buffet flat

n. a speakeasy or other unregulated or illegal entertainment establishment which sells alcohol, usually located in an apartment or home. Subjects: English, United States, Crime & Prisons, Food & Drink, Slang

Editorial Note: Now historical.

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Citations: 1911 Chicago Daily Tribune (Jan. 24) “Veteran Gambler Says Vice Grows With Police Aid” p. 1: From Twenty-second street south in Michigan avenue, Wabash avenue, State street, and the cross streets as far south as Thirty-first street is a rich district of the so-called buffet flats. There, too, can be found hundreds of handbooks, gaming houses, and all night saloons of the most vicious character. 1911 Gene Morgan Chicago Daily Tribune (Feb. 19) “It Takes an Out-of-Town Minister Really to See Chicago Vice” p. 11: The “buffet flat” is thus termed because it is possible to buy all kinds of liquor in these places at all hours—and for all prices. 1916 Lincoln Daily News (Neb.) (Sept. 8) p. 3: The Buffet Flat and Wine Room, Recruiting Stations for White Slavers, Exposed. 1927 Harvey Anderson @ New York City Port Arthur News (Texas) (Jan. 9) “Buffet Flat Solves Many of High Society’s Drinking Problems” p. 3: The casual, migratory and unskilled drinkers of the world, along with a scattering of habitual, non-migratory and skilful [sic] drinkers, have found a new haven. It is the buffet flat and the New York police are authority for the statement that there are now about 10,000 of these sheltered retreats in Manhattan and Brooklyn and they are diverting streams of “sucker” money from the night clubs and they constitute a new and baffling factor in the problem of liquor law enforcement. 1933 Nevada State Journal (Reno) (Dec. 17) “Emperor Jones Is Coming” p. 7: Have you ever been to a buffet flat? It’s neither a lunchroom nor a variation of a western plain. It’s peculiar to Harlem, yet few white visitors to that Negro haven in New York City ever hear of it, and practically none get into one. In “Emperor Jones,” a picturization of Eugene O’Neill’s famous play…a buffet flat is shown in all its colorful detail. A buffet flat is simply a Harlem apartment to which people come to sit around, eat, drink, talk, sing and dance.

Posted 2 Sep 04 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

Do you have any pictures of what a buffet flat really looks like.

by Michael Cleckley 30 Mar 08, 0421 GMT