A Manhattan Nightspot with a Helluva Past

A few weeks back, I met a few friends at the speakeasy Little Branch in West Village.  "Speakeasies" were popular nightspots during the Prohibition years (1920-1933) as establishments where alcohol was illegally sold.  There are no signs for their entry (this one in particular took me almost 30 minutes to find as even Google wasn't privy to its address).  "What do you think New York would have been like in the Twenties?" my friend Dee asked.  If only those walls could talk.

Before the Depression years of the 1930s, the boom times of the 1920s ushered in a new era of liberation - economic, artistic, and sexual.  It was a time when mobsters were kings and nightlife roared.  The New York Times ran a post several months back about a more prominent Prohibition era nighstpot called the Casino.  The Casino was located in Central Park near 72nd and 5th avenue, on the site where ABC holds its summer concert series.  Counting Crows and LMFAO, among others, played this year, but more than likely they were unaware of the site's history.

Originally a restaurant, the Casino fell into disarray, and was a "dumpy" nightspot at the beginning of the Twenites according to the Times.  With funding from Manhattan's incoming mayor in 1926 and wealthy donors (rumored to include the likes of notorious gangster Arnold Rothstein), the Casino was renovated into one of Manhattan's most illustrious nightspots by the end of the 1920s (the parking lot had space for 300).  I don't know what life was like in the Twenties, but I'd like to think the Casino hosted some raucous times in its day.

Site where Casino once stood



Casino in its heyday