Deer Park is a place that i see all time while i'm in the down town area of Newark DE. it's a very nice looking building; from what i understand deer park was once a Hotel, Bed&Breakfast and now a bar. i will check it out one day. The site on which the Deer Park Tavern is built was previously occupied by the St. Patrick's Inn, which was destroyed by fire. There have been arguments as to whether the St. Patrick's Inn was indeed located on this spot, or across the street, but the consensus seems to favor the site of the present building. From 1747 to 1848 John Tobias, and then John Pritchard ran the inn. It thus acquired the nickname "Pritchard's." In the 1700s the St. Patrick's Inn was a favorite resting place for travelers passing through Newark. In 1764, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon stayed at the inn with their team of surveyors. A folk account of their stay says that they were a jolly bunch who kept a tame bear for amusement and consumed large portions of peach and apricot brandy. The Mason-Dixon line was the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, which became famous as the line of demarcation between free and slave states. Mason and Dixon were requested to survey a one and a half-mile section of the city border that was to form a corner near the site of the St. Patrick's Inn. acob DeHaven was the first proprietor of the Deer Park. He ran the hotel until 1857. In 1855, Hanna Chamberlain received permission to move her women's seminary to the hotel, where it remained for 20 years. In 1858, J. Marshall Harlan took over the hotel and ran it until 1865, when he sold it to Colonel Joshua Clayton. The first railroad line was built through Newark in 1869, and helped to make the hotel popular after John E. Lewis purchased it in 1874. On December 23, 1843, Edgar Allan Poe lectured at the Academy and visited the inn. As he was attempting to emerge from his carriage at the inn, he was reputed to have fallen in the mud and was so upset that he put a curse on the building.