Alexander, Cato (1780–1858), was a key member of the founding cohort of the American school of mixing drinks, running establishments that pleased New Yorkers and travelers foreign and domestic with his exceptional drinks and cuisine for over forty years. Born enslaved, probably in New York, Alexander was raised in the world of inns and taverns (as a youth he frequently waited on George Washington when the president lived in New York). See Washington, George. He gained his freedom in 1799 and, sometime before 1811, leased a substantial, two-story house and an acre or two of land on the Boston Post Road four miles north of New York City (today it corresponds roughly to Second Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street in Manhattan). He would run a tavern there for the next three and a half decades.
In its long heyday, Cato’s Tavern was an integral part of the city’s social life. It was a popular destination for weekend family excursions and a venue for balls, auctions, and funerals. It was also, however, a key part of the infrastructure of the city’s sporting life, as a goal for impromptu carriage races, a meeting point for foxhunts in the wilds of northern Manhattan, and a gathering point for the raffish, the high-spirited, and the dissolute.
Alexander himself enjoyed a general respect infrequently accorded to African Americans at the time. As was common with African American caterers, he supervised both the kitchen and the bar. His reputation as a chef was high, but as a mixologist it was even higher. While Alexander was often praised for his traditional punches, his chief acclaim was for his way with the new, peculiarly American drinks that were transforming the country’s drinking culture. The Irish actor Tyrone Power, who frequented his establishment in the early 1830s, summed up the general opinion when he called Alexander “foremost amongst cullers of mint, whether for julep or hail-storm; second to no man as a compounder of cock-tail, and such a hand at a gin-sling!” See Cock-Tail and Gin Sling. His only rival as a popularizer of these drinks was Orsamus Willard, of New York’s famous City Hotel. See Willard, Orsamus.
In the mid-1840s, Alexander was forced to sell his business after losses incurred, rumor had it, from lending incautiously to his patrons. After a stint as a farmer on Long Island, east of the city, he returned to New York in 1852 and opened a modest oyster house on Broadway. It lasted barely a year, and after that he disappeared from the public eye. Alexander’s original tavern and its popular proprietor, however, remained large in the memory of New Yorkers well into the twentieth century.
“Death of Cato of ‘the Road.’” New York Herald, February 17, 1858.
Mott, Hopper Striker. “Cato’s Tavern.” Americana, April 1916, 123.
Power, Tyrone. Impressions of America during the Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. London: R. Bentley, 1836.
By: David Wondrich