by: MICHAEL RIEDEL
The history of the mob in America begins here, at Ellis Island. Between 1899 and 1910, nearly 2 million southern Italians fled grinding poverty to arrive at the gateway to America — Giuseppe Masseria, Frank Costello and Salvatore Lucania (the future Charles “Lucky” Luciano) among them.
Their exploits and those of successors like Carlo Gambino and John Gotti inspired a slew of film and TV stories, some more glamorous than others. Now AMC’s “The Making of the Mob: New York,” an eight-part docudrama premiering Monday, takes a look at where these wise guys came from.
Let’s take our own little tour of Gangland to see where the boys plotted, gambled, ate, killed and were killed.
Just make sure men in long coats aren’t following you.
NYC authorities dumped liquor during Prohibition, and the mob took advantage. Photo: Buyenlarge/Getty Images Source: Supplied
As the series makes clear, the US government played a large, if inadvertent, role in the rise of the mob — with the great, failed experiment called Prohibition.
Starting Jan. 16, 1920, Americans were deprived of their liquor, but not for long. Bootlegging became one of the more lucrative rackets in NYC, much of it controlled by “Joe the Boss” Masseria, who — with crew members like Luciano — supplied millions of dollars of hooch to speak-easies.
One of them was Chumley’s, a popular spot in the West Village (closed since 2007) for literary tipplers Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O’Neill and E.E. Cummings. No doubt they were battling writer’s block.
One of Luciano’s mentors was Arnold Rothstein, the strategic thinker nicknamed “the Brain.” During Prohibition, he helped transform the Mafia from a gang of street thugs into a vast, multimillion-dollar empire.
But Rothstein had a weakness for gambling. In October 1928, he lost $320,000 in a three-day poker game. He thought it was fixed, and refused to pay. A few weeks later, during a business meeting at the Park Central, he was gunned down.
He wasn’t the only mobster never to check out of that hotel: In 1957, Albert Anastasia was having a shave in the hotel barbershop — now a Starbucks, of course — when two men wearing aviator glasses shot him right out of the barber chair.
He was the most famous gangster since Al Capone and brutally murdered his way to the top of the most powerful crime family in America.
Beginning in the 1940s, when members of the mob’s Five Families — called the Commission — wanted to unwind, they went to the Copa, which was secretly owned by Frank Costello, of the Luciano family.
On any given night “there was someone from each family there,” C Alexander Hortis reports in his book, “The Mob and the City.” Here, men named Fat Tony, Joe Stretch and Frankie Brown drank with Joe DiMaggio, Ethel Merman, George Raft and every mobster’s favourite singer, Frank Sinatra.
The Copa polished the gangster’s image. No longer a spaghetti-slurping street thug, he was now a dapper, silk-suited man about town who mixed with celebrities, left $100 tips and appeared in the gossip columns.
There’s no record of anyone being killed at the Copa, though legend has it a few guys were carried out the back exit in the early morning hours — the hangover from which no one recovers.
A few weeks after Castellano was murdered, a parade of wise guys went into the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy to pay their respects to John Gotti, the new head of the Gambino crime family. Gotti spent a lot of time at the Ravenite, playing cards and talking about sports.
The feds bugged the place, so Gotti would go to a widow’s apartment two flights up to conduct business. The FBI found out, and planted a bug in her VCR. “They heard him talking about three murders, and that spelled his doom,” Capeci says.
Today, the Ravenite is high-end shoe store Cydwoq New York. The only thing Italian in it is the leather.
The White House, Todt Hill, Staten Island
Paul Castellano succeeded Carlo Gambino as the head of the Gambino crime family in 1976. He ruled his empire from a white mansion atop Todt Hill, the highest point on Staten Island. Because it had pillars and a portico, the feds called it “the White House.”
“Its location made it difficult to bug,” says Jerry Capeci, editor of ganglandnews.com. “It was up on a big hill. There was no place around where they could hide and break in. And there was a maid who was always there.”
Eventually, FBI agents posing as TV repairmen managed to plant a bug, and caught Castellano and his associates in action. They discovered something else as well: Castellano was having an affair with the maid.
Sparks Steak House, 210 E. 46th St.
In 1985, Castellano, then 70, was on trial for stolen cars and conspiring to commit murder. An emboldened John Gotti feared Castellano was about to take him out for dealing heroin, so he struck first.
On Dec. 16, as Castellano stepped out of his black Lincoln in front of Sparks Steak House, he was gunned down. Gotti watched the hit he ordered while in a car across the street.
The Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher St.
The Genovese family, whose turf included Greenwich Village, ran a lot of gay bars.
Throughout the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, police regularly raided these establishments, charging costumiers with “lewd and lascivious activities.” With a little help from the mob, who had plenty of cops on the payroll, the raids could be kept at a minimum.
Now known as the landmark that sparked the gay rights movement, the Stonewall Inn was controlled by “Matty the Horse” Ianniello without incident until June 28, 1969, when the new head of the vice squad — a cop who wasn’t on the take — ordered a raid looking for evidence of mob activity. Stonewall’s customers fought back — and a movement was born.