Entry · catalog no. 0003
buffet flat
/ bəˈfeɪ flæt /buh-FAY FLAT
noun · Chicago, Detroit and Harlem · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
A private apartment run as an unlicensed all-night club, mostly by Black women, in Northern city neighborhoods during Prohibition and after. For a small admission the house offered liquor, gambling, food, piano music, sex and sex shows. Buffet meant what it says: everything was on offer.
“After the last show they carried her uptown to a buffet flat.”
2.
By extension, the same apartments working as community infrastructure — informal banks where Pullman porters left their earnings during layovers, safe lodging when hotels were closed to Black travelers, and one of the few places Black gay and lesbian people could gather openly.
“The porters banked their money at the buffet flat, because no bank downtown would hold it.”
Origin & Attribution
Black urban neighborhoods of the North and Midwest, roughly 1910 through the 1930s — Chicago's South Side, Detroit's Black Bottom, Harlem. They existed because segregation left Black travelers, workers and queer people with nowhere else: hotels refused them, banks refused them, clubs closed at one. Popular accounts flatten buffet flats into brothels or into rent parties. They were neither. A rent party raised the landlord's money and ended; a buffet flat was a standing business.
1911
Chicago Tribune, Jan. 24, describes "so-called buffet flats" on the South Side
1925
Bessie Smith names one in "Soft Pedal Blues," recorded May 14 for Columbia
1972
Ruby Walker Smith's oral history published in Chris Albertson's Bessie
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Chicago, Detroit and Harlem · 1920s
Spoken by
Blues singers, Pullman porters, Black city nightlife, Black gay and lesbian communities
$BUFFETThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded115 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
40/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1911
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
"Soft Pedal Blues" — Bessie Smith, Columbia Records, recorded May 14, 1925
audio · recording
■
Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1911
text · newspaper
■
Bessie — Chris Albertson, 1972 (rev. Yale University Press, 2003)
text · biography
■
+ Cite a sourceRuby Walker Smith, oral history recorded by Chris Albertson, 1971
audio · oral history
See also