Three Midtown Bars Hold Your Table for a Prohibition Night Walk
A three-hour Midtown West walk into three bars that hold seats for the group, with the Prohibition story told in between.
The walk starts on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, outside the office entrance of One Worldwide Plaza, with Carnegie Diner lit up across the road. A guide takes the group into three venues over the next three hours. The operator describes them as historic bars, pubs, and speakeasies, and names none of them in advance.
Admission at all three is covered, and the group walks in to space already held for it. That is the part you are paying for. On a Friday night in the Theater District, the door is the hard part. The company behind the walk started in 2011 as a table-booking service for New York nightlife.
Departures run from late afternoon into the evening, at 4:00 PM, 5:00 PM, 6:30 PM, 7:00 PM, and 7:30 PM. A shared departure caps at 18 travelers, and one booking can hold up to 10. Everyone meets at the same corner, and there is no hotel pickup.
Drinks and food are separate. Cocktails at the venues run from 18 to 25 dollars, and most of them add card and processing fees on top of that.
Speakeasy Drinks and Prohibition History Tour NYCThree hours on foot through Midtown West. Admission and held seating at three venues, with drinks bought at the bar.www.viator.comThree Stops Across Three Hours
The route works a small patch of Midtown West. It passes Studio 54 on West 54th Street, crosses the Times Square and Theater District blocks, and moves through Hell's Kitchen. Nothing between stops runs longer than a few blocks, though three hours on foot is the shape of the evening, and the listing asks for a moderate level of fitness.
The operator describes the three venues by type and stops short of naming them: one underground room, one modern take on the speakeasy, and one still trading on the site it occupied in the 1920s. Guides work in English, and the group sits together at every stop, which makes the evening workable on your own.
A departure can be cancelled outright when too few people book it. That matters when a whole evening is built around this one thing.
Admission Is Covered. The Drinks Are Not.
What the ticket buys is entry. Admission at all three venues is included, the group gets express entry, and space is held for it at each stop. Gratuity sits outside that.
Everything you drink is bought at the bar. Cocktails run from 18 to 25 dollars, and most venues add card and processing fees. Three rounds across three stops is the number to budget against.
One reviewer totalled it up in October 2022: "Average on each place we paid from 20-25 usd per drink (3 drinks in 3 places)."
Non-alcoholic menus are available at the venues. The evening still works for anyone skipping the drinking.
What the Operator Asks For
The operator states its door requirements up front, and the list is short.
- Everyone must be 21 or older with valid photo identification. Non-US citizens should carry a passport.
- The dress code is business or upscale casual. No sportswear, flip flops, tank tops, or baseball caps.
- Three hours on foot make comfortable shoes the practical call.
The tour is also listed as unsuitable for travelers with spinal injuries or poor cardiovascular health, and for anyone pregnant.
The Story Between the Bars
The history is what fills the three hours. The guide covers immigration and New York politics in the run-up to Prohibition, the women of the Gilded Age and the temperance movement that grew out of that era, and the oil fortune the movement helped build. Bootleggers and the period's better-known gangsters come in along the way. The last stop deals with how quickly the whole thing collapsed.
It lands differently in a room that was open at the time. One of the three venues still trades on the site it occupied in the 1920s. The other two carry the period through their fittings and their stories, and all three are reached through ordinary front doors. What this evening sells is the room, the history attached to it, and a seat inside both.
Guides rotate, and reviewers name theirs by first name far more often than they name the bars.
The rating on this tour sits at 4.7 across 222 reviews.
Cancel at least 24 hours before departure for a full refund. Inside that window nothing comes back, and the operator can call off a departure that does not fill. The ticket arrives on your phone, and the meeting point never moves: the office entrance of One Worldwide Plaza, Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th, with a bike rack in front of it.
The pin above marks Carnegie Diner, 828 Eighth Avenue. The entrance is straight across the avenue from it. The operator warns that map apps route people around to a side street. The group forms on Eighth Avenue itself.
A 7:30 PM departure has you back on the street around 10:30, a couple of blocks from the Hell's Kitchen kitchens that stay open late.