City Tavern

The Constitution was signed on a Monday. That much everyone knows. What the official record tends to skip is what happened right afterward. Forty-two men – some of them barely on speaking terms, three of them having refused to sign at all – stepped out of the Pennsylvania State House into the thin September air. Their wigs were damp from the long, sticky summer. Instead of heading back to their lodgings at the Indian Queen or Mrs. Marshall’s boarding house, they turned south on Chestnut, walked a couple of blocks, and went to City Tavern. At the tavern, on the corner of Second and Walnut, they sat down and ate together.