Prohibition Detroit: Rum Runners, the Purple Gang and the Bars That Survived
Seven bars, from a downtown jazz room to a Belgian feather-bowling hall, and the dry years when the Detroit River carried most of America’s smuggled liquor.
- Stops 7
- Time An afternoon and evening
- Cost Free guide
- Best by Car or rideshare (the first two stops are walkable downtown, and someone should be driving who isn’t drinking)
The guide is free. Admission, food, drinks and parking along the way are on you.
Every stop on this route is a working bar or restaurant, so it runs on their hours, and several keep short weeks. Check before you go, and plan a ride: this is a lot of bars. We haven’t been to any of these seven stops yet. They’re all marked, and we’d love your help with them.
The route in Google Maps, in parts
Stop 1
Cliff Bell’s
During ProhibitionBell ran speakeasies; club opened 1935VisitingRestaurant or barOur visitNot yet
Start downtown, at 2030 Park Avenue, with the man who made it through. John Clifford Bell ran speakeasies during Prohibition, among them the DAC Annex and the Parisian Club, attracted enough police attention to spend four months on the run in 1928, and was eventually arrested.
When it was legal again, he went straight. Bell opened Cliff Bell’s here in 1935, in an Albert Kahn building with an interior by Charles Agree: mahogany, brass, green velvet walls and gold leaf on the domed ceilings, plus air conditioning, still a novelty. He ran it until 1958. The room went dark in 1985 and sat empty for about twenty years before a restoration reopened it in February 2006. It marked twenty years back this February.
So this isn’t a blind pig. It’s what a blind pig operator built once he didn’t have to hide. There’s jazz most nights; book ahead.
Stop 2
Tommy’s Detroit Bar & Grill
During ProhibitionLittle Harry’s, a basement speakeasyVisitingRestaurant or barOur visitNot yet
A short walk west, at 624 Third, Tommy’s Detroit Bar & Grill sits on top of the best-documented speakeasy on this route. In 2013, Wayne State University archaeologists, working with Preservation Detroit, dug the basement and found a staircase, a bricked-up tunnel running about ten feet to a small wood-paneled room, and a walled-off space with no doors or windows. One of the researchers called the evidence of a speakeasy overwhelming.
The Detroit Historical Society holds a guest card for “Little Harry’s” at this address. Harry Weitzman owned the building in the late 1920s, when the Purple Gang was at its peak, and researchers think the place was named for him. There’s no evidence he was a Purple Gang member, and the gang link remains likely but unproven.
The Purple Gang itself was real enough: mostly sons of Jewish immigrants from the east side, they hijacked rival rum runners’ loads on the river and frozen Lake St. Clair until the 1931 Collingwood Manor murders sent their leaders to prison for life. Order a burger and ask about the basement.
Stop 3
Nancy Whiskey
During ProhibitionSaloon since 1902VisitingRestaurant or barOur visitNot yet
Drive a few minutes west to 2644 Harrison Street, in North Corktown, where Nancy Whiskey has been a saloon since 1902, when it switched over from a corner store. The sign calls it Detroit’s oldest party.
Detroiters say they kept drinking here through Prohibition, when this was a speakeasy. That’s the bar’s telling, and in a neighborhood a mile from the river during the years when roughly three-quarters of the liquor smuggled into the country came across at Detroit and Windsor, it isn’t hard to believe.
The better-documented story is later. When Jimmy Hoffa took over Teamsters Local 299 a block away in 1937, this became his bar, and eventually it put in a phone booth for his use alone. An electrical fire gutted the place in 2009; owner Gerald Stevens rebuilt it, tin ceiling and phone booth included. Staff tell ghost stories about the basement. You can decide.
Stop 4
The Painted Lady
During ProhibitionSpeakeasy, by local tellingVisitingRestaurant or barOur visitNot yet
Head north to Hamtramck, a town whose Prohibition years were wild enough that local historian Greg Kowalski filled a book with them. At 2930 Jacob Street, a block or two from Keyworth Stadium, the Painted Lady occupies a Victorian building that predates Prohibition.
The story goes that it was a speakeasy then, and the evidence people point to is a hidden staircase behind a bookcase in the front room, along with a small room and the remains of a basement bar. We haven’t found records naming the dry-years business, so treat it as lore with something to show for itself.
What came later is well known. From 1974, Lili Karwowski ran the place as Lili’s 21, a home for Detroit’s punk and rock bands for nearly three decades, with her sons working the bar. Her family sold it in 2002, and the new owners, longtime regulars, renamed it and kept the stage in the corner. It gets packed around Detroit City FC games.
Stop 5
Dakota Inn Rathskeller
During ProhibitionOpened August 1, 1933VisitingRestaurant or barOur visitNot yet
West to 17324 John R, just off McNichols. The Dakota Inn Rathskeller is the first round after Prohibition. Karl Kurz, who worked at Ford’s Highland Park plant, bought a rundown Chinese hand laundry here and opened a German-style rathskeller on August 1, 1933, less than three months after beer became legal again in Michigan and four months before national repeal.
It started with a three-stool bar. Three generations of the Kurz family grew it into the room you see: dark polished wood, beer steins, family hunting trophies and hand-painted scenes from Kurz’s German childhood. It was listed as a state historic site in 1988.
In 2025 the Kurz family sold it to developer Paddy Lynch, who also owns the Schvitz and Dutch Girl Donuts and has pledged to keep the dining room as it is, while opening up the downstairs bar and adding a biergarten out back. Hours have been short, Thursday through Saturday evenings, so check first.
Stop 6
Two Way Inn
During ProhibitionSpeakeasy, says the recordVisitingRestaurant or barOur visitNot yet
Northeast to 17897 Mt. Elliott, in the Nolan neighborhood, where the Two Way Inn claims to be the oldest bar in Detroit. Philetus Norris, a Civil War colonel who later became the second superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, built it in the 1870s when this was the village of Norris, well outside the city.
Over its life the building has been a general store and post office, a saloon, a stagecoach stop, a village jail, a dance hall and, by some accounts, a brothel. During Prohibition it ran as a speakeasy, at times with a dentist’s office for cover. The Malak family has run it since 1973.
Regulars and ghost hunters say Norris himself never quite left. That part is lore. The bar is real, small and very much a neighborhood place: be a good guest.
Stop 7
Cadieux Cafe
During ProhibitionBelgian speakeasy, early 1930sVisitingRestaurant or barOur visitNot yet
Finish on the far east side, at 4300 Cadieux Road. Two Belgian immigrants opened the Cadieux Cafe in the early 1930s as a speakeasy, and for most of a century since it has been the social hall of Metro Detroit’s Belgian community.
The draw is feather bowling, a Flemish game that plays like bocce crossed with curling on a curved dirt lane, with a feather stuck in the ground as the target. The Cadieux is one of the only places outside Belgium where you can play it, and leagues still meet here. In the dining room, order the mussels, done several ways, or the Belgian beer stew.
The Devos family owned it from 1962 and later sold it to Paul Howard, co-owner of Cliff Bell’s, and musician John Rutherford, which ties this route up neatly: you started the day in the club a former blind-pig operator built after repeal, and you’re ending it in a real Prohibition speakeasy, under the same management.