Wiktionary
n. (context archaic English) A flashy tavern that serves gin.
Wikipedia
A gin palace is an English name originally for a lavish bar selling gin, later transferred by association to late Victorian pubs designed in a similar style.
In the 18th century, gin shops or 'dram shops' were just small shops (often originally chemist's shops as gin originally had medicinal associations) that sold gin mostly to take away, or to drink standing up. As the legislation changed establishments generally became larger; they also had to be licensed and sell ale or wine. In the late 1820s the first 'Gin Palaces' were built, Thompson and Fearon's in Holborn and Weller's in Old Street, London. They were based on the new fashionable shops being built at the time, fitted out at great expense and lit by gas lights. They were thought to be vulgar at the time, although hugely popular. Charles Dickens described them as "perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left…" in his Sketches by Boz.
The design hugely influenced all aspects of the design of later Victorian pubs, even after gin had declined in importance as a drink; the bar in pubs is based on the shop counter of the gin palace, designed for swift service and ideal for attaching beer pumps; the ornate mirrors and etched glass of the late 19th century. The term has survived for any pub in the late 19th-century style; as this was the peak of pub building in Britain the style has become associated with the pub, even though none of the original gin palaces survives.
Baker's Vaults in Stockport is a fine example of a Gin Palace. In the underground vaults there remain the brick stalls designed to hold gin barrels.
Well-preserved examples of the late 19th-century style include the Princess Louise in Holborn and the Philharmonic Dining Rooms in Liverpool.
Usage examples of "gin palace".
Another observer stood outside a gin palace for three hours one evening and counted 1,411 people going in and out.
Ramage thought sourly he could well be one of the wretched, liquor-sodden creatures loitering outside some sordid gin palace, pleading with the potman for a glass of swipes or begging a penny from a customer for a drop of gin.
The false theatrical beard Maybrick had obtained for him from a cheap shop in SoHo and the dye used to color it left Lachley as anonymous as the thousands of other shabbily dressed working men wandering Whitechapel, wending their way from one gin palace to the next on a drunken pub crawl.
I came up under the bows of a floating gin palace, puffing and panting in an attempt to get my breath back, but I soon stopped that when 1 heard the pad of naked feet on the deck above.
I fear that we might need to give you something of a spanking before leaving your excellent floating gin palace.
It's an expense-account, no-account gin palace and gaming den, very expensive, full of yanks and maple-leafers, touts, tarts, hustlers, dirty weekenders.