Unearthing New York’s Secret Speakeasy Tunnels: True Stories of Mobsters, Booze, & Hidden Jazz Bars Beneath the City| Strange History Part 1

0:00 Speaker 1: Ah, New York, where dreams are made, traffic is eternal, and apparently there's a whole secret drinking world hidden beneath your feet. Welcome to the Strange History Podcast. Dear listeners, I'm your host, Amy, here to guide you through the boozy labyrinth under Manhattan, Brooklyn and Harlem. Because while Prohibition may have tried to make America sober, New Yorker simply said, challenge accepted and went underground.

0:27 Speaker 2: Literally, the tunnels are real, and some still exist.

0:33 Speaker 1: Let's start with a sobering or let's be honest, not so sobering fact, there are still sealed tunnels under New York that once ferried illegal booze, mobsters and occasionally an unlucky jazz musician who took a wrong turn. When Prohibition began in nineteen twenty, federal agents rated bars faster than you can say bathtub gin. But New Yorkers had an answer. The city's pre existing in structure, old coal shoots, sewer lines, and forgotten service tunnels became the veins of a new kind of nightlife.

1:08 Speaker 1: Mcsorley's Old Ale House, East Village. Mcsorley's, founded in eighteen fifty four, was one of the few bars to survive Prohibition by pretending to be a near beer joint. But when renovations were done in the nineteen nineties, construction workers discovered a sealed off tunnel beneath the bar, leading toward the bowery, likely used to ferry real ale during raids. The tunnel walls were lined with old kegs, a few beer mugs, and some skeletal remains of rats that clearly died doing what they loved.

1:38 Speaker 1: Those rats, my friends, were the true unsung heroes of Prohibition, small fuzzy martyrs of the cause.

1:45 Speaker 3: The Underground Gentlemen's Club. This episode is brought to you by the Underground Gentleman's Club, not the kind you're thinking of, unless your idea of a good time is sitting in a damp brick tunnel, sipping bootleg gin and listening to a guy named Tony play the trumpet off key. The Underground Gentlemen's Club because it's not a secret if the cops already know about it.

2:07 Speaker 2: The hidden doors and passwords of Manhattan twenty one Club, West fifty second Street.

2:15 Speaker 1: Ah the legendary twenty one Club, one of the most famous surviving speakeasies When the feds came knocking, they'd open the front door to a perfectly respectable restaurant, but below hidden wine cellars, trapdoors, and a revolving wall that concealed two thousand bottles of liquor behind solid concrete. The real star was the secret tunnel that connected Twenty one Club's basement to nearby buildings. If the cops came in one door, the bartenders simply rolled the wall shut, darted down the tunnel, and vanished like tipsy magicians.

2:49 Speaker 1: And when prohibition ended in nineteen thirty three, the owners just reopened and said, oh good now we can stop pretending. These are root beer, cocktails.

3:00 Speaker 2: Mobsters, mysteries, and the Bowery beneath.

3:04 Speaker 1: If you think these tunnels were all champagne and jazz, think again. The Bowery District's tunnels were also a mobster freeway. Onnie the Killer Madden's Cotton Club Tunnels Harlem Onny Madden, charming gangster, boxing promoter and part time sociopath, ran the famous Cotton Club where Duke Ellington's orchestra made history. Underneath the club a network of narrow tunnels leading from the stage to nearby tenement basements and an old coal delivery route. Federal agents once raided the place, only to find the staff and liquor had vanished.

3:42 Speaker 1: Locals swore they could still hear laughter echoing underground for hours, possibly from the band, possibly from the ghost of a very smug Onie Madden.

3:51 Speaker 3: Ghost Gin Tonight's episode is also sponsored by Ghost Gin, distilled using authentic haunted spring water from the tunnels of Manhattan. Every sip comes with a faint jazz solo and a twelve percent chance of possession. Ghost Gin for when your spirits need well spirits.

4:11 Speaker 1: As modern construction reshapes New York, old tunnels keep reappearing like hangovers from another century.

4:17 Speaker 2: Delmonico's Tunnel Financial District.

4:21 Speaker 1: Delmonico's, one of New York's oldest fine dining establishments, had a tunnel that allegedly connected to the docks, the purpose delivering barrels of wine and whiskey discreetly during Prohibition. In twenty seventeen, workers found a bricked archway beneath the restaurant, leading toward the East River, inside fragments of old glass wooden crates and the faint smell of bootleg bourbon soaked into the earth. They say ghosts haunt battlefields, but honestly, I'd rather haunt a wine tunnel, better lighting, better company.

