Drinks have flowed at the Green Mill, the jazz club in front of you, since around 1907. The Green Mill opened around 1907 and reached its golden age in the 1920s, when Uptown was Chicago's glittering entertainment district. During Prohibition the club was partly controlled by Machine Gun Jack McGurn, a henchman of Al Capone, and Capone himself favored a booth here with sightlines to both doors.
Beneath the bar, tunnels are said to have let bootleggers slip away during raids. Performers from Billie Holiday to Al Jolson played its small stage, and the entertainer Joe E. Lewis was nearly killed for trying to leave for a rival club. The Green Mill never closed and never lost its Jazz Age interior of green velvet and Art Deco curves.
Look at the curving neon sign and the old facade; step inside on a night with live music, and the room sounds much as it did a century ago.