Rosslyn Hotel
The Rosslyn Hotel opened in 1914 at 5th and Main Streets in Los Angeles. Despite its 800 rooms, it was frequently full and in 1923, with Prohibition in full force, a 275 room annex was opened on the other side of 5th Street, connected to the older building by a subterranean corridor. The corridor split a basement which contained barber shops, shoeshine stands and eventually a speakeasy known as the Monterey Room.
In the style upper-classes lounges of the day, a hat check room and reception desk greeted the visitor to the Monterey Room. Speakeasies were so common in Los Angeles that one newspaper of the day estimated there were more than 400 illegal bars operating in the city in 1919. Remaining hidden was of little concern.
Because of its distance to Canada and the professional fervor of government agents inspecting cargoes on ships arriving in the port at San Pedro, California speakeasies dispensed liquor of poorer quality than that of their northern brethren. Coupled with the new behavior of women accompanying men to bars – almost unheard of prior to Prohibition – bartenders needed considerable skill and inventiveness to arrive at new drink recipes – called cocktails – which masked the taste and texture of the cheap booze.
The access to fresh fruit, especially citrus, made California a leader in the development of many well-known and oft consumed cocktails today. Because of the sheer number of speakeasies and less well-heeled establishments known as blind pigs throughout Los Angeles, enforcement in the city was sporadic, and many speakeasies operated throughout the period without ever being disrupted by a raid.
At least twice Californians voted on statewide enforcement propositions and defeated them, and local support for enforced temperance was tepid at best, leaving the enforcement of the Volstead Act to the overextended federal government.