public

Heavily Investigated

Twenty souls are said to linger inside One If By Land — and they are not polite about it. Earrings vanish from women's ears at the bar. Plates take flight. A maître d' once quit after invisible hands shoved him up and down the stairs each night. A woman in black descends the staircase and evaporates mid-step, while Theodosia Burr — lost at sea, never found — is rumored to drift through the mezzanine, still looking for her father. Stand near the bar long enough, and you may leave one earring lighter.

Built in 1767, the structure at 17 Barrow Street served as Aaron Burr's carriage house during his tenure as New York's Attorney General in the 1790s — a perfectly respectable use, until Burr shot Alexander Hamilton and lost most of his property along with his reputation. The building then became a fire-engine house, then a brothel and saloon, before opening as a restaurant in 1970. A former vice president's stable turned romantic fine-dining institution: the Arc of American ambition, really.