The Jug Tavern, also known as the Davids–Garrison House or the Grapevine Inn, is located at the junction of Revolutionary Road and Rockledge Avenue in Sparta section of Ossining, New York, United States.

Some local legends hold that Revolutionary War figures such as George Washington and John André visited.

The six-by-two-bay building is built into that rise, with its stone foundation exposed on the east to give it the appearance of two and a half stories.

[2] Early 18th-century records suggest that the land where the tavern now stands, then owned by the Philipse family, was leased by a Charles Davids (or Davis, in some documents), a tenant farmer.

By the 1780s, the latest period suggested for the house's construction,[6] a road ran down to the river from the site and the future hamlet of Sparta was coming into being.

The following year it was offered for sale, and Peter Davids bought the 200 acres (81 ha)[5] that comprise not only the tavern site but present-day Sparta.

[5] The likelihood that Nathaniel and Annis Garrison regained ownership sometime during the early 19th century also finds support in their grandsons' sale of the house to Michael Geisler in 1882.

It is also possible that it was damaged by fire, as a contemporary newspaper account reports that Geisler's home in Sparta was burned.

That ended in 1919 when Frank A. Vanderlip, president of National City Bank, and his wife, residents of Scarborough to the south, began redeveloping the hamlet.

However, it may have figured in Vanderlip's efforts, as many of the houses were being renovated in the Colonial Revival mode, and it was the only building in Sparta that actually dated to that period.

The Vanderlip efforts, which continued past his death until the last restored house was sold in the 1970s, led to much local newspaper coverage and an interest in the history of the area.

[11] It is during that period that much of the lore about the Tavern—that various Revolutionary figures such as George Washington or John André had stopped in for a drink, or that British prisoners of war were held in the cellar—may have surfaced and become accepted as, or confused with, fact.

Some local lore holds that liquor was served illegally, without charge, to those who could be trusted to keep that knowledge to themselves, and hence no license would have been sought, much less recorded.

"Jug Tavern" does not appear in any document related to the building until 1947, and reportedly the Geisler descendants who lived there as it began to catch on were offended by it.

Almost 30 years later, Frank Vanderlip's son told the authors of a walking tour guidebook that he had never heard the name in his lifetime of developing the area.