In 1927 there were 30,000 ‘ speakeasies‘ (so called from ‘speaking easy’ so that cops couldn’t hear) in the United States – twice the number of legal bars before the era of prohibition. The Shoenberg Brewery is a magnificent old, brownstone building. City officials – reluctant to celebrate their dark past – have removed all signs of the garage’s existence and today the site is a fenced garden. Capone had a watertight alibi – he was in Florida that day. Capone’s gang leaded them with 150 bullets killing seven men, though Moran was in safety across the road. On February 14th 1929, four of Capone’s men, two dressed as police, went into a garage which was the liquor headquarters of rival “Bugs” Moran’s North Side gang. Moran’s men, thinking it was a police raid, dropped their guns and put their hands against the wall.
Clark Street is the site of Capone’s most notorious killing. You can take in the sights like Cicero Restaurant where Capone had a speakeasy Al Capone’s brewery Holy Name Cathedral, site of an assassination Chinatown – Capone’s area with the church where he prayed, his first place of work, and where he first shot a gangster the Sicilian neighbourhood, and the site of the St. The guides are funny but also extremely knowledgeable.
For $24 you’ll be ushered on board an old school bus that’s been painted black to make it look like an old gangster car.
The tours, which run every day and take two hours, are led by guides wearing gangster suits and talking the lingo. Today, you can take in the history of Chicago’s seedy past with an Untouchable Gangster Tour. He died of syphilis in Miami, Florida in 1947. Capone was eventually caught by a bunch of determined Federal Agents, known as the ‘ Untouchables‘, led by Eliott Ness, who procured to convict Capone on a simple charge of tax evasion in 1931. He was run out of town to Florida in 1928. His underground empire was rumoured to have netted an income of $100 million per year. Capone ruled the city’s illegal vice network – comprising of brothels, speakeasies, gambling halls, race tracks, breweries, and nightclubs – between 19. In Chicago he became the protégé of gangster John Torrio, becoming his business partner after just three years and taking over the racket when Torrio was run out of town. Here he received the wounds that gave him the nickname “ Scarface“.Īfter killing two rival gang members in New York, he arrived in Chicago in 1919 to let things back in New York cool down and set up home at 7244 South Prairie Avenue. He quit school at fourteen to dedicate most of his adult life to the criminal fraternity, joining the Five Points gang in Manhattan, and working as a barman and bouncer in gangster Frankie Yale’s Harvard Inn. At school he joined two gangs: the Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors. Who was Al CaponeĬapone was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1899 into a rough neighbourhood. The biggest and most notorious gangster of them all was Al Capone. Instead of inspiring the civic obedience its pious enforcers envisaged, Prohibition increased crime greatly by igniting the bootlegging moonshine and beer wars fought by the Chicago gangs. In January 1920, the Volstead Act was made a national statute, prohibiting the consumption of alcohol everywhere. Valentine’s Massacre site, Capone’s moonshine brewery and spot where John Dillinger met his match to the FBIġ920s Chicago: a city fuelled by crime, lawlessness, alcohol, and the strains of wild jazz music. History: Lawless ground of violent crime, shootings, and gang warfare run by the notorious Al Caponeīest sights: St.