Pete’s Tavern is part of a series of tidbits from the chapters of my book Bars, Taverns and Dives New Yorkers Love, published by Rizzoli. You can order it from Powell’s, Amazon, Rizzoli, and Barnes & Noble. Signed prints of all the bars in the book are available here.

New York’s got a lot of “oldest bars.” Records are patchy, legends get repeated as history, and the definition of “oldest” — and “bar,” for that matter — is debatable. But Pete’s Tavern is one of them. Since 1864, they’ve served beer, whiskey and wine continuously at the corner of Irving Place and East 18th. Through Prohibition, the blackouts of 1977 and 2003, and during both Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. That’s an indisputably solid run, and their Prohibition scam is one of the best I’ve ever heard.

Pete’s Tavern In Prohibition

Pete’s is divided—like many taverns of its era—into a front barroom (with an entrance on Irving Place) and a back dining room (with an entrance on East 18th Street), connected by a portal. During Prohibition, they swapped out their “Pete’s Tavern” sign for one that said, innocently, “Florist,” and filled the barroom’s windows with flowers and heavy curtains. The front entrance was permanently closed, leaving the side door, on 18th Street, as the “florist’s” only functional entry. If you walked in from 18th, you’d see what appeared to be a modest flower shop, with a counter in front and a large, walk-in refrigerator full of fresh posies to your left. That “refrigerator” had a hidden door in back, which led through the connecting portal into the barroom, fully operational throughout America’s so-called “Grand Experiment.”

The party went on at Pete’s Tavern for 13 years without a hitch, customers coming and going through that magic refrigerator. Ask to see photos of Pete’s in its flower shop days up on the walls today.

I love this place, and that’s why I drew it, wrote about it, and put it in my book. You can get signed prints of Pete’s Tavern right here, and the book right here.

Next up:

The Old Town Bar, possibly the finest old “conversation bar” in all of NYC. (With famous urinals to boot… but that’s another story.) It’s another chapter of my book Bars, Taverns and Dives New Yorkers Love, which you can order right here. Limited-edition signed prints of the bars are available here.