debt. In December 1921, Fischer sold his controlling interest in Reisenweber's to a syndicate run by John Wagener, Walter Kaffenberg, and B. H. Uberall, who announced that they would change the name of the business in the course of their reorganization. By 1922, Reisenweber's was operating in part as a speakeasy, serving private stocks of liquor at invitation-only events. On New Year's Day, 1922, prohibition agents raided a private party at the restaurant and served summonses to the manager, John Gorman, and his son for serving liquor to a half dozen diners. The prohibition agents alleged that "a telephone bell linked with all the dining rooms was to have been rung a certain number of times when [prohibition officers] appeared". In March 1922, federal authorities sued to close Reisenweber's on the accusation that liquor was served on its premises, marking the first time that the injunction clause of the Volstead Act had been invoked in the Southern District of New York. On September 28, 1922, federal judge Martin T. Manton decreed the closing of Reisenweber's Cafe for a year, a decision that was upheld on appeal the following January. Reisenweber's never reopened. By November 1923, the Paradise Gardens "dancing palace" was operating out of the former Reisenweber's Cafe. The Reisenweber's buildings housed a Woolworth store in the 1940s, and were finally demolished in the 1980s. Reisenweber's Brighton Beach Casino and Shelbourne Hotel Starting in 1909, a second branch of Reisenweber's, Reisenweber's Brighton Beach Casino, operated in Brighton Beach, at Ocean Parkway and Surf Avenue, next door to the New Brighton Theater. The casino was built around 1907, in the lot that formerly belonged to Bader's Hotel. Its edifice was made of ornamental Spanish tile and brick, and its elaborate bar cost $42,000 to build (about $1,100,000 in 2020 dollars). Its top floor deck resembled the deck of an ocean liner, overlooking the beach and ocean, and an advertisement promised "All the Joys of a Sail, Without the Motion!". Dances were held in the Wisteria Ballroom. Reisenweber's Brighton Beach Casino featured performances by Lillian Russell and Eddie Cantor. The popular 1914 song "By the Beautiful Sea" was written on its terrace, during a party held by Russell and Diamond Jim Brady, who had a private dining room at the casino. John Reisenweber, Jr., later purchased the Ricca Donna Hotel on the other side of New Brighton Theater, renamed it the Shelbourne