Welcome to Bill's NYC

If the idea of entering a time machine holds the slightest fascination for you and one of your destinations would be a trip to old New York during the Roaring Twenties, go to 57 East 54th Street, walk four steps down and back into time. For once you pass through the hand-carved swinging doors and enter the famous Silver Dollar Bar, you'll find everything just as it was back in the mid 1920's when Bill Hardy first converted this five-story brownstone into one of New York's most prominent and celebrated speakeasies.

One is immediately bathed in nostalgia upon entering this room as priceless photos of prize fighters and thoroughbred race horses adorn every inch of wall space embracing with warmth the antique bar and hand sculpted back bar. There's even an antique cash register, rounding out the theme.

Whereas the first floor of Bill's is all sports memorabilia, (it was originally for men only), the second floor is a museum to the world of entertainment. This high-ceilinged dining room, with its overhead oak beams, also boasts not an inch of empty wall space with posters and photos dating from the mid 1800's to the famous Gay Nineties. You'll see everything from an autographed Buffalo Bill poster, to century-old playbills, to a bevy of famous Ziegfield girls, to a very young Al Jolson in this one-of-a-kind collection of “who was who”.

The third floor, The Tenderloin Room, is for private parties only and it also features a finely crafted bar. As the legend always had it, this bar was converted from a fireplace in the old Rockefeller mansion but recently that legend was altered when Bill Hardy's widow, (herself a former Ziegfield girl), celebrated her 90th birthday at Bill's and was reported to have said with authority, “Oh no, dear, that bar came out of the old Delmonico's”.

Bill's Gay Nineties features live piano on the first floor, (Monday night through Saturday), a deliciously hearty menu for both lunch and dinner on the first two floors, and good stiff drinks wherever you are.

Bill Hardy must be proud of the tradition which has been upheld due to the more than capable proprietorship for the past twenty seven years of Barbara Bart. For in the June, 2006, issue of Esquire Magazine, Bill's Gay Nineties made the celebrated list of being one of “The Best Bars in America”. So stop in with a friend, Friend, belly up and drink in old New York.