Historic Williamsburg

16. Market Square Tavern

Williamsburg, VA

Book Now

Market Square Tavern is one of the 88 original buildings that were still standing in Williamsburg when the restoration process began. The property went through multiple owners and uses until the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation acquired it in 1929. It has been restored to show how it would have looked around 1771, during its early years as a tavern. Dr. John Dixon was the first owner. He leased the property from the City of Williamsburg on July 3, 1749. Somewhere during that time period a small structure, only 31 feet deep by 21 feet long, was constructed on the lot. It most likely had two rooms on the ground floor and a three-room, half-story second floor. The house and property passed through a number of hands before its ownership transferred to Robert Lyon, a merchant and barber, in 1760. Lyon built a stable, smokehouse and kitchen, and added two rooms to the west side of the building. He also put in a covered walkway that connected the house to a nearby store. He sold the building to a tailor named Thomas Craig in 1761. Craig ran a boarding house for the first few years, but acquired a public house license and began operating a tavern on the premises around 1767. Craig sold his business to Gabriel Maupin in 1771. Maupin enlarged the building and improved the facilities, and advertised his establishment in the Virginia Gazette as having 'the best Entertainment and Accommodations.' The tavern survived the American Revolution as well as the economic depression that followed. Maupin sold the property to Peter Robert Deneufville during the first decade of the nineteenth century, and it remained in Deneufville's family until 1886. James E. Banks bought the run-down tavern in 1891 and converted it into what became the Raleigh Hotel, which required many significant structural changes to the interior and exterior of the building. Unfortunately, these changes destroyed any evidence of how the second floor of the tavern might have looked when it was first constructed. Banks passed away in 1916, but his heirs continued running the hotel until the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation took possession. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation restored the Market Square Tavern between 1931 and 1932. The Williamsburg Inn now administers the facility as a guest house.