The newly renovated Man Full of Trouble Tavern in Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood is now reopened. (Tyger Williams, The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS)
When Dan Wheeler bought A Man Full of Trouble in 2021, he hoped to breathe life back into Philly’s only surviving Revolutionary-era drinking spot, which had sat shuttered to the public for decades. Wheeler, 60, dreamed of restoring the charming brick building in the shadows of the Society Hill Towers into a neighborhood hub with flowing suds and a museum to celebrate the colorful tavern with a colorful name.
After two-and-a-half years of renovations, A Man Full of Trouble is open for business for the first time in more than a century.
Teaming up with the tavern’s new operators, the Chester County brewery Succession Fermentory, Wheeler threw open the door early in December. First opened in 1759, and said to be a dive bar during the fevered days of the Revolution, its caged bar likely catered to working waterfront stiffs, dockhands, shipwrights and sailors stumbling into port, according to historians.
Now, the tavern, and its cozy barroom, shines with authentic colonial gleam. Wheeler has transformed the old bar’s upstairs rooms, where sotted seamen once slept in crowded beds, into a museum filled with relics dedicated to the neighborhood’s Revolutionary past and the story of tavern life in America.
Another upstairs gallery currently features an exhibit on Dox Thrash, the master Philadelphia printmaker whose famed work centered on everyday Black American life. Wheeler is reserving that space for local artists, hopeful that poets, painters and punk rockers will want to share their work in Philly’s oldest surviving taproom.
“I didn’t want to have a dusty house museum that nobody ever came to,” Wheeler said. “I wanted to breathe new life into it, and I wanted to set it up as somewhere that told the life of this neighborhood.”
The upstairs rooms of the Man Full of Trouble Tavern in Philadelphia are filled with relics dedicated to the neighborhood’s Revolutionary past and the story of tavern life in America. (Tyger Williams, The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS)
Serving a selection of Succession’s farmhouse beers and ferments on draft and in cask and bottle, plus a curated list of Pennsylvania wines and spirits, the centuries-old pub is now open Thursdays to Mondays. The hours vary and are posted on the Succession Brewing Company webpage. The museum is still open by appointment only, Wheeler said, but will soon have regular hours. For food, the bar will be selling sandwiches by Farina Di Vita in Queen Village.
Benjamin Devon of Succession said the brewery, founded in 2021, was drawn to A Man Full of Trouble’s historic vibe, and its intimate 25-seat tasting room, designed by Hannah LeVasseur of StellaLou Farm and Keith Hartwig of Succession.
“What’s cool about this space is, like every space, it offers a voice,” Devon said. “And that voice seems very communal.”
Wheeler, an Old City lawyer and real estate investor who also worked as an economic development official for Gov. Ed Rendell, long wanted to reopen the place. When he spotted the tavern — once a museum and most recently owned by the University of Pennsylvania — listed for sale, he jumped at the chance to own a piece of history. He paid $875,000 for the bar and adjoining colonial house.
“It’s a dream come true in a lot of ways,” said Wheeler, an amateur collector who has stocked the tavern’s museum with many of his own historic pieces, including an early copy of the original Declaration of Independence, a pocket-size pamphlet of the Constitution printed in 1787, Revolutionary-era muskets and a cannon, 18th-century neighborhood maps and a rare 19th-century tavern sign and other artwork.
Colonial Philly burst with bars, with about one alehouse for every 160 citizens, historians say. But only A Man Full of Trouble survives.
Built at 127 Spruce St., back then it was wedged between a brook and stinking Dock Creek. The name was lifted from a Bible passage from the Book of Job: “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of troubles.” Its original sign famously depicted the image of a man with a woman on his back. Like other modest tippling houses, it was licensed for only beer and cider. The caged bar could be locked up after closing, so sloshed hotel guests didn’t raid the booze, Wheeler said. Food was cooked above a fireplace in the dirt-floor basement. For a time, it became a hotel. Then, a wholesale chicken market.
In the 1960s, Virginia Knauer — a onetime City Council member and director of the Federal Office of Consumer Affairs in Washington — and her husband saved the crumbling tavern from the wrecking ball. The couple painstakingly restored A Man Full of Trouble and cared for it as a museum from 1965 to 1994.
For his part, Wheeler worked with John Milner Architects, which specializes in historical renovations, to preserve the tavern’s historic credibility.
“Every detail, the colors of the paint, the pointing on the bricks, all had to be just so,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler did update the tavern’s famous sign with a design by Bird Studio in Germantown, based on historic models, that shows an Elizabethan-era man and woman hounded by angels and devils.
The sign outside for the Man Full of Trouble Tavern. (Tyger Williams, The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS)
Wheeler and Devon hope the barroom where drinkers once tipped tankards can become a community spot for all ages, and a spot where museums, history buffs, beer aficionados and artists may look to hold private events.
On a recent afternoon, customer Adam Gifford, 45, from South Jersey, sipped an elderberry stout in the colonial barroom. He seemed sold.
“I think it’s going to be crowded,” he said.
