In the years prior to 1846, when 24th Street was a cattle market, the center of activity was the Bull's Head Tavern. Standing at the northwest corner of Third Avenue and 24th Street, the tavern was a three-story wood building with porches overlooking the street. A sign with a bull's head hung from a post on Third Avenue. This was actually the second Bull's Head Tavern. The first stood on the Bowery below Canal Street, where the Bull's Head Market had been before moving uptown.
The Bull's Head Tavern was where cattle drovers bargained with New York butchers and deals were made for the sale of livestock. Drovers stayed at the tavern until their stock was sold, and the tavern proprietor acted as a banker, holding their earnings in a large iron safe. One newspaper account of the Bull's Head Tavern described it as:
A place of meeting of the drovers, who spent their funds freely at the bar, and were liberal with their money. A favorite game of chance there was 'crack-a-loo.' The method of it was that a coin should be thrown in the air by different persons and the one who came nearest to a certain crack in the floor took the pot. Hundreds of dollars, it is said, changed hands in a single night as a result of participating in this game.
Rivals to the Bull's Head Tavern were the Black Swan across Third Avenue
and the Bull’s Head Junior between 23rd and 24th
Streets. What had essentially
been a roadhouse for out of
town cattle drovers was renamed a “Hotel”
in the
