Bell in Hand • 1795

America's oldest continuously operating tavern pours its first ale in 1795, when Jimmy Wilson, Boston's beloved town crier for fifty years, retires from announcing the Boston Tea Party and the birth of a nation to open a pub named for the bell he rang through city streets. Daniel Webster and Paul Revere gathered here to trade gossip and discuss the day's news, and today the bar that once served only ale still draws crowds to its weathered bar top, older than the 1844 building itself.