Blue and Gold Kennel Club Speakeasy
Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California
Marker Inscription
Blue and Gold Kennel Club This eighteen-room farmhouse was built by Nicholas Kristmas in 1924. By 1928, it had entered into an era of local infamy, during which it was known alternatively by the names Blue and Gold Kennel Club, Whitehall Distillery, and Burton's Gold Medal Distillery. The house featured two bars in the basement, one for ordinary patrons and a second which featured a ballroom for elite clientele. Secret passageways and peep holes allowed curious onlookers to spy on the salacious activities that went on behind closed doors. A casino occupying the third floor had an armed gunman stationed on a platform by the window, watching for police. Alcohol was distilled in the carriage house behind the main house. Drinks were served in the speakeasy and at its greyhound race track, where dog racing scores were broadcast to bookies across the country through an extensive system of antennae. The speakeasy was shut down in 1933 when authorities arrested then-owner George Tex White, an alleged gangster from Chicago, for running an illegal gambling establishment. White sold the property in 1935, only to buy it back again two years later. This disreputable era finally came to an end in 1938 when a shooting occurred on the property, causing federal authorities to seize the property and put it up for auction. It has since become a private residence. Dedicated on October 13, 2018 by Mountain Charlie Chapter No. 1850 E Clampus Vitus with Irwin and Gilda S. Wunderman "Right wrongs nobody"
Erected by E Clampus Vitus, Mountain Charlie Chapter No. 1850
The Story
Built as an eighteen-room farmhouse in 1924, this house slid into local infamy during Prohibition as the Blue and Gold Kennel Club — a speakeasy, casino, and distillery hidden behind respectable walls. Secret passages, basement bars, a third-floor casino with an armed lookout, and even a greyhound track wired to bookies nationwide made it a hub of illicit nightlife. Raids, an arrest of its gangster owner, and finally a 1938 shooting brought the federal government down on the property and ended its outlaw era.
Why it matters
The house captures the wild underside of Prohibition-era America, when ordinary buildings became fronts for bootlegging, gambling, and organized crime.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When this eighteen-room farmhouse went up in 1924, the United States was living under Prohibition — the nationwide ban on making and selling alcohol that had taken effect a few years earlier. It was meant to sober up the country. Instead, it drove an enormous thirst underground and created a vast, profitable black market almost overnight.
The surrounding Santa Clara Valley was still largely agricultural in this era, a landscape of farms and orchards well before it became known for anything electronic. A large farmhouse set among the fields drew little suspicion — which is precisely what made it useful. Rural quiet offered cover; distance from prying eyes offered room to operate.
Across the country, the 1920s were roaring with exactly this contradiction: a legally dry nation that drank, gambled, and danced with abandon behind closed doors. Speakeasies flourished, organized crime grew rich supplying them, and ordinary buildings took on secret second lives. This house became one of them.
People & events
The farmhouse was built by Nicholas Kristmas in 1924, but within a few years it had slipped into local infamy under a rotating set of names — the Blue and Gold Kennel Club, the Whitehall Distillery, Burton's Gold Medal Distillery. The names changed; the business did not.
What went on inside, according to the marker, reads like a catalog of the Prohibition underworld. Two bars in the basement — one for ordinary patrons, one with a ballroom for elite clientele. Secret passageways and peep holes for spying on the goings-on. A third-floor casino watched over by an armed gunman posted at the window for the police. Alcohol distilled in the carriage house out back. And a greyhound race track whose scores were broadcast to bookies across the country through a sprawling system of antennae.
The reckoning came in stages. In 1933 authorities shut the place down and arrested its then-owner, George "Tex" White — described as an alleged gangster from Chicago — for running an illegal gambling establishment. White sold the property in 1935, bought it back two years later, and the disreputable era finally ended in 1938 when a shooting on the grounds brought federal authorities down on the place. They seized it and put it up for auction, and it became a private residence.
Its place in the American story
This house is a vivid, almost cinematic specimen of a nationwide phenomenon. Prohibition did not end drinking; it relocated it, criminalized it, and made it wildly profitable — and buildings exactly like this one, respectable on the outside and lawless within, sprang up all over the country.
Every element the marker describes points to a larger national story: home distilling to beat the ban, casinos operating in open defiance of the law, lookouts posted against raids, and gambling networks wired together across state lines. The wager broadcast to distant bookies is a small window onto how organized and interconnected this illicit economy became.
The arc from a gangster owner's arrest to federal seizure also traces the era's turbulent close, as the country reckoned with what the ban had actually produced. A single farmhouse, in other words, captures the whole contradiction of Prohibition-era America — the gap between the law on the books and the life going on behind the shutters.
If you visit
This is now a private residence, so admire it only from a respectful distance and keep to public ground — the story here is meant to be imagined, not intruded upon. From the outside it is an ordinary large old farmhouse, and that ordinariness is exactly the point.
Standing before it, try to picture the hidden architecture the marker describes: the two basement bars, the passageways and peep holes, the third-floor casino with a gunman at the window, the still humming away in the carriage house behind. A quiet suburban lot once thrummed with an entire illicit economy.
As a road-trip stop it's a wonderful piece of hidden history in a region better known for its high-tech present — proof that colorful, outlaw stories hide in the most unassuming places. Note that the marker was placed by a group with a well-known fondness for celebrating the offbeat corners of the past, and let it remind you that beneath the everyday landscape you drive through, a wilder history is often just below the surface.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Nicholas Kristmas
- · George Tex White
Related events
- · Prohibition
Themes & tags
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