A Fire in the Hearth, a Figure in the Chair
Step into the White Horse Tavern on a cold night and the first thing you notice is the low ceiling. The beams are dark, the floors lean a little, and the big fireplace throws more shadow than light into the corners. It feels like a room that has been doing exactly this, keeping people warm and fed and talking, for a very long time.
It has. The building at the corner of Marlborough and Farewell Streets is one of the oldest in Newport, and it has been a tavern for most of its life. That is a long time to collect stories, and the White Horse has collected more than most.
Some of them are written down in deeds and town records. Others are told by the people who work here, quietly, usually after closing. Those are the ones about the man by the fireplace.
From Brinley's House to Mayes's Tavern
A Seventeenth-Century Beginning
The story starts in 1652, when Francis Brinley built the original building on this lot, on land that came from his brother-in-law, William Coddington, one of Newport's founders.
In 1673 Brinley sold the property to William Mayes, and Mayes enlarged the building and turned it into a tavern. He received a tavern license in 1687, and his son, William Mayes Jr., kept the business going into the early 1700s.
More Than a Bar
In colonial Newport a tavern was not just a place to drink. The White Horse served as a meeting place for the Rhode Island General Assembly, and the building also did duty as a courthouse and as city hall. Laws were argued over its tables. Cases were heard. Deals were sealed with a drink.
That mix of business and pleasure is part of what makes the place feel crowded even when it is empty. Generations of Newporters came through the door to settle something important.
Decline and Restoration
Like many old buildings, the White Horse had a rough middle age. For years it served as a boarding house, rooms rented out by the night or the week to whoever needed one, and the building slowly wore down.
In 1952 the Van Bueren family paid for a restoration through the Preservation Society of Newport County, bringing the old tavern back to something close to its colonial appearance. It was later sold and reopened as a private tavern and restaurant, and it remains a popular place to eat and drink today.
So the room you sit in is not a museum exhibit. It is still doing its original job, which may be exactly why, as the stories go, some of its old regulars feel so at home.
The Ghost Stories of the White Horse
The Man by the Fireplace
The best-known story at the White Horse belongs to a traveler. According to a tale retold by local media, two drifters showed up at the tavern in the 1720s looking for a room for the night. The next morning, one of them was found dead by the fireplace. The other had vanished.
Nobody knows who the dead man was, and the story does not say what happened to his companion. But guests and staff have reported seeing a man near that same fireplace ever since. Some describe him as an elderly man in colonial clothing, sitting quietly as if waiting for a drink that never comes. When people look again, the chair is empty.
The Woman Above the Table
Discover Newport, the city's tourism bureau, notes that the White Horse is often called the oldest, and supposedly most haunted, tavern in America, and that several ghosts are said to occupy it. Among them is a woman reportedly seen floating above one of the dining tables, and a seaman said to have died on the property.
Footsteps Upstairs
Visitors have also reported footsteps "all over the place" when the upper rooms are empty, and a colonial figure in the upstairs restroom. These accounts are part of the tavern's local lore rather than anything the business promotes. When asked about the hauntings by a local news outlet, the tavern declined to comment and said it focuses on the true history of the building.
That restraint is fitting. The White Horse does not need ghosts to be remarkable. But the stories persist anyway, passed from guest to guest and guide to guide, the way they have for generations.
Last Call
The White Horse Tavern has outlived the colony that licensed it, the courts that met inside it, and the boarding-house years that nearly wore it out. It is still open, still pouring, still warm on a winter night.
If you sit near the fireplace, take a moment before you leave. Look at the empty chair across the room. According to the people who work here, it is not always empty.
