12/12/2020
New York’s 21 Club Closing, Possibly Ending Historic Run That Began During Prohibition Era
Breaking Newstags: urban history, Prohibition, restaurants, New York History
It survived Prohibition, the Great Depression, two World Wars and countless economic downturns. But New York CIty’s famed 21 Club apparently couldn’t outlast the coronavirus pandemic.
The iconic restaurant has reportedly told its nearly 150 employees that it’s going out of business and that they’ll be let go in March.
Opened as a speakeasy during Prohibition, the 21 Club has served past presidents, including President Donald Trump, who celebrated his 2016 victory with a dinner there. Its celebrity guests Ernest Hemingway (who supposedly had his way with a restaurant guest on the steps), tennis greats John McEnroe and Chris Evert, and stars like Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Orson Welles, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. Several had bronze plaques above “their” tables.
Many movies and TV shows have filmed at the 21 Club, including The Sweet Smell of Success, Wall Street, and Sex and the City. The restaurant also hosted the Mad Men premiere party.
Like any long-term establishment, the 21 Club’s popularity waxed and waned. But its 35 jockeys at the entrance to the restaurant at 52nd Street remained a fixture of midtown, even as the building was closed for most of the pandemic.
The restaurant was celebrating its 90th birthday this year.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel