No doubt, there are innumerable stories about prohibition in Dutchess County. I can recall a number of times hearing these from my father as he discussed this part of our history with his friends, all of whom were affiliates of the police and FBI.
These memories recently resurfaced when I began going through some of my father’s old belongings. His second wife had recently died, and a number of these family artifacts were found in her attic.
In a venture around the region about a year ago, I came upon a building well concealed by trees. It was a brick building, apparently an underground extension of another old brick building since leveled. Whereas when that building was standing, you’d never know it was there unless you happened upon its entrance in a side wall of the dark basement that once stood there beneath a fairly large home. With that home now gone, the westward sun shone upon the barren wall, revealing a unique bright red brick face and doorway that appeared to lead you to either a gulley or some long corridor. Neither of these I ventured into at the time.
Middletown PA
Recently, a year after this meeting up with the mysterious entranceway, an article was posted in the Yahoo News. The picture in that article looked nearly identical to that of the building I ventured to a year ago. For a few second I thought this was in fact the exact same building, until I read the article which claimed it was in Pennsylvania.
But then it occurred to me–the description of building I read as I reviewed the article still sounded much like what I had found. This left me unable to sleep that night.
The next morning, the first thing I do once the sun was up was head back to that building back in the woods of an old mansion’s grounds. I looked at the entrance again, with the sun angled just right, and then ventured into it–and lo and behold, as I expected, I found the remains of an old wine room where bottles of liqueur and kegs of beer once sat, the remains of which strewn around. Even in partial darkness, due to the sun creeping through the western facing entrance, I was able to snap these pictures of the facility.
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Brian Altonen, MPH, MS 
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