Illinois / Chicago
Green Mill Cocktail Lounge
Capone's favorite booth is still there, and so is the trapdoor story. Ninety years of jazz have not dimmed the green neon.
Getting in
Front door on Broadway. Cash at the door for the late jazz set.
Order this
Gin martini
Your passport
Prohibition Original rooms like this one are catalogued across the trail — see every prohibition original bar.
Keep the night going
Nearest doors
4.6Lost Lake
Logan Square · Chicago, IL · 3.5 mi
Banana-leaf wallpaper, forty pages of rum, and the best-run tiki bar in the country wedged into a Logan Square corner.
4.5Billy Sunday
Logan Square · Chicago, IL · 3.7 mi
Named for the evangelist who once tried to dry out Chicago, this bar answers with a menu built almost entirely around amari and vermouth.
4.5Room 13
Logan Square · Chicago, IL · 3.7 mi
A hotel basement done up as a Prohibition club, complete with a barber-chair corner and drinks that take their time.
4.6The Violet Hour
Wicker Park · Chicago, IL · 4.3 mi
Behind a plywood mural on Damen: high-backed blue chairs, chandeliers, no cell phones, and the drink that taught the Midwest about mint and rose.
The Gear Room
Drink like Green Mill Cocktail Lounge at home
The Savoy Cocktail Book
Harry Craddock's 1930 compendium, written while America was dry and London was not.
Imbibe! — David Wondrich
The best history of the American bar before Prohibition closed it. Jerry Thomas as protagonist.
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
How a country talked itself into the dry years, and how it climbed back out.
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