Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a brothel or cheap saloon.

1883		G.W. Peck Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa (1887) 100: He has gone to drinking again, like a fish [...] he is now patronizing a barrel house down by the river.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 43: The barkeep looked at me as if he thought I had been stacking up too long against a barrel house.
1909		I.L. Nascher Wretches of Povertyville 21: On a side street nearby is a ‘barrel house’ where casks take the place of bottles behind the bar.
1916		J. Lait ‘Omaha Slim’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 124: His residence, club, and office, the dime flop over the barrel-house.
1923		N. Anderson Hobo 27: The barrel-house was a rooming-house, saloon, and house of prostitution all in one.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 22: Barrel House. – Originally, and before prohibition, the cheap Bowery resorts where the dregs from liquor barrels were served at as little as a penny a drink. More lately the term has come to mean any cheap lodging-house, speakeasy or brothel of the lowest, filthiest sort, where the money to pay for a drunken sleep is all that is asked of a patron.
1939		Ramsey & Smith Jazzmen 12: From barrel-houses and honky-tonks came many of the descriptive words which were applied to the music played in them, such as [...] ‘gut-bucket,’ referring originally to the bucket which caught drippings or ‘gutterings’ from the barrels, later to the unrestrained brand of music that was played by small bands in the dives.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 300: Gay New Orleans! And not a levee, crib, red light, barrelhouse or honky-tonk in sight.
1956		F.O. Beck Hobohemia 26: The barrel houses had opened their doors for free drinks to the dozen men or women who first presented themselves.
1961		R.A. Norton Through Beatnik Eyeballs 80: It struck me as a fair example of a barrel-house.
1966		Trimble 5000 Adult Sex Words and Phrases.
1986–7		Maledicta IX 148: The compilers ought to have looked farther afield and found: […] barrel house, bawdy house, bed house, broad house.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1884		Ft Worth Dly Gaz. (TX) 15 Sept. 3/2: John H. Lang ran for alderman, and in the race told a barrelhouse man to ‘set ’em up to the canaries.’ The saloon keeper did so, and when he presnted the bill [...] it was repudiated.
1896		Globe Republican (Dodge City, KS) 10 Sept. 7/1: A kind of liquor worse than barrel-house whisky, on which one can get beastly drunk.
1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 174: A high-grade Heeler who had helped divvy the Campaign Fund and round up the Barrel-House Vote and get the Hoboes into Line for Good Government.
1908		D.G. Phillips Susan Lenox I 208: Oh, he’s a wonder. Graduate of Trinity College, Dublin—yeggman—panhandler—barrel-house bum—genius, nearly.
1925		G.H. Mullin Adventures of a Scholar Tramp 139: The barrel-house stiff is frankly a booze parasite.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 175: The beer bums and barrel-house five cent whiskey bums came under my notice.
1927		C. Samolar ‘Argot of the Vagabond’ in AS II:9 389: Rum-dumb is a condition of hopeless intoxication. A wino was a good-for-nothing vag who used to frequent the wineries and became rum-dumb on the wine he begged. A barrel-house bum was his equivalent in the cities.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 48: They are the barrel house habitués, the type you see lying around in [...] booze joints.
1981		Roosevelt Sykes q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 173: When I started to making records in 1929, I was playing at a little barrelhouse joint over in East St. Louis.