St. John's Tavern

I received this card in a swap; I suspect the damage in the upper right corner can be attributed not to the postcard's age but to the rough handling of the post office's automated sorting machines.

According to Ann Hewlett Hutteman's book Wilmington, North Carolina, this building, located at 114 Orange Street, was home to the St. John's Masonic Lodge from 1803 to 1825 at which time it was purchased by Thomas W. Brown whose family maintained ownership of the building until 1943. During World War II, James McKoy and Gar Faulkner established the restaurant, St. John's Tavern. St. John's catered to an upscale crowd and was very popular until the mid-1950s. In the early 1960s, the site housed St. John's Art Museum. The museum, which needed a larger more appropriate space, moved to a new location and was renamed the Cameron Art Museum in 2001.

See a more detailed history of 114 Orange Street on the Susan747 blog.