How do you get into The Library?
The Library is listed as password required. A phrase or code, given on booking or by the venue’s own channel.
Reservations are taken through Opentable. Booking ahead is the surest way in.
What “password required” means in practice
Password bars are the closest modern descendant of the real thing. In the 1920s a phrase at the door was a filter against enforcement, not a piece of theatre; the word changed when a place was raided or when a doorman was arrested. Today it filters for intent instead — the people who get in are the ones who looked the bar up and followed its instructions. Most venues hand the phrase out with a booking confirmation or post it quietly on their own social account for a day at a time.
The drinks at The Library
How the venue describes itself: “Bourbon & Branch is a San Francisco speakeasy that operated illegally during Prohibition from 1921 to 1933. Password required, craft cocktails, and a set of house rules straight from the era. 501 Jones St.” (from its own website, retrieved 9 October 2026)
The venue publishes a price range of $$$.
Beyond what the venue publishes we have not verified a list, so what follows is the period rather than the bar: Corpse Reviver No. 2, Twentieth Century, and White Lady are all drinks of this era, and each links to its origin and its build.
Where The Library sits
The Library is in San Francisco, California, in the county of the same name, in the West of the United States. The city sits inside the Bay Area metropolitan area.
Our directory currently lists 21 speakeasies and hidden bars in San Francisco. The full list is on our guide to hidden bars in San Francisco.
Measured from the map pins, the closest of those to The Library are Bourbon and Branch, a few doors away, The Ipswitch, a few doors away, and Hidden Bar SF, about 150 m away.
California holds 173 listed venues in this directory. See them all on our California speakeasy guide.
Prohibition in California
California 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 California.
What the newspapers recorded in San Francisco
Searching the Library of Congress run of California newspapers for speakeasy, blind pig and bootlegger across 1920 to 1933 returns dated pages anyone can open. These are from San Francisco:
- The Western outlook, December 24, 1927 — read the page at the Library of Congress
Planning a visit
Hours published by the venue:
- Sunday and Monday to Wednesday, 6pm to midnight
- Thursday to Saturday, 6pm to 2am
Hours as published on the venue’s own site, retrieved 9 October 2026.
You can reach The Library by phone on (415) 346-1735, through its own website, and on Facebook and Instagram.
The address is 510 O’Farrell St, San Francisco, CA 94102. Open in Google Maps.
What we have confirmed
For The Library we hold street address, telephone number, official website, social accounts, opening hours, and an online booking link. We do not yet hold a published drinks list or a listed-building record.
It is in the directory because its own name uses a concealment trope and the description in the source data mentions a password and 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.