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The weathered wall along Strawtown Road pays tribute to a hotel once occupied the property, Photo by Robert Brum
It once was home to a distillery, then a series of hotels in a downtown bustling with blacksmiths, wheelwrights and harness makers.
It has welcomed stage coach passengers, travelers from the Port of Nyack, Civil War soldiers, and more recently a succession of restaurants serving everything from continental fare to Asian fusion cuisine.
Nowadays the weathered wall along Strawtown Road in West Nyack bears the inscription “1840 Tavern” on its white-painted bricks.
The two-room saloon best known to generations of Rocklanders as the Clarksville Inn has been renamed in an homage to the year that a gentleman named Thomas Warner is said to have opened the Clarkstown Hotel at the site.
The hotel was a popular gathering spot for locals as well as a stopover for wagons passing through, and hosted farewell parties for soldiers on their way to the front lines during the Civil War.
Some said Washington Irving and Martin Van Buren visited the hotel, although historians disagree.
In the 1850s the establishment’s name changed to Knapp’s Hotel, in the heart of what had become known as Clarksville Corners.
A century later, the historic building at Strawtown and West Nyack roads was restored, and began a new life as a restaurant, and occasionally, a cafe and music venue.
A New Year's Eve 2017 fire destroyed the kitchen and caused extensive smoke damage, closing the restaurant for two years.
In its latest incarnation, the two-room tavern in the three-story building’s basement is in the hands of Kieran O'Gorman, who, with his wife, Kim, restored its wood-and-brick interior and stocked the menu with comfort foods and some selections harkening back to his Irish roots.
Kieran O’Gorman opened the 1840 Tavern at the Clarksville Inn in December of 2019 — just months before the pandemic’s impact.
“Thanks to a great community and amazing friends we survived and are looking forward to the future,” he wrote in a recent email.
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