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Prohibition exhibit looks at the rise and fall of a ‘spirited’ movement

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Courtesy of National Constitution Center

American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, a Heinz History Center Exhibition, features dozens of interactive activities, including Wayne Wheeler’s Amazing Amendment Machine, a 20-foot-long, carnival-inspired contraption that traces how the temperance movement culminated in the 18th Amendment.

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Courtesy of National Constitution Center

Visitors can pose for a photo alongside some of the Prohibition era’s most notorious gangsters.

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Prohibition agents pour confiscated liquor into a sewer in New York City following a raid, circa 1921.

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Courtesy of John Binder

Speakeasy patrons toast the end of Prohibition in 1933.

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PITTSBURGH – Who is Gifford Pinchot?

Chances are, even the folks who whiz through the $2,000 questions on “Jeopardy” would be stumped by that. But Gifford Pinchot was the governor of Pennsylvania when Prohibition came to an unceremonious end in 1933. Described by an opponent as “a fanatical dry agitator,” Pinchot decided to take a stand against the renewed legality of booze sales by setting up the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, which strictly regulates the sale of intoxicating spirits in the commonwealth to this day.

That’s just one of the nuggets of information contained within the exhibit “American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” at Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh. Created along with the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and based on the 2010 book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” by Daniel Okrent, “American Spirits” opened to the public Saturday, its final stop on a nationwide tour.

“Prohibition changed America forever,” according to Andy Masich, president and CEO of Heinz History Center. “It changed the relationship between men and women. All kinds of social norms went through upheaval and change.”

At almost a century’s remove, we now commonly look back on Prohibition as a farcical experiment fronted by busybodies who brought us little more than rampant bootlegging, organized crime, speakeasies and short skirts. And while Prohibition has to be ranked as one of American history’s greatest misfires – the constitutional amendment that outlawed alcohol sales lasted only 13 years – “American Spirits” delineates how Prohibition was actually a long time coming in the United States.

As early as 1737, Benjamin Franklin came up with 228 different synonyms for the word “drunk.” And even though we mythologize our 19th century forebears as sturdy tillers of the soil who rose with the sun and didn’t stray far from the virtues of home and the church pew, the reality is that a healthy portion of them were prodigious guzzlers of demon rum. By the early 1900s, concerns that alcohol was laying waste to families became wrapped up in anxieties about the arrival of large numbers of Catholics and Jews in America and the religious customs they brought with them from elsewhere.

“This was a nation of drinkers,” said Leslie Prybylek, curator of history at Heinz History Center.

Taking the lead from such figures as Billy Sunday, the evangelist and former Pittsburgh Alleghenys baseball player who said a saloon was “the sums of all villainies,” Prohibition was put into effect just in time for the arrival of the 1920s. Of course, many Americans kept right on drinking, making it at home, sipping it at an illicit nightclub or relying on stocks of sacramental wine sent to churches or synagogues. In that period, Pittsburgh developed a reputation as being a resolutely “wet” city thanks to its large immigrant population.

By the early 1930s, even many supporters of Prohibition had come to the conclusion that Prohibition had failed, creating more problems than it was solving, and the election of Franklin Roosevelt as president in 1932 sealed its fate.

More than 180 items are on display in the exhibit, including a Tommy Gun that was owned by Pittsburgh’s police force; Prohibition-era vehicles, including a 1922 Studebaker and a 1932 Ford V-8; a re-created speakeasy; propaganda posters making the case for temperance; flapper dresses; and more.

For information, call 412-456-6000 or visit www.heinzhistorycenter.org.

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