The Palo Alto Hotel

 The Palo Alto Hotel at Bladensburg in 1846

From an old print in the possession of the Ohio Historical Society.

The “Cocktail”  was not invented here on April 17, 1846, nor was the word “Cocktail” first applied here.

The Palo Alto Hotel  on the east side of Baltimore avenue just north of the George Washington House, declared itself to date from 1734.

(DCPL)

The Maryland Historical Magazine (Winter, 1985) says that “The structure dates from ca. 1745, though a 1734 date appears in the photograph.”

(DCPL)

“The Palo Alto was the last place  a traveler journeying north could indulge in spirits before going to the dry town of Hyattsville; hence the ‘Last Chance’ sign. The building was razed during the early 1960s.” 

An ad for Wallis' Cafe in Washington in 1922 said that “Duelling has gone. The Palo Alto has slipped into history,” but The Palo Alto was still standing in December of 1963 when its bartender was held at gunpoint for an hour. (The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 1963.)

The old hotel's association with the invention of the cocktail began when an article appeared in the Baltimore Sun in 1908, entitled “The Secret History of the Cocktail.” Now widely believed to  be a hoax written by H. L. Menken, the editor of The Sun at the time, the article has no byline. It consists of an extended quotation from “an intellectual Baltimore Street Bartender.” The woodcut above was taken from this article. The intellectual bartender describes it as “...a contemporary wood cut, very crudely done, of the Palo Alto Hotel.”  The story is told that a man named John Hopkins fought an early morning duel at the Bladensburg dueling grounds and though he won the duel he was so unnerved by the sight of his opponent's blood that he was taken by his seconds to the Palo Alto hotel bar for a drink to brace him up.  

“Once there they conducted him to the old tap room and called upon Jack Henderson, who was on watch behind the bar, to set up something stimulating at once.”

“Jack, a man of resource, saw that something unusually tempting and powerful was needed. Grabbing up a champagne glass he filled it half full of good old Maryland rye, and then seizing a bottle of bitters he heaved in few drops. As he stirred up the mixture a bottle of syrup caught eye and he put in a swig. Then he pushed the mixture forward and the first Manhattan cocktail in the world was born.”

The First Manhattan Cocktail

“This old print is now very rare, and but two copies are known to be in the United States. The man drinking in the center is John A. Hopkins, of Fairfax county, Virginia, a celebrated bon vivant of ante-bellum Washington. The two men observing him are Col. Denmead Maglone, U. S. A., and Hon. George W. Mattingly, member of Congress (1842-58) from Georgia. The man behind the bar is ‘Jack’ Henderson, ‘inventor of the cocktail.’”

Henderson, Hopkins and the first  “Cocktail”

While the intellectual bartender of 1908 (maybe  Mencken) calls this drink a “Manhattan Cocktail” we would identify it as an “Old Fashioned.”  The third picture in the  1908 article  is a woodcut portrait of John Hopkins, Esq.

John A. Hopkins, Esq.

This crude portrait of the man who drank the first cocktail was printed in the Washington Weekly Constitutionalist of December 14, 1848. The Constitutionalist was a weekly of considerable influence and its capital gossip was famous in the forties and early fifties. It occasionally printed bad wood-cuts. It ceased to issue at the beginning of the war.

In 1916, The Louisville Courier Journal reported that Washingtonians and Bladensburgers celebrated the 80th birthday of the invention of the Cocktail.

Citizens of Washington crossed the District of Columbia line to-day to join with residents of Bladensburg, a nearby Maryland town to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of the invention of that more or less famous American drink—cocktail.

Also in 1916, The Bridgeport Evening Farmer, repeated the story to answer the question “Who Invented the Cocktail?”  Of course there were skeptics even in 1916. Percival Slathers wrote in The New York Sun on August 17, 1916, that “There is in Maryland an upstart town which has recently celebrated the ‘eightieth anniversary’ of this noble drink, thus arrogating to itself evolution and destiny. Bladensburg had about as much to do with the invention of the cocktail as it had with creating the solar system.” 

In 1956, The Washington Post reported that Bladensburg celebrated its many firsts including  “the first cocktail.”

Articles like “The Great Cocktail Hoax” by John Baer (The Sun, Jan. 17, 1982) make it clear that the bartender's story is no longer taken seriously.  Baer argues that the style of the article and the fact that H. L. Mencken often engaged in  “synthesized news” points to the Baltimore Bard as the creator of the Baltimore street Bartender. The rambling tale makes many allusions to books, journals and scholars that apparently don't exist. See also “The Biggest Cocktail Hoax of All Time” by David Wondrich, in The Daily Beast,  Aug. 6 2017.

As to the location of the Old Palo Alto Hotel, chamberofcommerce.com  says that   “Palo Alto Hotel and Saloon Historic Site is located at 4251-4289 Baltimore Ave, Bladensburg, MD 20710" but several want-ads point to 4409 Baltimore Avenue (north bound) in Bladensburg, which I guess to be about 38.9423223,-76.9409311.   (See ads for a piano player, a waitress, or a salesman.)

(The Washington Post, Oct. 17, 1909)