4:56 Speaker 2: Chumley's eighty six Bedford Street, Greenwich Village.

5:01 Speaker 1: Chumley's was so secret that even cab drivers couldn't find it, hence the phrase eight six it. The number wasn't random, It came from the bar's address and its escape plan. When police raided, bartenders shouted eighty six, everyone and patrons vanished through a back door leading to a hidden alleyway. The tunnels beneath Chumleys connected to neighboring Brownstones, ensuring the gin and the gossip kept flowing.

5:29 Speaker 3: Tunnel Tinder need someone to share a flask with under the city. Try Tunnel Tender, the only dating app that connects you with singles hiding from federal agents. Swipe right if you like jazz, rebellion and questionable ventilation.

5:45 Speaker 1: Tunnel Tender Love is blind, but the lighting's worse.

5:48 Speaker 2: The boozy infrastructure of Brooklyn, Now, Brooklyn wasn't going to let Manhattan have all the fun.

5:55 Speaker 1: Beneath the Burroughs Breweries and Brownstones lay an equally intoxicating network.

6:00 Speaker 2: The Brooklyn Navy Yard whiskey route.

6:03 Speaker 1: During Prohibition, smugglers used old military supply tunnels near the navy Yard to transport whiskey barrels off ships, all under the noses of federal agents station just blocks away. In the nineteen nineties, utility workers rediscovered portions of the tunnels filled with rusted carts and fragments of glass jugs. One worker claimed he saw the faded chalkwords on a wall no dry laws down here.

6:30 Speaker 2: The King's County Distillery discovery.

6:34 Speaker 1: When King's County Distillery set up shop in the old Brooklyn Navy Yard in twenty ten, they found remnants of those same hidden roots, concrete walls with drainage grooves, the smell of old oak barrels, and even some nineteen twenties graffiti. Their tour today includes a nod to the bootleggers who paved the way literally for Brooklyn's craft Whisky revival.

6:58 Speaker 2: Ghosts of the Underground.

7:00 Speaker 1: You didn't think we'd end this without a haunting, did you?

7:03 Speaker 2: The Jazz Tunnel Spirits.

7:05 Speaker 1: Renovation crews near one hundred twenty fifth Street unearthed a tunnel lined with cracked tile remnants of a speakeasy beneath what was once the Lafayette Theater. Locals reported hearing faint piano notes at night, even though the tunnel was sealed and electrics long dead. Paranormal investigators, yes, the brave souls who bring EMF readers to sewage adjacent tunnels, recorded snippets of jazz like hums and clinking glasses. You know it's a classy haunting when even the ghosts are tipsy.

7:36 Speaker 2: Chinatown's dual tunnels.

7:38 Speaker 1: Some of Chinatown's old tunnels were originally built for utilities, but got repurposed by both opium dens and speakeasies. Police raids in the late nineteen twenties found trap doors leading to candlelit bars filled with expats, gamblers, and jazz musicians. In one raid, officers reportedly found a live orchestra still playing as the cops burst in mid song, midswig, mid chaos.

8:05 Speaker 2: Modern speakeasys history repeats itself today.

8:10 Speaker 1: Modern hidden bars mimic their prohibition ancestors. You can still find speakeasys behind phone booths like PDT on Saint Mark's Place, laundromats, Sunshine Laundromat in Greenpoint, or ice cream shops. Urban spaces. Patent pending in nomad access through a fake cafe. But here's the twist. Some of them occupy the actual footprints of nineteen twenties speakeasies. Patent Pending, for example, is built in the basement of Nikola Tesla's former workspace, using the same walls that once hid illegal liquor, electricity, and liquor.

8:45 Speaker 1: What could possibly go wrong?

8:47 Speaker 3: Drunk Historian Audio Tours. This episode is also brought to you by Drunk Historian Audio Tours. Just strap on your headphones, follow a suspiciously confident voice into an alleyway, and learn about New York's history or get mildly lost. Either way you'll learn something drunk Historian, because history is better when slightly slurred.

9:13 Speaker 1: So there you have it. The secret tunnels that kept New York's heart and liver alive during America's driest years. Beneath the jazz, the chaos and the cocktails was something timeless, the refusal to let anyone tell New Yorkers when to stop having fun. And maybe, just maybe that's the city's real spirit. So next time you're walking the streets of Manhattan and feel the ground echo just a bit, it might not be the subway. It might just be the faint sound of a trumpet echoing from the tunnels of rebellion below.

9:47 Speaker 1: Until next time, my thirsty historians, I'm amy reminding you history isn't always above ground. Sometimes it's six feet deep and still serving Gin