Mullica Hill Historic Walking Tour

Old Eagle Hotel

Est. 1772 · 51 South Main Street

Stop 13 of 13 · Core Loop · Old Town Hall Museum 2 min · Map · About 3 min read

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This building is where Harrison Township began.

The long two-story hotel behind bare trees, figures on the porch, the street unpaved in front. — The Eagle Hotel in a period photograph.

The tavern was already old when that happened. Four years before the United States declared independence, a man named Captain John Cozens opened an inn at this exact spot. That was 1772. Cozens's tavern was one of two in town where stagecoach travelers ate, slept, watered their horses, and picked up news from Philadelphia. For three quarters of a century, it served as the public room of Mullica Hill. People did business in it. They argued politics in it.

Local citizens met at the Eagle to press the state for a township of their own, and the petition worked, with a twist. The Whig Party championed the movement and proposed naming the new township Harrison, after the president. The Democratic majority in Trenton refused, and the township was established in 1844 under the name Spicer Township. In 1845 the Whigs won the legislature and promptly renamed it Harrison. The first sessions of the Harrison Township Committee were held in this building; the Old Town Hall down the street where this tour started did not yet exist. Civic life in this place was assembled at a tavern table here before it was assembled anywhere else.

The two-story hotel with Eagle Hotel signed above the porch, men gathered along it and a hand pump at the curb. — The Eagle Hotel under Frye & Hopkins proprietorship, late nineteenth century, before the mansard expansion. The hotel name is visible above the porch.

Family and staff lined up along the hotel porch rail, a young staked tree at the curb. — The Eagle Hotel in an earlier era, with the family and staff gathered on the porch.

The structure you see is the result of nineteenth-century renovation in stages: three stories, five bays, a double-fronted facade, a concave mansard roof with bracketed gabled dormers above. The aluminum siding came much later. The hotel closed before the mid-twentieth century, and the building was converted to apartments. In 1991 the National Register listing for the village's historic district described it simply as the "Old Hotel." It remains the building where the first sessions of the Harrison Township Committee were held, and its tavern lineage is older than the United States itself.

A horse-drawn wagon waits under the trees in front of the hotel porch. — The Eagle Hotel in an earlier era, with horses and a butcher's wagon in front of the porch.

The hotel at three stories under a concave mansard roof with dormers, porches on two levels. — The Eagle Hotel after the mansard expansion, showing the configuration the building has today.

Two short waypoints remain before the finish: the Mullica Hill Garage and the Spicer House. Then Old Town Hall and its museum wait where the tour began. The building that replaced this tavern as the seat of local government is the same one that now keeps its memory.

Did You Know

The township's own minutes open at this tavern: the first Spicer Township meeting of March 13, 1844 was recorded 'at the house of Mary Wood', the hotel then being in a woman's hands. And the historic district survey adds that Cozens's 1772 house first traded under another name entirely: the Spicerville Tavern.

Around You Now

blueplate is at 47 South Main, two doors from the old tavern, and Sister's Fun to Fine Jewelry, more than twenty years in town, keeps shop at 39.

Lights on Main

Main Street's tree-lighting celebration offers another reason to visit. Check the current event details before planning a return trip.

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While You Are Here

The objects and archives behind these stories live inside Old Town Hall Museum at 62 South Main Street. Admission is free, and current exhibit dates and hours are on the Society's museum page.

The tour is free. Keeping Old Town Hall is not.

Opens the Society's support page.

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Make a Day of It

Eat & Shop on Main Street →