Fraunces Tavern by Samuel Hollyer

The other Fraunces Tavern, possibly Mason's Arms, as it would have looked in 1777. Illustration engraved by Samuel Hollyer (1826-1919), title Fraunces' Tavern, N.Y.C., 1777. Published in 1905, in the Old New York, Views by S. Hollyer, Volume I.

Hollyer was possibly inspired by an older illustration, the same way he did with the View of the Bowling-Green, originally published in 1830, and the Canal in Heere Gracht, 1659, originally published in Valentine's Manual 1862. Many illustrations he engraved for his three volumes of Old New York were dated before his birth and based on older drawings.

Samuel Fraunces owned a few taverns in New York. At least three of them were known as Fraunces' Tavern: Mason's Arms, Queen's Head and 49 Cortlandt Street. This should not be the Queen’s Head Tavern, the historic tavern owned by Samuel Fraunces at the corner of Dock Street (now Pearl St.) and Broad St. A similar drawing made by Robert Shaw (1859-1912) makes it even clearer, because this is not the kind of landscape that would be expected to be found in a tavern close to the docks and to the old Royal Exchange. In the 18th century, the old ports area of big cities were usually crowded, with almost no trees, as the view of New York in 1798 (on the right) shows.

The Plan of the City of New-York, surveyed in the winter of 1775 by John Montrésor, engraved by Peter Andrews, shows regularly spaced trees on both sides of Broadway, consistent with the trees in this Hollyer's illustration. This Plan does not represent trees on other streets, only in some parks.

Fragment of the view of New York in the late 18th century by Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin (1798), between the former Royal Exchange (Broad Street) and the old Government House (Bowling Green).

It shows Fraunces Tavern with a gambrel roof with its lowest part fronting Pearl Street and supposed windows of the attic fronting Broad Street.