A History of the Tavern

The Bullard Tavern at Old Sturbridge Village was built in 1946-47. Its primary designer was the architect John Radford Abbott, just returned from military service. Before the War he had worked with Village founder A.B. Wells on preliminary plans for the structure. By 1946 A.B. had retired to California, but Abbott and the Village's first Director, Ruth Wells, “decided to build the Tavern as A.B. had envisioned it.” The building was completed on the Village's second opening day, May 10th, 1947. It was originally intended to provide visitor amenities and exhibit space; in fact, as Ruth Wells noted, “the bulk of the lighting collection had been installed in rustic shelf cases” on the top floor of the building. Soon, however, it became the Village's primary location for food services.

From the beginning, the Tavern was planned as a service building, not a historical reproduction. Seen from the Common, the building has an early nineteenth-century silhouette, but it was never intended to resemble a historic structure in detail. A.B. Wells had insisted on a thrifty, utilitarian design, using readily available materials; “he was an individualist and that was that,” Ruth remembered. However, the Tavern does have features of historical and architectural interest.¹

The Tap Room. A substantial part of the paneling and other woodwork in the Tavern's Tap Room was salvaged by the Village from a dilapidated 18th-century house in Brooklyn, Connecticut. Ruth Wells later recalled that the purchase of this house for salvage was her first acquisition of a historic structure for the museum. (The incorporation of original historic fabric into a museum service building was common practice in the 1940s, although it would not be undertaken now.)²

The Great Room. The Tavern's most dramatic feature is the Great Room, with its distinctive arched timbers in the ceiling. It was originally constructed as part of the Wells family's “Mashapaug camp,” their rural retreat in Union, Connecticut. In 1946 the Great Room, according to A.B. Wells' intentions, was moved and added to the partially constructed Tavern.

To create the Mashapaug camp, A.B. Wells had taken a mid-nineteenth century farmhouse and transformed it into his vision of the colonial style; he added the Great Room, which he designed himself. Seeking a striking effect rather than strict historical accuracy, he created the Great Room's huge hearth with its unusual and idiosyncratic window at one end.

The Great Room's ceiling timbers date back to 1818 and were taken from a covered bridge, about to be demolished for a new reservoir, which spanned the Sacandaga river in the community of Fish House, N.Y.  They are sections of the bridge's curved supporting members, which were originally 125 feet long. Their arched construction represents an American bridge-building technique of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It pre-dates the more modern Ithiel Town “Lattice Truss” design which can be seen in the Village's Dummerston Covered Bridge.³

After the Great Room had been transferred to the rear of the Tavern, the rest of the Mashapaug camp was eventually moved to the Village as well. At first it was used as a demonstration and exhibit building, and then was moved to a location behind the scenes; it now serves as offices for costumed interpretation in the Department of Education and Public Programs.

Taverns in New England.

Taverns were almost as common as meetinghouses in early New England, and there were taverns in virtually every town. Most of them sat at the center of their communities in center villages or mill villages, although others could be found outside villages along well-traveled roads. Most towns had at least two taverns; in large communities there were often two or even three competing establishments in the same village.⁴

Many taverns were stagecoach stops - that is, the proprietor was an agent for the stage line and kept fresh “stages” of horses in his stables, often along with a spare coach or two. Travelers would be given the stage schedule at the tavern and would probably purchase their passage there. For travelers, a tavern was a place to find a meal and a bed en route, to fodder their horses if they were journeying on their own, and to rest from an arduous and uncomfortable day on the road. ⁵

For local people, a tavern was a place to meet, talk, drink, and hear the latest news. Innholders provided fresh newspapers and word-of-mouth from the city as well as a forum for local gossip. They sometimes provided places for selectmen's meetings, justice of the peace sessions, and school committee meetings, and were usually the locations for balls, dances and sleighing parties. Taverns were also the usual stopping points for itinerant performers, artists, lecturers, and instructors. Here they boarded, advertised their services, and often rented a room as a temporary studio or office.

Taverns, Public Houses, Inns and Hotels.

