How do you get into The Back Room?
We have not confirmed it. The Back Room is in the directory because it calls itself a speakeasy, and that is the whole of what we can stand behind about its door.
Drinks of the era
We have not seen this venue’s own list, so what follows is the period rather than the bar: Blood and Sand, Bobby Burns, and Rob Roy are all drinks of this era, and each links to its origin and its build.
Where The Back Room sits
The Back Room is in New York, New York, in the county of the same name, in the Mid-Atlantic of the United States.
Our directory currently lists 66 speakeasies and hidden bars in New York. The full list is on our guide to hidden bars in New York.
Measured from the map pins, the closest of those to The Back Room are Speakeasy Dollhouse, a few doors away, 2nd Floor on Clinton, about 150 m away, and Ye’s Apothecary, about 250 m away.
New York holds 101 listed venues in this directory. See them all on our New York speakeasy guide.
Prohibition in New York
New York came under national prohibition on 17 January 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment took effect and the Volstead Act defined an intoxicating beverage as anything above one half of one per cent alcohol — a threshold strict enough to close breweries that had expected to survive.
More on the period in our history of Prohibition in New York.
What the newspapers recorded in New York
Searching the Library of Congress run of New York newspapers for speakeasy, blind pig and bootlegger across 1920 to 1933 returns dated pages anyone can open. These are from New York:
- The daily worker, December 15, 1931 — read the page at the Library of Congress
- The daily worker, July 14, 1927 — read the page at the Library of Congress
- The daily worker, August 5, 1927 — read the page at the Library of Congress
- The daily worker, October 16, 1930 — read the page at the Library of Congress
Planning a visit
Hours published by the venue:
- Monday to Wednesday, 6pm to 02:00+
- Thursday to Friday, 6pm to 03:00+
- Sunday, 6pm to 02:00+
Hours as published on the venue’s own site, retrieved 9 October 2026.
You can reach The Back Room by phone on (212) 228-5098, through its own website, and on Facebook, Instagram, X, and Tiktok.
The address is 102 Norfolk Street, New York, NY 10002. Open in Google Maps.
What we have confirmed
For The Back Room we hold street address, telephone number, official website, social accounts, and opening hours. We do not yet hold a published drinks list, an online booking link, or a listed-building record.
It is in the directory because its own name names a back room and calls it a room rather than a bar and the description in the source data describes it as a speakeasy.
Two independent open datasets, OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps, both carry this venue at this location. Agreement between them is the strongest existence check we can make without visiting.
The source data classifies the premises as a bar.