December 5, 2008
'The City on a Still' celebrates Prohibition’s repeal
NewYorkology contributor Vidiot commits journalism by night, edits Cocktailians and explores NYC by day. He’s especially interested in the infrastructure, transit, architectural wonders, drinking establishments, and hidden corners of the greatest city in the world.
New Yorkers don’t necessarily need excuses to celebrate, but there’s a pretty good one today: At 4:31 this afternoon, exactly 75 years will have elapsed since the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, officially ending Prohibition in the United States.
 Happy Repeal Day!
However, New York barely noticed the repeal in 1933, according to writer Daniel Okrent, who’s working on a book entitled “Last Call: The Rise & Fall of Prohibition” (set for a January 2010 publication.) “In New York, it was a little of an anticlimax, frankly” he told NewYorkology, noting that most of the celebrations of repeal happened in April of 1933, when Congress and FDR made the weaker 3.2-percent beer legal.
But New York is a town that likes its drinks, and by the time December 5, 1933 rolled around, Prohibition hadn’t really been enforced in the city for some time. “New York state repealed its [Prohibition] enforcement law in 1923. The federal authorities made sporadic and spastic attempts to enforce the federal laws through about 1929, but they weren’t really effective, and the New York City police were either unsympathetic to Prohibition or were on the take,” Okrent added.
 In response to Prohibition, numerous “speakeasies” — so named because you had to whisper a password through a locked door to gain admittance — sprang up. Police Commissioner Grover Whalen estimated that there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York City.
“There was a period in the early ’20s when you had to have a password” to get into a speakeasy, Okrent said. “But by 1925 or 1926, that went away … to get a drink in New York City, it was really hard: You had to ask a cop where to go.”
Many of the most famous speakeasies in Prohibition-era New York are gone: Chumley’s on Bedford Street has yet to reopen after the 2007 chimney collapse that closed it, and the El Morocco on East 54th Street, where the velvet rope was invented and where Humphrey Bogart was banned for life after an altercation involving two stuffed pandas and flying crockery, is now the site of the Citigroup Center.
Several former speakeasies are still serving today: Club Intime on West 54th, owned by the flamboyant Tex Guinan, is now champagne bar Flûte Midtown. McSorley’s Old Ale House brewed beer in their basement during Prohibition, and Pete’s Tavern disguised itself as a flower shop. Fanelli’s Café on Prince Street is still going strong, as is Bill’s Gay Nineties, which must be one of the oldest theme restaurants around, given its 1920s origin and 1890s theme.
The most famous former speakeasy, though, would be the 21 Club, at 21 West 52nd Street, on a block that once held 38 separate speakeasies. Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld loved “21”, and argued “be prepared to fight if you don’t agree …that it’s the best place in town.”
In 1930, columnist Walter Winchell mentioned in print that “21” had never been raided. So of course it was raided the next day by federal agents. In response, the club’s owners commissioned architect Frank Applegate Buchanan to devise ways to hide bootleg liquor from the authorities. They came up with a system of alarm bells, hidden caches, and a collapsible shelf behind the bar that would dump bottles into a brick-lined chute, smash them, and dump their contents directly into the sewer. (Daniel Okrent told NewYorkology that a nearby speakeasy on 53rd Street used a similar system. When the Donnell Library Center was built on its site years later, the excavation crews discovered a strong smell of alcohol.) There’s no trace of the chute behind “21”’s bar now, aside from the entirely separate chute for recyclables, but the famous secret wine cellar door still works perfectly, and diners can request a peek.
Builder Soll Roehner came up with the idea of a secret wine cellar, camouflaged to look like a load-bearing archway filled with brick. The 4,000 pound airtight brick door still boasts the original lock, which is opened by inserting a thin, 18-inch metal skewer into an inconspicuous crack in the brickwork, which releases a large deadbolt.
“21” was raided only once after that, in 1932. Agents searched for over 12 hours, but couldn’t find a drop of liquor in the joint. (The wine cellar was actually over the property line, underneath 19 W. 52nd St., so the club’s owners could truthfully tell the cops that they had no alcohol on the premises.)
And to give you a sense of how lax governmental enforcement of Prohibition was in New York, the wine cellar still boasts Mayor Jimmy Walker’s personal booth, where he’d come down to have an occasional very private tipple.
Now, 75 years after the end of Prohibition, speakeasies are back. This time, it’s a drinker’s fad rather than a business necessity making hidden, exclusive bars with high-end cocktails all the rage.
Angel’s Share is up a staircase and behind a subtly marked door in a Japanese restaurant, PDT is entered through the back wall of a false phone booth in a hot dog joint, Milk & Honey famously has an unlisted number, and the Back Room — on the site of the speakeasy Lansky Lounge — will pour your drink into a teacup, in case the revenuers come around.
If you’re looking for something a bit easier to find, Dewar’s Scotch is celebrating Repeal Day and the 1930s vibe with drink specials and costumed actors in character at various bars around the city, including Puck Fair, the Old Town, d.b.a., the Roosevelt Hotel, Flute Midtown, Legends, and others.
The Distilled Spirits Council, a trade association representing liquor producers, has produced ProhibitionRepeal.com to raise awareness of Prohibition. “Consumption of alcohol has become more sophisticated, and we’re trying to educate the public about Prohibition and its repeal,” Distilled Spirits Council representative Danielle Eddy told NewYorkology, pointing out that Prohibition cost governments tax revenues and impinged on the public‘s civil liberties. ProhibitionRepeal.com has some recipes for Prohibition-era cocktails such as the Sidecar and French 75, as well as essays by cocktailians David Wondrich and Gary & Mardee Regan.
Picture credits: Top pictures are all taken inside the 21 Club, except for the Prohibition sign, which is in the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans. The last picture in the story is inside the PDT bar. All pictures by Vidiot.
December 5, 2008 10:25 AM in Downtown, Drinkology, History, Midtown
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