FLORHAM PARK, NEW JERSEY—Renovations at the Florham Park campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University revealed a Prince Albert tobacco can containing a note left behind by plumbers and tile workers in 1932. The letter recorded their names and the work they had done in the building, which at the time was part of the Vanderbilt-Twombly estate. It also expressed their desire for a drink and the end of Prohibition. “If only those workers had known in 1932 when they placed that time capsule in the wall that FDR’s ‘wet’ victory that November had swept away the ‘dry’ consensus that dominated the 1920s. Indeed, Prohibition ended by ratification of the 21st Amendment on December 12, 1933,” commented historian Gary Darden of the University’s Department of Social Sciences & History.
