Fairfax Arms Tavern (Colchester, Virginia)

 tavern, inn, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, 18th century construction

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The Fairfax Arms Tavern, a former ordinary, is a small story-and-a-half clapboard structure on a high foundation. The large dining room with wide, fluted cupboards, once assuaged the hearty appetites of many self-confessed gourmands. In his Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America (1798-1801), John Davis, English tutor of Nathaniel Ellicott's children at Occoquan, wrote of 'Mr. Gordon's tavern:' 'Every luxury that money can purchase is to be obtained at the first summons . . . The richest viands cover the table . . . and ice cools the Madeira that has been thrice across the ocean . . . Apartments are numerous and at the same time spacious . . . carpets of delicate texture cover the floors; and glasses are suspended from the walls in which a Goliah might survey himself.'

Built 1750.

www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=206