A Brief History of Brooklyn Cocktails

Including the Luckless History of The Brooklyn Cocktail; and a Possible Chicago-Brooklyn Hotel Cocktail Connection.

A postcard for the Penguin Cocktail Lounge and Bar inside the Towers Hotel in Brooklyn Heights

Nobody talks about the Brooklyn cocktail scene.

I don’t mean the current scene; that gets plenty of press, and has since the late aughts when the first craft cocktail bars opened in the Borough of Kings.

I mean everything that came before that. Reams have been …