This page is a part of our current exhibit, Fermenting a Communal Spirit: Morris County Tavern, Speakeasies & Social Clubs, on display through 2026. For the complete story, come visit any time during Acorn Hall’s regular hours.
During Prohibition, Abner “Longy” Zwillman rose to become the “Al Capone of New Jersey” and was allegedly responsible for 40% of bootleg alcohol smuggled into the US. Said to have had an agreement with Seagram’s distillery in Canada, he was known to have invested in “high-class joints” that attracted customers able to afford his brand-label booze. He also convinced associates such as Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, and Meyer Lansky to invest in area speakeasies.
A few years apart in age, he and Samuel Blume and Jacob Weinberg of the Canary Cottage grew up in the same Newark neighborhood and were the sons of Jewish immigrants. Weinberg’s father, an Austrian Jewish immigrant, was the longtime owner of a Newark saloon. Weinberg and Blume got their start at “Sue’s Café,” a large speakeasy and gambling house housed in the Weinberg’s old saloon. After it was spectacularly raided in January 1922, and as soon as Blume had served a five month sentence, the pair took over the Canary Cottage, operating it until 1961. Although not documented – as mob activity is wont to be – Zwillman was likely an investor in the Canary Cottage as it was exactly the kind of elegant, upscale establishment where he looked to sell his imported whiskey and beer. And as his declassified FBI file would later confirm, it was a place he enjoyed visiting for a round of golf.
In July 1951, the US Senate Select Committee of Organized Crime held hearings focusing specifically on the New Jersey underworld. Zwillman was subpoenaed to testify that August, but was mysteriously unlocatable. After initially searching for him on yachts along the Atlantic seaboard, an informant alerted federal agents that Zwillman was in fact hiding out in Florham Park at none other than the Canary Cottage. In what was surely a complete coincidence, state police and local law enforcement raided the club on an anonymous tip the very next day. Zwillman was not caught, but Blume was once again arrested. According to news reports, an unknown “group of businessmen,” whom Blume refused to identify, had hired strippers, and he was charged with “maintaining a disorderly house.” He eventually pled no contest to “causing a lewd and indecent show to be performed,” and Zwillman miraculously reappeared in Newark ready to testify.
For more:
The Story of the Canary Cottage (1919-1923)
The Story of the Canary Cottage (1923-1933)
