The phone booth outside 502 N. Oregon St. won't be unlocking any hidden doors anymore. 1922, the downtown El Paso bar built to look and feel like a 1920s speakeasy, has closed, and its 2,450-square-foot space is now listed as available for lease.
The closure was reported by El Paso Inc., which first broke the news that the bar had shut its doors. The outlet also confirmed that the roughly 2,450-square-foot premises in Suite B are now on the market for lease, though no word has emerged on what might take the space next.
1922 opened in 2020 and quickly built a reputation as one of downtown El Paso's more theatrical nightlife spots. The concept leaned hard into its Prohibition-era theme, built around the bar's own motto: “Can you keep a secret?,” per the same report from El Paso Inc.
A Phone Booth Was the Only Way In
Part of what made 1922 memorable was the entrance itself. Visitors approached what looked like an ordinary phone booth on Oregon Street, and had to press the code “DEN” to unlock the door and step into the recreated speakeasy inside, according to an earlier feature from elpasoinc.com. That same feature described the bar's décor and theme as a “pitch-perfect recreation” of the 1920s underground drinking dens the concept was named for.
Once inside, the bar built its identity around intimacy and theater. Musical performances by area musicians, mostly jazz acts though all genres were welcome, were a frequent fixture of the space, the feature noted. The bar's signature cocktails, served at two-and-a-half ounces and mixed at speakeasy strength, were prepared tableside for guests rather than handed across a bar top.
The property's address is listed as 502 N. Oregon St., Suite B, according to the Downtown El Paso eats and drinks directory, placing it squarely in the heart of the city's downtown nightlife corridor.
Who Ran the Bar Remains Unclear
Even the bar's ownership carries some ambiguity in the record. The earlier elpasoinc.com feature identified the owner as Justin Knoch, while Downtown El Paso's own writeup from 2019 referred to the proprietor as Justin Koch. The discrepancy between the two spellings has never been resolved in available reporting, and neither source has clarified which is accurate.
1922's closure lands amid a string of other shutdowns across the El Paso dining and drinking scene this year. In April, two well-known bars, Papa Doble and Rockhouse Bar and Grill, announced they were closing permanently, according to the El Paso Times. More recently, the same paper reported that Hooters and Buen Dia joined a string of El Paso restaurant closures in October.
No explanation has been offered for why 1922 shut down, and there's no indication yet of whether the concept might resurface somewhere else in the city. For now, the phone booth on Oregon Street sits quiet, and the speakeasy that once asked patrons if they could keep a secret has one more mystery of its own.
