Old Taverns of New York

by W. Harrison Bayles

John Batten, the garrulous friend of “Felix Oldboy,” who considered him a valuable repository of reminiscences, was a veteran soldier who had come out with the British troops in the early part of the Revolutionary War. Better educated than the most of his companions in arms, he is said to have taught school in the old Dutch Church while the British occupied New York. He used sometimes to say in a pleasant, joking way: “I fought hard for this country,” and after enjoying the effect produced on his young auditors, who were ready to admire his patriotic devotion, would slowly add, after looking around and winking at some elderly person who knew his history, “but we didn’t get it.”

On one occasion Batten was present at a grand Fourth of July dinner and was taken to be a Revolutionary soldier, as of course, he verily was. The company drank his health in patriotic toasts and at last called upon him to respond. This he did and spoke so touchingly of the events of the war that his audience was very much affected, especially the feminine part of it. Then he said: “Yes, I did fight all through the old Revolution. I fought as bravely as the others. I liked this country and decided to stay here; so, when my regiment was preparing to embark, I slipped over to Long Island and stayed there until they had sailed for England.” The astonished company realized that they had been cheering a British soldier and that Johnny Batten was not the sort of veteran they were accustomed to admire. Batten thought it a good joke.

The Blue Bell

After the war Batten opened a tavern at Jamaica, Long Island, and a few years after he came to New York City, where, in 1786, we find him the landlord of the Blue Bell in Slote Lane. After several changes he settled down at No. 37 Nassau Street, which he kept as a first-class tavern for several years. After this he became a merchant and opened a hosiery store on the west side of Broadway, between Dey and Cortlandt Streets. He was here in 1817. Batten lived to be a very old man. He was one of those they called “Battery Walkers” or “Peep o’ Day Boys,” who used to go down to the Battery at daybreak and walk about until breakfast time.

The City Hotel

When, in 1816, Gibson became landlord of the Merchants’ Hotel in Wall Street, he was succeeded in the City Hotel by Chester Jennings, who was the landlord of the house for more than twenty years. Under his management it acquired a high reputation, and in 1836 he retired with a competency. The very next year his fortune, which had been invested in United States Bank and other stocks, was swept away by the great revulsion of 1837. Samuel G. Mather was landlord of the City Hotel in 1838, but John Jacob Astor, the owner of the house, induced Jennings to again undertake its management with Willard, his former assistant, and together they assumed control of it and succeeded so well that in the course of a few years Jennings had placed himself in a position to retire again in comfort.

During nearly the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century the City Hotel was not only the most celebrated house of entertainment in the city, but travellers declared that it had no equal in the United States. On its register were found the names of the most distinguished men of the nation as well as prominent citizens from every section of the land. It was a plain structure of four stories with no architectural pretensions, and the interior fittings and the furniture were also plain, but good and durable. The dining room was spacious, light, well ventilated, neat and scrupulously clean. The service was good and the table furnished with an abundant supply, selected with the greatest care. Chester Jennings was the unseen partner who provided supplies and superintended the details of the running of the house in all departments except the office. Willard’s duties were in the office, where he was clerk, book-keeper, cashier, bar-keeper and anything necessary. He attended closely to business and was a well known man, though never seen outside of the hotel. Other hotels were built with greater pretensions but the old City Hotel maintained its prestige through all. It had become a general rendezvous for merchants and friends on their return from business to their homes, and there was about it a social atmosphere which could not be transferred. The National Hotel, on the corner of Broadway and Cedar Street, nearly opposite the City Hotel, erected by Joseph Delacroix of Vauxhall Garden, was opened for business in March, 1826, and the Adelphi Hotel, a building six stories high, on the corner of Broadway and Beaver Street, was erected in 1827.

Club at the City Hotel

In the palmy days of the City Hotel there were a number of men who made it their home, or dining place, and, brought together by similarity of tastes or for social enjoyment, had formed a coterie or sort of club. They were all men of some leisure who could afford to sit long after dinner and sip their wine and crack their jokes and discuss the gossip of the town. “This band of jolly good fellows, who lingered day after day for long years over their wine and nuts, were well known characters in the city and were especially familiar to such as visited the City Hotel, where they lived and died.”[6] Colonel Nick Saltus, a retired merchant of wealth and a confirmed old bachelor, was the acknowledged chairman and spokesman of this peculiar group.

In those days the captains of the packet-ships which sailed twice each month for European ports, were men of much importance. Many of them made the City Hotel their headquarters when in port and became boon-companions of the select coterie of the house, who often, when an arrival was announced at Sandy Hook, would proceed to the Battery to meet their friend who had been commissioned to procure some new gastronomical luxury for the company.