FallPaperturn - Flipbook - Page 21
days of the Prohibition
Era, a legendary still hidden across the road from
the hotel pumped applejack through secret underground pipes to
awaiting barrels in the
basement. Though the
remnants of what appears to be the pipeline9s
taps still exist, Ruth
Thomson couldn9t confirm the existence of the
applejack pipeline but
her brother, the late T.
Leonard Hill, remembered a trap door in the
hotel that could be used
to quickly drop the barrels of illegal alcohol
through the floor of the
bar and into the basement if local inspectors
were spotted heading
their way. A false room
discovered in the tavern9s
basement during renovations in 2006, seemed to
corroborate the legend.
But as clever and elaborate as Oscar Vliet9s attempts at concealment
may have been, he was
The Bernardsville News reported a raid
frequently in court for vi- on the Vliet Hotel and two other nearby
olating the liquor laws. establishments in 1924.
On a busy Friday in July
1924, state troopers and officers from the Somerset County prosecutor9s office raided the River View Hotel in Pottersville; the Peapack Hotel; and Oscar Vliet9s Gladstone Hotel, where, according
to, The Central New Jersey Home News, authorities seized eighteen
half pints of
