Tours offer glimpse of Prohibition on LI

Dudley Philhower remembers watching boats come into Stony Brook Harbor laden with the illicit cargo fueling the bawdy lifestyle that defined the Roaring '20s.

"I remember the rumrunners coming in; there were loads of them around," said Philhower, 88, who now lives in upstate Claremont. "No one said what they were doing, but we knew what they were delivering."

That cargo -- cases and bottles of alcohol -- was smuggled into homes, restaurants and other harbors tucked along Long Island's North Shore. Many of those locations are now revealed in self-guided tours along Route 25A from Great Neck to Port Jefferson offered by the North Shore Promotion Alliance and the Long Island Conventions and Visitors Bureau.

"There was a lot of activity in these back roads and byways," said Gloria Rocchio, of the alliance.

Prohibition began in 1920 with the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed making, selling or consuming alcohol. But resourceful Long Islanders found their way around the law by transporting liquor over water as a rumrunner, making it and moving it over land as a bootlegger, or operating a speakeasy, an illegal bar where patrons needed a password to enter.

"They were looking to survive and adapt to the circumstances," said Deborah Boudreau, education manager for the Ward Melville Foundation, which helped research locations. "Some of them were entrepreneurs who wanted to profit from the situation and make a living. And also to probably retain the social culture and keep the status quo of people getting together."

The tour follows sites where historians believe flappers, gangsters and thirsty residents went to imbibe before Prohibition ended in 1933.

The North Shore's coast only had two Coast Guard stations, making it attractive to rumrunners, Rocchio said. Vanderbilt Motor Parkway, the major roadway at the time that ran between Queens and Lake Ronkonkoma, became known as "Rumrunners Road."

Speakeasies opened to provide customers for the illegal alcohol. Finnegan's Restaurant in Huntington and the former Smithtown Hotel, now the Arthur Avenue Restaurant, in the 1920s required customers to use a password, but today only ask for a reservation.

At the Mill Pond House restaurant in Centerport, tunnels that now serve as wine storage had provided access to a speakeasy across the street.

"It's nice to have that connection to the past," said Dean Philippis, the restaurant owner for nine years. "You see what's left of the tunnels and you know something was going on."

Gerald Duff said local legend has it his home on Stony Brook Road was a speakeasy and that a backyard shed that burned down three years ago had been an illegal distillery.

"An old timer who used to live nearby told us they used to sell booze at the back door," Duff said. "He said he remembers coming to the back door to buy hooch for his parents. It's interesting to live in a piece of history."