tavern wound up on this week's NRHP action list with OMG a new number and a new listing date and...
Yes, this is boring. You don't have to care. Whatever your reasons for viewing this blog, or just this blog entry, it's probably not because you're interested in the curatorial minutiae of an arcane bureaucratic construct like the National Register of Historic Places. I don't care that much myself, except when such minutiae informs my blog's content. And since I'm being very bloody-minded about this project, since every individual Manhattan listing on the NRHP gets at least one blog entry and at least one picture--no exceptions, no elisions, no cheating--Fraunces Tavern gets another entry.
I have nothing to add to my previous entry. Didn't bother actually going inside the museum again, or eat at the restaurant, as I am still childishly peeved at my reception there last year. It didn't need my business, though. It received waves of tourists for the Memorial Day weekend, some of whom were all set to walk right through me, a stationary object with a camera, until some firings in their reptilian brain stem fired at the last possible second.
Built: 1719; reconstruction and renovation, 1904-07
Architect: Unknown; William H. Mersereau (reconstruction)
National Register Number: 08000140
Listed: March 6, 2008
Visited: August 5, 2007 and May 24, 2008
Didn't I cover Fraunces Tavern already? I DID.
Wasn't it already placed on the National Register of Historic Places? WHY YES IT WAS--as one of sixteen buildings within the Fraunces Tavern Block historic district, anyway. You'd think that the National Park Service wouldn't need to re-landmark it as an individual building, but crazily enough, maybe because of the hundredth anniversary of its reconstruction, Fraunces Tavern wound up on this week's NRHP action list with OMG a new number and a new listing date and...
Yes, this is boring. You don't have to care. Whatever your reasons for viewing this blog, or just this blog entry, it's probably not because you're interested in the curatorial minutiae of an arcane bureaucratic construct like the National Register of Historic Places. I don't care that much myself, except when such minutiae informs my blog's content. And since I'm being very bloody-minded about this project, since every individual Manhattan listing on the NRHP gets at least one blog entry and at least one picture--no exceptions, no elisions, no cheating--Fraunces Tavern gets another entry.
I have nothing to add to my previous entry. Didn't bother actually going inside the museum again, or eat at the restaurant, as I am still childishly peeved at my reception there last year. It didn't need my business, though. It received waves of tourists for the Memorial Day weekend, some of whom were all set to walk right through me, a stationary object with a camera, until some firings in their reptilian brain stem fired at the last possible second.
Labels: Financial District, Fraunces Tavern
posted by Michael at
10:18 PM
2 Comments:
What a great blog. I'm in FL now but can't wait to get back home and tour around with your blog as guide. Great stuff. Fraunces probably always has been shit but today it's shit that someone fucked up. That's how bad it is.
I did a post of it on my blog that you may enjoy. I saw the bit about cameras in the other Fraunces post. As someone who started their career in museums, I can honestly suggest when they do this again, tell them to go screw themselves in the nicest way and leave. It gives you an amazingly good feeling.
Ha ha, well, my usual reaction to arbitrary bossing-around is instantaneous exit, but I felt I needed to take my lumps and have a complete Fraunces Tavern "experience" for the sake of the blog.
I'm pleased you like the blog. As a guide for walkabout tours in the city, though, it's...I don't know. I worry sometimes that the blog may be too fitful and weird to be very useful. Truth be told, I'm still not even sure what the blog is good for other than a way to channel my quasi-OCD tendencies and write on a regular basis. But it would fill me with satisfaction to know that it gives people an excuse to wonder at the architectural fabric of the city.
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