Exterior of DeMarco’s Department Store circa 1920s. Photo courtesy the Farmingdale-Bethpage Historical Society and the Farmingdale Public Library Digital Photograph Collection
continued spirits,” Teed said. “For that reason, and because of people like Dave Wondrich, who is a cocktail historian, we have access to the recipes that were used at the time and oftentimes the spirits that were being used, so to the best of our ability with the ingredients at hand, we are actually recreating those same cocktails.” Some cocktails offered at the speakeasy include the “French 75,” a mix of gin or cognac, lemon, sugar and champagne and the “Mary Pickford,” named after an actress in the 1920s, with aged white rum, maraschino liquor, pineapple, pomegranate, Peychaud’s
bitters and lime. Ten other cocktails are listed on the menu, along with wine and beer offerings. Bartending at the start of the pandemic was difficult as food was allowed, but alcoholic beverages were not. It made Teed feel as though his craft was lesser. “Fortunately enough,” he said, “it wasn’t completely like [Prohibition] because people were allowed to make to-go cocktails, so the industry held out for a while, but at a point, they stopped allowing to-go cocktails and when that happened it was 25% capacity. The people who were making serious money bartending now have very limited ability to keep the lights on and pay their rent,” Teed said. “What happened because of it is a lot of people paired down their staff so places [were] not run as efficiently as they want to. It’s more stress for everybody working, and the product sometimes suffers, but like fine dining, people genuinely care so you have people who still strive for that higher [end] result, but to an extent, it’s a bit reminiscent of [Prohibition].” Before the DeVito brothers renovated and reopened the speakeasy with the frozen yogurt shop as a front, Frank DeMarco owned DeMarco’s Department Store. No official documents show that a speakeasy existed at that Farming-
“I wanted to be the one to finally deliver it to where it was supposed to go.”
A bottle from the shipwrecked Lizzie D, gifted to Charlotte’s Speakeasy by an unnamed donor. Photo by Megan Naftali
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A Long Island speakesy 100 years in the making dale location, since it was illegal at the time to have one and there are no documented police raids. DeMarco’s store is estimated to have opened in the 1920s, and DeMarco was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, according to Toniann Contarino, a librarian at the Farmingdale Public Library. When Charlotte’s Speakeasy is open for business, DeVito likes to show people photographs of the outside of the building from the 1920s and show them the old escape route. On the way to the escape route, there is a table with mementos from the past and objects that people have gifted to the speakeasy. One such item includes a bottle from the shipwrecked Lizzie D. The Lizzie D was a tugboat that left New York Harbor in 1922 to allegedly assist a distressed schooner and vanished in a strong storm. There is speculation that the Lizzie D carried illegal liquor. The ship was found in 1977 when divers discovered the ship with crates with hundreds of bottles of Kentucky bourbon, Scotch whiskey and Canadian rye, about 15 miles off the coast of Long Island, according to the Mob Museum. “What are you giving this to me for?” DeVito said. “Look, about 100 years ago, this was on its way to you and it missed by [a few] miles. I wanted to be the one to finally deliver it to where it was supposed to go,” said the man who gave DeVito the bottle.
