Willard, Orsamus (1792–1876), universally known as “Willard of the City Hotel,” was the most famous bartender in America and the second most famous one in New York City (after Cato Alexander). More importantly, he was a pioneer in mixing individual drinks to order using ice—and thus of the American school of mixology and the modern bar in general. See Alexander, Cato.
Willard was born in north-central Massachusetts and may have worked briefly as a schoolteacher. By the time he turned twenty-one, however, he had secured a position as office boy at the City Hotel in New York. At the time, this was the largest and fanciest hotel in America. Willard had natural gifts, however, that fitted him for higher office: he was ambidextrous and possessed a photographic memory. In 1816, he parlayed those gifts, along with his natural energy and dry New England wit, into a position as desk clerk and bartender (at the time, those were one and the same job: hotel guests checked in at the bar). One day that year, as he later told one of his customers, a “Virginia gentleman,” himself a customer at the bar, taught Willard the “art” of making Mint Juleps with ice, a drink then almost exclusively southern. See Mint Julep. Willard, in turn, brought the drink to such a pitch of perfection that soon it was popular in New York, and when the gospel of the iced drink spread from that city throughout America and then the world, the julep spread with it.
At this point it is probably impossible to corroborate that story in detail, but we can say with certainty that by the late 1820s Willard and the bar of the City Hotel had a transatlantic reputation for Mint Juleps—indeed, as the London Morning Post observed in 1829, the “bar manager” of the City Hotel, “by his acknowledged skill in mixing mint julep, etc., is said to be a most valuable appendage to the concern.” Such was his reputation in New York that one of his nicknames was “Napoleon of the Bar.” Among the other drinks in Willard’s repertoire we find mention of standards such as Whisky Punch, the Gin Sling, the Cock-Tail, and the Apple Toddy, and also of fancy drinks such as “Willard’s Extra-Extra Peach Brandy Punch” (alas, no recipe survives for that). See punch; Gin Sling; Cock-Tail; and toddy.
By the mid-1830s, Willard was famous—“The name of this remarkable personage is familiar to every American, and to every foreigner who has visited the States,” as one British traveler noted. Stories of his legendary feats of memory were common, such as the time a passing guest sailed to England, remained there ten years, and returned to New York. When he walked into the bar, Willard welcomed him by name, recalled his old room number, and observed “how quickly ten years roll away.” There was also no shortage of stories of his eccentricities—how he almost never left the hotel, how he would do anything possible to accommodate a guest’s desires, how he would mix drinks with both hands while answering questions about the whereabouts of his guests and anything else under the sun.
In 1836, after twenty years behind the bar, Willard joined Chester Jennings, the hotel’s manager, in retiring. As Jennings’s partner, he had made a good deal of money and bought a large farm in Still River, Massachusetts, near his birthplace. (The farmhouse boasted number plates on every room door.) He also bought land in the West—almost 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of land in Michigan and Wisconsin—and took to raising prize cattle.
In 1843, however, the City Hotel having failed, he and Jennings were lured out of retirement to restore it to its past fortunes. Willard once again stood behind the bar, where he stayed for a further five years until he and Jennings called it quits again. From 1848 until his death at the age of eighty-four, little is heard from him. Indeed, the sporting fraternity in New York assumed that, like Jennings, who died in 1854, he was no more. Willard left a large estate, and his house in Still River still stands. He is buried nearby on a sunny hillside, surrounded by his wife and descendants. He was America’s, and the world’s, first celebrity bartender.
See also City Hotel.
Alexander, J. E. Transatlantic Sketches. Philadelphia: Key & Biddle, 1833.
“City Hotel, N.Y.” Batavia (NY) Spirit of the Times, January 24, 1843, 2.
Murray, Charles Augustus. Travels in North America. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.
“Notes on America.” London Morning Post, January 20, 1829, 2.
Nourse, Henry S. History of the Town of Harvard, Massachusetts, 1792–1893. Harvard, MA: W. Hapgood, 1894.
By: David Wondrich
The City Hotel, where Orsamus Willard spent so much of his life, in 1831. The bar was behind the windows at the bottom right of the building.
Wondrich Collection.
The City Hotel, where Orsamus Willard spent so much of his life, in 1831. The bar was behind the windows at the bottom right of the building. Source: Wondrich Collection.