A Frozen Yogurt Shop's Journey To Award-Winning Prohibition-Era Speakeasy On Long Island

FARMINGDALE, NY — What started as an underground room abandoned for 85 years beneath rusty cellar doors flanked by mud and broken cement has been rejuvenated into an award-winning Long Island nightclub.

Charlotte's Speakeasy in Farmingdale won best nightclub on Long Island in the 2023 Bethpage Best of LI Awards.

The lounge, below a frozen yogurt and ice cream shop, offers craft cocktails from mixologists, bar food and live music. But the atmosphere is arguably the biggest draw.

"When you’re here, you’re standing where people were hiding from the cops 100 years ago," Nick DeVito, 60, told Patch.

The lounge was actually used as a speakeasy during Prohibition in the Roaring 1920s and early '30s. The creation, sale and transportation of alcohol was banned in the United States for 14 years. People who wanted to indulge would flock to illicit nightclubs — speakeasies — where they would avoid the law.

The basement of Charlotte's was one such place.

Nick DeVito and his brother, John, 56, came to Farmingdale in 2014 looking for a mixed-use building to run their printing business out of the back. The two sought to run a different retail shop as to not directly compete with Main Street's other printers. Pizza was considered, but Farmingdale's crowded scene nixed the idea. The DeVitos arrived at the idea of frozen yogurt and ice cream to compliment the village's budding restaurant scene.

The real estate representative brought the brothers into their "mess" of a backyard and opened a pair of cellar doors and invited the duo down.

"I was like, 'Yeah, I don’t know if I want to go down there,'" Nick said. "It looked like a root cellar, and I expected a dirt floor and a ceiling that was about 6 feet high."

The DeVitos were instead greeted by an arched entrance way at the bottom of the stairs. Pieces of tin ceilings and walls — all in disrepair — were present, along with a 12-foot ceiling in the basement.

"No one has a 12-foot ceiling in the basement," Nick said. "They want to dig as little as possible when making a basement. So I said to the real estate guy, 'What the hell? Why is there a 12-foot ceiling in the basement? Why are there the remnants of a tin wall covering and a tin ceiling?' He says, 'I don’t know. It’s good for storage.'"

The entrepreneurs did not buy it. They wanted to do something with the space but knew nothing of its history — until a trip by Farmingdale Village Mayor Ralph Ekstrand.

The DeVitos asked Ekstrand and late Village Historian Bill Johnston to share what they could about the large basement beneath their ice cream shop.

"We open up the ice cream store, and Mayor Ralph comes in one day," Nick recalled. "He goes, ‘How do you guys like it here?’ ‘Oh, we like it fine.’ He said, ‘How do you like having a speakeasy in your basement?’ I said, ‘We like that, too. What are you talking about?’"

Farmingdale used to be governed by a village police department before it merged with the Nassau County Police Department in 1953. Johnston, according to Ekstrand, said the village did not keep files on certain illegal activities during the Roaring '20s.

"'Yes, we all know that 294 Main Street is a speakeasy, but we're putting it down here on paper in written files that we're looking the other way,'" Ekstrand said.

And look the other way they did, Johnston, who died in 2019 at the age of 86, previously told Ekstrand.

"The village at that time, says, 'Prohibition is Prohibition. We're going to look the other way until something happens. If something happens, then we're going to have to come down on it,'" Ekstrand said.

The building's basement's architecture, the mayor said, was the "nail in the coffin" in all signs pointing to a speakeasy: A tall ceiling and several exits.

"They had, counting going upstairs, five ways to get out of the place," Ekstrand said. "Hmm, what building in the 1920s would have a 15-foot basement and five exits? And who in their right mind would put the metallic ceiling tile in their basement? Nobody's going to spend that money to put in their basement. We don't have proof, but the village folklore by the village historian says, 'Of course it was a speakeasy, but you're never going to find a written statement in the file at village hall saying 'village hall knew or promoted an illegal functioning place.' They're not going to do that.'"

A man named DeMarco used to operate the speakeasy under a department store, according to lore passed onto the DeVitos.

"Upstairs, they said he made a living, and downstairs, he made a fortune," Nick DeVito said. "The lightbulb went over our head, and we thought, ‘We’ve got the ice cream store. It’s the perfect front for a speakeasy.'"

The brothers were told by their contractor they would have to cut a hole in the floor and build a staircase should they want people to go downstairs. The two sat on the idea for a few years, as they already spent a "fortune" on the frozen yogurt business.

Completely renovating the basement and courtyard turned into a $500,000 endeavor.

"At a certain point, [John] said to me, 'We’re sitting on top of history. Literally sitting on top of history,'" Nick said.

The two felt they had to share the history of the speakeasy with the rest of Farmingdale and beyond.

The brothers got clearance — and strong encouragement — from the village, which helped them ensure their underground venture was up to code.

"I never saw government help a small business as much as these guys helped us," Nick DeVito said.

The contractor from Dreamworks Construction viewed repairing the speakeasy as a labor of love, DeVito said. The same woman who designed the interior of the dessert portion of Charlotte's was "let loose" downstairs, where she masterfully added intricate features to the speakeasy.

By the end of 2017, the DeVitos had successfully revitalized a decades-abandoned speakeasy into a thriving lounge.