Establishments for the public provision of food, drink and lodging were known in law as “licensed houses.” They went by a variety of names in both England and America. “Inn” and “public house” (later “pub”) were terms frequently used in England. They could be found in America as well, although a little less commonly. By the 1830s the appellation “hotel” was gaining popularity in New England, probably because it conveyed a more genteel image of abundant food and gracious lodging. But the most widely used term of all in New England was “tavern,” which had come into the English language in the 13th century. In old England the word usually meant an establishment solely for drinking; but in New England, Webster's Dictionary for 1831 informs us, “tavern is synonymous with inn or hotel, and denotes a house for the entertainment of travelers as well as for the sale of liquours.” (Of 84 establishments which could be located on Worcester County, Massachusetts maps for 1831: 2 were “houses of entertainment,” 6 were “public houses,” 17 were “inns,” 22 were “hotels,” and 37 were “taverns.”)  ⁶

Tavern Signs.

At least up to the Civil War, tavern signs were a distinctive feature of the New England rural landscape. Since 1647 they had been required by law, when Massachusetts decreed that every establishment “shall have some inoffensive sign, obvious, for the direction of strangers” posted within three months of the tavern's licensing. Tavern signs stood near the building's entrance or directly across the road from it, and served to attract the attention of weary travelers and to let them know where beds, food, drink, and animal fodder could be obtained. Landscape paintings and drawings and early photographs tell us that early and mid-nineteenth-century signs were of imposing height, so that they could be seen easily from a distance, or read from horseback or the driver's seat of a stage coach.⁷

English taverns customarily had fanciful or figurative names such as “The Red Lion” or the “Green Dragon,” which were illustrated on their signs. This practice originated in a time when most men and women could not read, and travelers needed pictorial identification to find their way. Some early American taverns continued this traditional practice, but because literacy was widespread in New England from early settlement, it was not considered necessary here. Taverns were instead usually identified by the innkeeper's name painted on his sign. By the late 18th century this had become a legal requirement. A tavernkeeper who did not prominently display his name would be fined the substantial sum of $20.⁸

The Bullard Tavern's Name

Although the Tavern building does not have an early nineteenth-century history of its own, the Village decided in the early 1980s that this important structure needed to be better integrated into the museum landscape. To fit into the historical Village, the Tavern needed a sign, a name, and a historical tavernkeeper. The Village chose Cromwell Bullard, an early nineteenth-century “innholder” closely associated with Sturbridge and the Publick House, and decided to give the Tavern his name and to put it on the large, brightly painted reproduction tavern sign that identifies the building.

The Bullard Tavern Sign

The Bullard Tavern's sign is based on a handsome example from the Village's extensive collection. On a blue background representing the sky, it depicts the smiling face of the sun rising between two green hills. The proprietor's name is painted in gold on the blue sky in an arch that follows the curve of the sun; above it are three stars. The original, whose lettering and design probably place it after 1830, bears the name of G.W. Mowry and his “Hotel.” The Tavern's version is a close reproduction, differing only in the names of the proprietor and his establishment. Signs in the Village collection identify hotels, inns, and taverns interchangeably. Surviving nineteenth-century signs follow the practice of the period in interchangeably identifying hotels, inns, and taverns. Cromwell Bullard's own establishment in Sturbridge Center (today's Publick House) was variously called an inn, a hotel and a tavern in documents from the 1830s.⁹

With about equal frequency, tavern signs were either attached to a corner of the building itself, or displayed on posts in front of the structure - although one landscape painting actually shows a tavern sign hanging from a large tree across the road! The Bullard Tavern sign at the Village is positioned near the formal “front door” of the structure. Following a practice frequently seen in landscape paintings and drawings of the 1830s, it is suspended between two tall hewn posts. ¹⁰

With its sign linking it to Cromwell Bullard, its period silhouette, its portions of early nineteenth-century historic fabric, and its connections to the museum's founders and early years, the Tavern is a significant and unmistakable part of the Old Sturbridge Village landscape.