Best-of list · Bar History
The history of speakeasy bars from Prohibition to today: why the hidden bar format never really went away, and the best modern speakeasies worth finding.
The short answer
7 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
The history of speakeasy bars is inseparable from the history of American ambivalence about alcohol — and about rules. Prohibition ran from 1920 to 1933, and during those thirteen years, an estimated 30,000 illegal bars operated in New York City alone. The speakeasy was not a niche phenomenon. It was an entire parallel economy. What is interesting is what happened after repeal: the format did not disappear. It adapted, went dormant, and then, starting in the early 2000s, came back — and it has not stopped growing since. Many of today's most extraordinary drinking experiences — from a bar accessible only by boat to one entered through a phone booth — appear in our guide to the most unique bars in the world.
The Volstead Act, which implemented the 18th Amendment in 1920, made the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors illegal in the United States. Within a year, more than a thousand speakeasies were operating in Manhattan. By the late 1920s, the number had grown tenfold. The word itself came from advice given to patrons: speak easy, speak quietly, don't draw attention to where you're going or what you're doing there.
The original speakeasies ranged from grimy basement rooms serving bathtub gin to remarkably sophisticated cocktail bars staffed by professional bartenders who had moved underground rather than leave the trade. The 21 Club on West 52nd Street is the most famous surviving example of the latter category: it had a wine cellar behind a false wall, a system of trapdoors for dumping bottles into the sewers during raids, and a guest list that included newspaper editors, politicians, and the occasional police commissioner.
How we picked
The history of speakeasy bars is really the history of what happens when drinking is treated as something worth protecting from dilution. During Prohibition, the dilution was legal. In the modern revival, the dilution is cultural: the mass-market bar experience that the hidden format was designed to escape. The best speakeasies today are not nostalgia acts. They are bars that use concealment as a curatorial tool, and the results justify the effort of finding them.
If you want to experience the format for the first time, go to PDT in New York or The Gibson in London. Both have the hidden entrance without the inaccessibility, and both make drinks that could hold their own in any room. That combination — secret door, serious cocktail — is what the original speakeasies were actually trying to achieve.
James has been drinking his way through New York since 2009 and has a particular interest in the history of American bar culture. He has visited every significant speakeasy operating in Manhattan and has opinions about all of them.
Last reviewed 2026-02-13 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.