buffet flat

[Grant Barrett]

Great find, George! A couple of notes:

"Buffet" is in the OED as "a refreshment bar" from 1792, British. It is
in there as a "buffet-car" ("a railway carriage containing a
refreshment bar") from 1887, American. A quick search on buffet AND
(liquor OR booze) in the various newspaper archives turns up many hits
for "buffet" as a drinking establishment in the US; the earliest I
found without looking hard was 1907. These "buffets" are not always
illicit.

As for "buffet flat," a quick search makes me think that it appeared
first in Chicago, although this might not hold in the face of more
research. There's a gap between its first appearance in the Chicago
Tribune and its first appearance in reference to NYC.

Some of the "buffet flats" were not illicit because they existed during
prohibition and were serving alcohol, but because they violated other
laws relating to serving alcohol (wrong hours, on Sunday, not licensed,
not paying taxes, etc.) or were associated with criminal enterprises.

Perhaps "buffet flat" is a backformation from "buffet" to distinguish
gin-joints in apartments and residences from those that were found in
association with or attached to game rooms or brothels, or to
distinguish the illicit "buffets" from the licit.

Here are a few cites for "buffet flat":

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 @ NYC 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.

Grant Barrett