Bar Tour
Bar Tour
W
Charlotte’s
Farmingdale, New York
Resurrecting an original speakeasy.
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Bar Business Magazine
alk into Charlotte’s Frozen Yogurt and go to the bouncer at the back of the shop. Give him the wrong password, and you’re out of luck. Say the right word, however, and you’ll be ushered through the bookcase and downstairs into Charlotte’s Speakeasy. Both the yogurt shop and the speakeasy below it are owned by brothers John and Nick DeVito, who were looking to move from the paper business into a new venture. After moving into their current location in Farmingdale, New York, they found the basement was an unusual space with twelve-foot ceilings and the remnants of tin wallpaper and a tin ceiling. The brothers spoke to the mayor, the previous owners, and a village historian who all confirmed that the basement had been a speakeasy in the 1920s. “We had always intended on doing something with the basement and the large outdoor space,” says Nick DeVito. “Once we found out what it had been, we decided that if we were going
to do anything with it, we would have to restore it to a speakeasy.” Meanwhile, the yogurt shop took off, and within a year and a half, the brothers decided it was time to resurrect the speakeasy. They called in Leah Plevrites, Founder of studioBIG, who had designed their yogurt shop. Plevrites handled the entire design of the bar as well as the financing and project management. A contractor hired by the DeVito brothers handled all of the construction work. Plevrites was also tasked with creating branding and a logo. Her goal was to create a simple, mysterious logo. When she went into the basement to measure and survey the space, she happened upon the perfect solution on the tin wallpaper from the original speakeasy—a fleur-delis pattern with draped pearls. “We said this is really the heart of the place because we found something that really existed when people came here in the 20s,” says Plevrites. For the logo, she simplified the tin’s design and added the word Charlotte’s so people would know the bar was
June 2018 barbizmag.com
All Photos: Harriet Andronikides.
By Ashley Bray