I am glad it is gone at last! Old Manhattan was as strictly run as disciplinary measures and rules could contrive and guarantee.

The old blue laws were stringently enforced, and the penalty for infringement was usually a sharp one.

In the unpublished record of the city clerk we find, next to the item that records Elbert Harring's application for a land-grant, a note to the effect that a "Publick Whipper" had been appointed on the same day, at five pounds quarterly.
Public notices of that time, printed in the current press, remind the reader of some of these aforementioned rules and regulations.

We read that "Tapsters are forbid to sell to the Indians," and that "unseasonable night tippling" is also tabooed; likewise drinking after nine in the evening when curfew rings, or "on a Sunday before three o'clock, when divine service shall be over." I wonder whether little old "Washington Hall" was built too late to come under these regulations?
It was a roadhouse of some repute in 1820, and a famous meeting place for celebrities in the sporting world.

It was, too, a tavern and coffee house for travellers (its punch was famous!) and the stagecoaches stopped there to change horses.