Old Ebbitt Grill

This guide to Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington, D.C. traces the saloon from its 1856 founding through fires, moves and a defiant reopening the night after Prohibition began, up to a June 1970 morning when owner Peter Bechas's unpaid sales tax brought the IRS to padlock the doors. The agency planned to auction off everything inside, including a two-hundred-year-old clock still running on its original wooden gears and a pair of decanters dated to 1575. Look for the worn carved bear above the bar.