Speakeasy Smashdown: Cops Bring the Hammer Down on 17th Street Hideout

On a chilly Sunday morning, March 10, 1929, the Third Precinct liquor raiders descended upon 924 17th Street NW, determined to put an end to what they suspected was a thriving speakeasy. The unsuspecting patrons, however, had other plans. The door was barricaded, but the cops weren’t ones to be deterred. With pickaxes and battering rams, they smashed their way in, breaching window and skylight defenses with ease.

Martha Strayer, a witness to the mayhem, described the spectacle from her vantage point next door. ‘I saw a good part of the performance,’ she said, as the police stormed the third-floor apartment. The officers climbed up the fire escape, only to find the window leading into the fire escape barricaded with a heavy wood barrier built inside. The skylight, too, was no match for their persistence. Heavy 2×4 timbers nailed across the opening were no obstacle for the determined cops. After a 15-minute standoff, they finally gained entry through the skylight, which opened into one of the two bathrooms.

The apartment, a four-roomed space with a kitchen and two bathrooms, had been transformed into a makeshift speakeasy. The kitchen stove had been moved, and the chairs and tables that were once used for convivial purposes were now reduced to splintered kindling. The raiders, however, found neither bootlegger nor liquor, but a complete bootlegging layout, indicating that the operation was well-organized and sophisticated.

The Third Precinct raiders left the apartment in disarray, with only three unsmashed pieces of furniture remaining. The aftermath of the raid left Martha Strayer and other onlookers wondering what had been happening behind the closed doors of the 17th Street hideout. The incident serves as a stark reminder of the cat-and-mouse game played between law enforcement and bootleggers during Prohibition.