When one enters the frozen yogurt shop, they can head toward the back of the store, where they will find a bookcase on the left of the store. The interested party offers the week's password to a bouncer (hint: The code is found on the speakeasy's website), who will then open the hidden door to the descending stairwell, which is adorned with tin from the original speakeasy.

The speakeasy was pretty "secret" in the beginning, Nick said. The brothers have since placed a small sign on the window of their shop.

"Some people wanted us to be very exclusive and limited," Nick said. "But we do need customers. As time went on, word of mouth is really our greatest advertising. It was tremendous to go from a local secret here in Farmingdale to having people come from all over."

People have visited from out-of-state and even abroad.

"Because it is a legitimate speakeasy, it is not a place that somebody built to try and capture the charm of a bygone era," Nick said.

Nick is especially proud of restoring and preserving the Prohibition relic.

"America is the greatest country in the world. We do everything the best except the thing we don’t do well: hold onto our history. We knock everything down and build a new one. That’s what America does, which is not so great. This stayed untouched for 85 years, and nobody did anything with it."

Most of what the speakeasy offers is inspired by the Roaring '20s but with a modern twist.

The alternative, staying pure to the speakeasies of yesteryear, would have required three things, a self-proclaimed "speakeasy aficionado" told the brothers: no chairs, teacups and coffee cups instead of glassware, and gin as the only alcohol.

"I go, 'Gin is terrible! I don’t want to serve only gin!'" Nick said. "I thought, 'This is great! We’ll be completely authentic! And we’ll be out of business in three months if I follow what he wants me to do.' [The aficionado] will come once with his friends, I’ll never see him again, and I’ll be out of business. So, we didn’t make it exactly like a speakeasy was."

The DeVitos researched how the speakeasies ran, how bootleggers operated, and the Long Island Prohibition scene.

Some cocktails are inspired by what people have been drinking for years, including an Old Fashioned. Some feature a modern twist, like The Sweet Charlotte's, which integrates vanilla frozen yogurt into a rum-based cocktail.

The food menu includes appetizers like a charcuterie plate and chicken wings, as well as the stone-fired pizza the DeVitos originally wanted to do.

The music is generally from the 1930s through 1950s, as the brothers feel people won't really relate to 1920s tunes. The live bands the speakeasy offers are very popular, Nick said.

Nick gets a kick out of showing patrons the escape route that people used 100 years ago. An underground path leads through the underbelly of the dessert shop and up to the back door of the neighboring shoe repair shop.

"Only later, from the mayor, from the village historian, from the DeMarco family, who we met, they were able to tell us this was the way they used to get out if the cops came," DeVito said. "You can still get out that way, and I still take people every night through there to show them some of the things we found."

Speakeasies are still romanticized 100 years after their era began, DeVito said. Some of the Charlotte's customers are people in their 90s.

"It’s such a treat to have them down here," DeVito said. "The young girls will go over to this 94-year-old lady and go, 'You’re an inspiration!' These young girls in their 20s will say, 'You’re still going out in your 90s!'"

Lots of young people, DeVito said, love the flapper era and its style.

"They love the romance, the charm and the class of that time period. People got dressed up. It was just a little classier, a little more sophisticated, and people want to come here and get a taste of that again. They want to step into the past. We get these young girls who say, 'I should’ve been born in the 1920s, this is my time period, I wanted to be in 'The Great Gatsby!'"

The walls are adorned with photos of the DeVito family from Prohibition — a time where everyone would dress up, and men would always be in suits, Nick said.

"There is something about the romance. About the charm of that time period that people want a piece of still. They come down here. Some people feel like they’re transported back to another time."

Some come for the craft cocktails. Others for the live music in an intimate setting. Or people stay in the back outside patio. Many, however, come for the history, DeVito said.

"They want to be standing where other people were hiding out from the cops 100 years ago. They want to run out that escape door and pretend the cops are chasing after them. They want to be in a historic place. Here, we don’t have historic places that survived. We’ve got stuff that’s original. There’s stuff that was here 100 years ago. Not only is it a historic place, but some of the history has survived."

DeVito said his parents used to go to nightclubs. By the time he was old enough, he said there were not many classic nightclubs left.

"It wasn’t the same thing. You didn’t go out, dress up and see a show. Now, we have a place where you can go out, dress up and see a show. It’s sort of a throwback to when I was a kid, and then a further throwback to the Prohibition Era. It was something I thought there was a need for. To have a nightclub, and the fact this place is steeped in history makes it that much better."

The combination of Prohibition aesthetic, cocktails and music has turned the once-deserted dessert shop basement into an award-winning lounge.

And the DeVitos didn't even know they were nominated. They tried to win best ice cream shop for years. They would ask their employees to hand out cards encouraging people to vote. They never won. The brothers gave up.

Nick said he didn't even know to vote for Charlotte's Speakeasy in the Bethpage Best of Long Island Awards.

"It was just our loyal customers," he said. "People leave here every night hugging me and thanking me for preserving the history of the place. People come down here and have the greatest time. I had a guy who called me who said he and his wife were having a tough time, and could I get him a table? I maneuvered things around. They started dancing. I could almost cry telling this story: They started dancing together and he comes to me when he’s leaving and tells me, ‘We haven’t danced in five years together.’ But here, they danced together. To me, something like that makes this whole place worthwhile."