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Speaking Easy: Wet Washington

By: Rebecca Sheir // January 28, 2011
  
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1223 Connecticut Ave. NW is now home to the bar/restaurant Dirty Martini. At the tail-end of Prohibition, the upper floors housed The Mayflower Club, one of D.C.'s swankiest speakeasies.
Garrett Peck
1223 Connecticut Ave. NW is now home to the bar/restaurant Dirty Martini. At the tail-end of Prohibition, the upper floors housed The Mayflower Club, one of D.C.'s swankiest speakeasies.

Historians estimate D.C. boasted 2,000 to 3,000 speakeasies during Prohibition, and Rebecca Sheir visits a site that once housed one of the most notorious: the Mayflower Club. She speaks with Garrett Peck, who leads the "Temperance Tour of Washington," and is author of the book, Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: How Dry We Weren't, set to be published this spring.

[Music: "Minnie the Moocher" by Cab Calloway from Are You Hep to the Jive]

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