Brooklyn’s Former Speakeasies
- Michael Verdirame
My Friend’s Basement?
When my buddy moved into an apartment in a converted one-family house in Bay Ridge, the landlord said the basement used to be a speakeasy. Indeed, there’s a bar down there, but it seemed unlikely to me that a sleepy side street would’ve housed an illicit watering hole; couldn’t an eccentric previous owner just have wanted a bar in his basement? (A search of DOB records indicates plumbing work performed in 1963—to install tap lines, perhaps?!) But come to think of it, the house would form a triangle with Three Jolly Pigeons and Lento’s on a map—the Bay Ridge Speakeasy Triangle???
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