Rising Sun Tavern

The Rising Sun Tavern is a restored colonial tavern on Caroline Street, built in the 1760s and operated as a public house from approximately 1792 to around 1820. It is now a museum run by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, offering costumed guided tours that do a good job of conveying what a busy 18th-century tavern actually smelled, sounded, and functioned like.

The building itself is one of the best-preserved examples of colonial tavern architecture in Virginia, with its original wide-plank floors, massive fireplace, and bar area intact. The guides play the role of tavern wenches and tell the story of the trade — the gossip, the politics, the card games, the traveling merchants and soldiers who passed through — with enough humor to keep it from feeling like a dry history lesson. It is one of three colonial house museums on the same historic stretch of Caroline Street; the others are the Hugh Mercer Apothecary and the James Monroe Museum.

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A story
The building was constructed around 1760 by Charles Washington, George's youngest brother, as his private home — it did not become a tavern until the 1790s. The "Rising Sun" name itself is a later invention; the place was known in its tavern days simply as Gordon's Tavern. The current presentation as a colonial tavern dates from the 1930s restoration.