The Bad Law That Made Good Bars

WHEN YOU STEP into the Raines Law Room at The William hotel on East 39th Street in Manhattan, you’ll find a series of tastefully decorated lounges. Softly upholstered chairs, tufted leather couches, and low-light sconces create an atmosphere that’s more swanky club or private living room than hotel bar. But although there’s a boutique hotel with a few dozen rooms above (rates run anywhere from $275 to well over $1,000 per night), the Raines Law Room is a bar.

- Peter Suderman

Like its sister location in Chelsea, the bar at The William hotel is one of New York City’s finest cocktail lounges, with elaborately designed riffs on classics. There’s the Led By Moonlight, a kind of Old Fashioned with aged rum, sotol, dry Curaçao, muscovado, and both mole and orange bitters. Or you might prefer the Desert Bloom, a twist on the spicy margarita, with mezcal instead of tequila, plus bergamot, aji amarillo pepper, passion fruit, and lime juice.

It’s a classy joint, but New York hotels bearing the Raines Law moniker weren’t always that way.

In 1896, the state legislature passed a bill that would become known as the Raines Law, named for its chief backer, Republican Sen. John Raines. That law, Raines explained in an essay that year for The North American Review, was aimed at taxing and regulating the sale of alcohol in New York to generate government revenue and reduce the number of booze-selling businesses.

The previous system, Raines said, was understood to be corrupt, as it relied on discretionary licenses and a host of largely unenforced provisions. In addition to taxing saloons, the Raines Law imposed new rules about when, where, and to whom they could serve alcohol. It raised the drinking age to 18, restricted sales “in the vicinity of public institutions” such as asylums, and prohibited alcohol sales on Sundays or on any day between 1 and 5 a.m.

There was, however, an exception to the ban on Sunday sales: hotels, which could sell liquor to guests with their meals. To be classified as a hotel, a place of business had to have at least 10 rentable rooms and a few other amenities. Thus the Raines Law Hotel was born.