The doors open.
The original building is constructed on Main Street as an inn for travelers on the Old York Road. Hunterdon County is rural farmland; Clinton, New Jersey doesn’t exist yet as an incorporated town.
A 280-year-old American story.
The Clinton House predates the United States. When the building first opened its doors in 1743, this stretch of Hunterdon County wasn’t yet Clinton — it was a stopping point along the Old York Road, the wagon route between Philadelphia and New York that travelers walked, rode, and rolled through for the better part of a century.
The inn provided what inns provided then: a hot meal, a glass of something strong, a bed, and a place to keep your horses overnight. The rooms changed, the staircase was rebuilt more than once, and the kitchen has seen more cooks than anyone has counted — but the building, more or less, is the same one a stagecoach passenger walked into in the 1780s.
The town grows up around the inn.
With the canal era and the South Branch of the Raritan running through it, Clinton becomes a working village. The Clinton House anchors the social life of Main Street — it’s where political meetings happen, where wedding parties gather, and where deals are sealed over dinner.
The railroad era.
When the Central Railroad of New Jersey lays track through Clinton, travelers arrive faster but the inn keeps its role. Photographs from the 1890s show the building in close to its current configuration.
From inn to restaurant.
The rooms upstairs eventually give way to a full-service dining operation. The bar develops its identity around classic American hospitality — steaks, seafood, and a serious wine program.
A fourth century of hospitality.
The Clinton House is now Hunterdon County’s most established steak and seafood restaurant, with a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence list and a sister restaurant — Nektar — across the river in New Hope, Pennsylvania. The room you sit in tonight is much the same one a stagecoach passenger sat in two hundred years ago. The menu, of course, is a little better.
— From the Gialias family and the team at The Clinton House