It always, it seems, comes back to the drink. Just as Chaucer’s storytellers convened at the Tabard Inn, Faust signed his diabolical contract at Auerbach’s Tavern, and Han shot Greedo at the Mos Eisley Cantina, it somehow makes sense that a watering hole stood at the apex of a maturing American democracy.
That watering hole was Rhodes Tavern, which stood for 183 years at F and 15th, behind the Willard and east of the White House and the Treasury. It went up in 1801, a year after the bankers moved in across the street. William Rhodes was a shrewd capitalist; when your customers control the nation’s money, they can’t ever deny you a tip. Rhodes must have had excellent happy hours to boot: his tavern spared the British burning the White House in 1814. All’s beer in love and war.
The tavern’s history reads as curriculum vitae (curriclum vini!) that rivals the taps of Sam Malone and Geoffrey Chaucer. Rhodes’ barroom served as DC’s first town hall, a boardinghouse for members of Congress, home to Riggs and the First Bank of the Metropolis, and even the Washington Stock Exchange. Yes, America, the forerunners of your government and financial system were drinking on the job. Or drinking was the job. Moving on…
Today, Rhodes’ tavern is little more than a pair of plaques and a painting on the delta of F into 15th. The tavern was razed in 1984 despite a DC vote to the contrary, and its commemorative plaque was paid for by pennies collected from DC schoolchildren. The painting that stands across the sidewalk is rudimentary, one whose British torching the neighborhood bears uncanny resemblance to the burning Chateau Mal Voison in “Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown.”
While we all lost a bit of history when the wrecking ball shut Rhodes in 1984, the most unfortunate ultimate victim is, and always will be, Mrs. Rhodes. Turn around from the plaque and cringe: the lady of the house is henceforth penned to posterity as an androgynous, cross-dressing Tony Danza.
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