There’s A Secret Speakeasy In The Middle Of O’Hare — And It’s The Last Of Its Kind

O’HARE — While O’Hare is in the midst of a decades-long effort to modernize and expand the facility, a bar at the heart of the airport has remained frozen in time for more than 50 years.

The Gaslight Club in the O’Hare Hilton Hotel is a relic from Chicago’s past. The 1920s-themed restaurant and bar used to have locations across the city and the globe. Now, the O’Hare club is the only location left.

Patrons no longer need a golden key to get into the restaurant, waitresses wear slightly more modest uniforms and the menu offers more than just steak and a baked potato. But the soul of the Gaslight Club is still alive, said owner Ray Dabizljevic.

“People walk in here, and they feel really intrigued. It’s like stepping back in time,” Dabizljevic said.

Martini Lunches And Cigarette Girls

Before there was Hugh Hefner, there was Burton Browne; and before Chicago was home to the very first Playboy Club, there was the Gold Coast Gaslight Club.

In the 1940s, Browne, a Chicago advertising executive, converted a small office next to his Downtown agency into the Sundown Room, a speakeasy-themed bar for his friends and clients. The bar became so popular that in 1953, Browne expanded his business venture and opened the first Gaslight Club, Dabizljevic said.

The club was decorated to resemble an early 1900s saloon with ornate red wallpaper, nude oil paintings and live jazz. Shortly after the first location opened, Browne opened clubs in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., according to a 1960 Time Magazine article.

Sitting in the elegant crystal room of the O’Hare Gaslight club on a recent morning, Dabizljevic flipped through a folder filled with old photos and magazine articles depicting the Gaslight Club’s glory days.

Potential Gaslight members had to be referred by friends. Once they were admitted, they were given a small golden key, Dabizljevic said. The club’s waitresses wore cabaret-style leotards and sang and danced alongside live pianists while cigarette girls offered diners a smoke. The O’Hare location had a telephone booth that opened up and revealed the club’s backroom speakeasy, where patrons drank out of ceramic mugs to keep with the Prohibition theme, Dabizljevic said.

Outside every club was a gas-lit lantern.

At its peak, Gaslight had more than 30,000 members. There were locations in New York, D.C., Miami, St. Louis and Paris, Dabizljevic said. The O’Hare club, which opened when the Hilton was built in 1973, was one of four locations in Chicago. There was also an 80-room Gaslight resort in West Dundee called the Chateau Louise.

“On weeknights, we were full of business meetings; and on weekends, members would bring their families for dinner,” Dabizljevic said, adding it wasn’t uncommon for there to be an hour wait to get in. “It was just a different era, people used to come for martini lunches and then stay for dinner.”

The club had a strict dress code and even had a rack full of extra ties and suit jackets for customers who forgot theirs, Dabizljevic said. The O’Hare location attracted traveling businessmen, a few local mayors and the occasional celebrity, he said.

Successful business deals were often celebrated with a bottle of Dom Pérignon, he said.

Members received a monthly edition of the Gaslight Gazette magazine, and Gaslight waitresses had a roadshow that could be booked for events, Dabizljevic said. In the 1950s, Playboy Magazine did a story on the Gaslight Clubs, according to Time. The first Playboy Club opened in Downtown Chicago just a few years later in 1960.

“The [Playboy] costume was pretty much the same; they just added ears and a tail,” Dabizljevic said.

After Browne died in 1975, the Gaslight Club brand went through a few owners. The business began to struggle financially in the ’80s; by the time Dabizljevic bought the O’Hare location 1995, it was the only club left.

Dabizljevic started working at the O’Hare Gaslight in 1974, just 10 months after it opened. He was 20 years old and had immigrated from a small town in Serbia four years prior.

“It was totally different, to walk in here and see how the American way of life was,” Dabizljevic said. “It was like night and day.”

During the past five decades at Gaslight, Dabizljevic has worked as a dishwasher, a waiter, the maître d’, the night manager and the general manager.

“I own my own business. I sent all my kids to college. I’ve gotten to live the American Dream,” Dabizljevic said. “I’ve lived a life I could probably never have in my home country.”

The Gaslight Club went through more changes after 9/11. After the attacks, O’Hare became a “ghost town,” and Gaslight had to do away with the members-only rule, Dabizljevic said.

Though the hotel and the restaurant underwent a total renovation in 1992, the Gaslight Club was made to look almost exactly the same. The old speakeasy is now an art deco dining room, and the gaslit lantern had to be removed, but a grand chandelier, now more than 100 years old, still hangs in the crystal room. One longtime employee, now in her 80s, still sings at the club a few times a week, Dabizljevic said.

Because all of the other locations have closed, the O’Hare club is a bit of a hidden gem, Dabizljevic said. He encouraged people to come out and get the full Gaslight experience.

The last North American Playboy Club closed in 1988. While there have been efforts to revive clubs in Las Vegas and New York, neither were successful.

And while the exclusive gold keys and far-flung locations may be things of the past, the Gaslight Club’s legacy lives on at O’Hare and in Dabizljevic’s thick folder full of memories.

“We’re going to keep going until things don’t work out,” the 71-year-old said.

The restaurant is open 11 a.m.-midnight Monday-Friday and 4 p.m.-midnight Saturday-Sunday The club has live music Monday-Saturday.

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