Summer Reading

Shaking Up Prohibition in New Orleans

June 01, 2015

Shaking Up Prohibition in New Orleans: Authentic Vintage Cocktails from A to Z
by Olivia Leonhardt and Hilda Phelps Hammond

“New Orleans is frankly and belligerently wet. It has no sympathy with Prohibition and its annual consumption of liquor is appalling. Hell-bound people have plenty of liquor,” wrote Sanford Jarrell in his 1929 New Orleans, the Civilized and Lovely City. New Orleans restaurants never even stopped serving booze—some waiters served it from hip flasks and Antoine’s had a speakeasy that could be found through a door in the ladies’ restroom. New Orleans was, by all accounts, the wettest city in America.

A charming alphabet book originally assembled in 1929 by Olive Leonhardt and Hilda Phelps Hammond, Shaking Up Prohibition shows exactly what New Orleans thought of Prohibition. John Magill writes an informative foreword that sets the stage for the alphabetical compendium of tongue-in-cheek poems, illustrations and cocktail recipes.

Among our favorites is R for the Rx from the doctor who could prescribe alcohol to treat ailments. This “popular old M.D.” had “more patients than he could see.”