It was the dive bar of the Revolution, a waterfront watering hole with an alluringly mournful name. But A Man Full of Trouble Tavern, Philadelphia’s only surviving pre-Revolutionary drinking spot, has been shuttered to the public for decades.
That hasn’t stopped generations of Philadelphians from wandering past the charming, if battered, brick building sitting in the shadows of the Society Hill Towers, and imagining bygone boozers whispering of sedition over the beers. One of the dreamers is Dan Wheeler, an Old City lawyer and real estate investor, who has decided to reopen the place.
Two years ago, Wheeler saw A Man Full of Trouble on a real estate listing and jumped at the chance to own a piece of history.
“I really couldn’t believe my eyes,” Wheeler said, of his $875,000 purchase of the bar and adjoining Colonial house “I’ve been waiting for this for 30 years.”
His plan is to bring life back to the old bar.
In June, Wheeler teamed up with Succession Fermentory, a Chester County brewery, for a Philly Beer Week pop-up at A Man Full of Trouble. It was the first time suds had been served at the tavern, which opened in 1759, in well more than a century.
“I want people to come back in here and breathe life back into this building that has been sitting fallow,” Wheeler said of the historic bar, once a museum and most recently owned by the University of Pennsylvania.
Wheeler, who is 59 and worked as an economic development official for Gov. Ed Rendell, plans to pair up with a microbrewery or distillery, which can sell its stuff in a barroom where regulars once tipped tankards. In the upstairs rooms, where sotted sailors were said to sleep five a bed, Wheeler plans to reopen a museum. One that could again honor the story of a colorful tavern with a colorful name — its original sign famously depicted the image of a man with a woman on his back —and learn about the ordinary Philadelphians who drank there.
“It’s the uniqueness of it,” he said. “You can’t even imagine all the things that went on here.”
It’s a small miracle A Man Full of Trouble even still exists. Colonial Philly burst with bars. There were 101 taverns in the budding port town, or about 1 bar for every 160 citizens, historians say. But only A Man Full of Trouble survives.
Built at 127 Spruce St., it was back then wedged between a brook and stinking Dock Creek. The name was lifted from a Bible passage: “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of troubles.” Like other modest tippling houses, it was licensed for only beer and cider. While Jefferson and Franklin and their crowd enjoyed their punch at the cozy confines of City Tavern — demolished in 1854, with its current incarnation built in 1976 — it was working waterfront stiffs who bellied up to the bar at A Man Full of Trouble. Dockhands and shipwrights. Sailors stumbling off ships.
“Not the type of place you’d bring your girlfriend for a cocktail,” said Bob Skiba, a tour guide and historian, with a chuckle. “It was more of a divey spot.”
As was the way, a bartender served drinks from behind a small caged bar, which could be locked up at closing. Food was cooked above a fireplace in the dirt-floor basement. The tavern’s most well-known owner was a woman named Martha Smallwood, who tried to class the joint up from 1796 until her death in 1826. For a time, it became a hotel. Then, a wholesale chicken market.
In the 1960s, Virginia Knauer—a onetime City Councilwoman and director of the Federal Office of Consumer Affairs in Washington — and her husband saved the crumbling tavern from the wrecking ball. The couple painstakingly restored A Man Full of Trouble and cared for it as a museum from 1965 to 1994. With help from a University of Pennsylvania archaeological dig, they uncovered hundreds of artifacts from the tavern, including bits of fireplace tile and wallpaper.
The Knauers even restored the missing sign. They chose the less bawdy version, which hangs now. Pulled from a parable, it displays a man walking with his wife, a monkey, a cat and a magpie.
By 1994, the museum remained open only one day a month. The Knauers gave the buildings to Penn, which maintained it as housing for traveling faculty and students.
For his part, Wheeler hopes to have A Man Full of Trouble fully open by next spring. He advertised last month’s pop-up on an Instagram account, where he posts historic images of the tavern. A strong crowd showed.
“I turned around and it was 6 o’clock and nobody wanted to leave,” he said.
He is making some repairs, and, a history buff, throwing himself into research. He envisions the bar being open limited hours, with museum and gallery spaces that could host events.
For him, the allure of the tavern is still imagining its history.
“This would be a great place to plot a revolution,” he said.
Source: https://www.inquirer.com/author/newall_mike/
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