Since 1922, the narrow shop that once housed McLhinney News Depot on North Washington Street in Havre de Grace has been a social hub for the town. For decades, it was the place where locals could buy their newspapers, and in recent years, it's been a computer store and repair shop.
On July 1, it became the site of Maryland's first speakeasy museum.
"It was kind of a joke that I always shared with my dad, that if no one started a speakeasy museum, if I ever came back home, I was going to start one," says Annie McLhinney-Cochran, 58, the founder of the museum and a Havre de Grace native. McLhinney-Cochran returned to her hometown from San Diego five-and-a-half years ago and has finally made good on her promise.
The museum is in its first phase of development. For its second phase, which begins in September, McLhinney-Cochran intends to do a walking tour of 10 of the 15 speakeasies she's identified in Havre de Grace. The final phase will involve the restoration of the Remax building next door, which McLhinney-Cochran says was the site of an actual speakeasy.
"The goal is to refurbish it and move the collection there," she says.
The museum itself is in the entrance of the bric-a-brac store — on the walls are vintage photos from the Prohibition era and beyond, along with posters with text about Maryland's Prohibition history.
McLhinney-Cochran says she is in the process of applying for grants for the restoration and estimates the project will take two years to complete. Although it's an ambitious project, it's a fitting one, given Maryland's and Harford County's Prohibition history — one that involves resisting the law and one that has produced local legends, often a mix of mythology and folklore.
From the moment the Volstead Act was enforced in 1920, and until it ended in 1933, Maryland was known as a state that stubbornly refused to accept Prohibition. According to experts, Baltimore led the way, and the surrounding areas did the same.
"The attitude in Baltimore was: The federal government put this constitutional amendment in — let the federal government enforce it," says Professor William Rorabaugh, a historian at the University of Washington and the author of "The Alcohol Republic: An American Tradition."
Maryland quickly developed a reputation as a wet state, and Baltimore became well-known as a wet city.
"Baltimore was basically in the competition for one of the wettest cities in the country," says Daniel Okrent, author of "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition." "It had the two key elements of a place that would resist Prohibition — it was a port city; it was heavily Catholic. The Catholics across the country opposed Prohibition unanimously."
Despite Maryland's rejection of Prohibition, the federal mandate meant finding alcohol to drink and distribute was still somewhat of a covert operation.
According to Rorabaugh, Maryland had some unique ways of skirting legislation. Of special note was Montgomery County, where the county government actually cut a deal with the bootleggers.
The state also benefited from a covert delivery system known as Rum Row, a network of offshore ships that traveled as far as Cape Cod to Virginia delivering alcohol.
"Chesapeake Bay is enormous. There's lots of places to bring liquor. That's why Havre de Grace would be important — it was a key hub in that transportation," says Rorabaugh. "They'd land on the west side because their customers were there."
One of the best-known residues of the Prohibition are speakeasies, places where people would drink alcohol publicly, albeit secretively. They have become the stuff of legend, and stories about them often mix mythology, facts and anecdotes.
McLhinney-Cochran said tales have floated around Havre de Grace about speakeasies and the figures who frequented them; there are rumours of Frank Sinatra and Al Capone sightings.
"Some of the big entertainers would come to town because it was one of the places they could drink pretty much openly," says McLhinney-Cochran.
Experts say these rumors are common, and the romanticism and exoticism associated with the Prohibition means these tales persist.
"None of it can be verified — that's the reason we have so many stories. It's impossible to prove a negative," says Okrent. "It's impossible to prove that Frank Sinatra didn't go to that speakeasy. That enables the mythological stories to flourish."
It's also difficult to estimate how many speakeasies were in Maryland, Havre de Grace or any town.
"Part of the problem is speakeasies were illegal. They didn't need a license. There were no regulations surrounding them," says Professor Roderick Phillips, author of "Alcohol: A History" and a historian at Carleton University in Ottawa. "There's very little to give you an idea of how many there were and how many people went to them."
This is true in Maryland.
"There are a lot of bars and places around that claim that they are [former speakeasies], but verifying that they are is pretty difficult," says Lara Westwood, special project archivist at the Maryland Historical Society.
But not everyone in the Maryland embraced its wet status. This is evident in a letter written to The Baltimore Sun in May 1922, by a person named Sharon from Harford County, on behalf of 20 men referred to as "some other citizens of Harford County." The letter asks that federal agents enforce Prohibition laws and increase the raids, claiming that many of the moonshiners disrupting the peace in the county came from other states.
"We believe as the majority of male citizens of Harford were in favor of local option, that the majority are also in favor of Prohibition," Sharon wrote.
Furthermore, federal, Baltimore and Washington agents still raided distilleries and speakeasies in the hope of enforcing the law. Raids that occurred in Harford and Prince George's counties in August 1923, where agents found 21,000 gallons of "alleged liquors," were reported by The Sun as "probably a greater total than the amount taken in any other one day's operations since Prohibition has been effective in Maryland."
In October 1927, The Sun reported there had been a total of $750,000 worth of seizures in nine months by Baltimore enforcement agents. One of the raids involved a distilling plant on a farm near Abingdon.
These raids were ultimately in vain, because by 1933, Prohibition was over.
Still, legislation of the past is the inspiration behind a museum that is looking to grow. In the interim, McLhinney-Cochran is creating a memory project and asking locals to share their oral histories of Prohibition and other memories past through a Facebook page.
"It's meant to capture some stories while we still have them," she says.