Address: 247 Mulberry Street
Status: Shoe Store http://cydwoq-ny.com/
On first glance, 247 Mulberry Street looks like nothing more than another high-end boutique in NoLita, but the cracked tiled floors of the CYDWOQ shoe store offers a glimpse back to the days when the mob ruled New York. Once a mafia nerve center entrenched in the core of Little Italy, the Ravenite Social Club hosted the Anastasia and later Gambino Crime Family for 66 years.
The Knights of Alto Social Club
The mafia social club started life in 1926 as the Knights of Alto Social Club. A regular den of thieves, patrons included Lucky Luciano, Carlo Gambino, Albert Anastasia and his chief enforcer, Aniello Dellacroce. Tzar of the Brooklyn docks, Albert Anastasia operated the Knights of Alto Social club as his Manhattan outpost and drop off point for pay offs.
Father O’Neil Dellacroce
Neil Dellacroce, an old time Murder Inc. hitman, made his bones with Anastasia in the wild days of prohibition. The mobster, who lived across the street from the Ravenite, had a slew of nicknames including Neil, Mr. Neil, O’Neil, The Polack, The Tall Guy and most interestingly: Father O’Neil on account of the time he went on a hit dressed like a Roman Catholic Priest. According to NYPD Detective Ralph Salerno:
“You looked at Dellacroce’s eyes and you could see how frightening they were…The frigid glare of a killer.” Organized Crime Detective Ralph Salerno
Aniello Dellacroce
The 1963 Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics hearings had this to say about Mr. Neil:
“Aniello Dellacroce, he is known as O’Neil. He is in gambling, shylocking, and extortion and strong arm. He has 10 arrests, 5 convictions…he has been involved in floating dice games, gambling, shylocking. He was involved with Al Anastiasia in Cuba in gambling and dice.” –Hearings on Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics, 1963
Dellacroce lived across the street from the Ravenite in this tenement.
The Ravenite Under New Management:
After Carlo Gambino and Vito Genovese toppled Albert Anastasia, Gambino purchased 247 Mulberry Street, renamed the club the Ravenite and installed Dellacroce as his underboss. The relationship proved to be incredibly lucrative with Gambino providing the brains and Mr. Neil providing the trigger-men. With Dellacroce’s help Gambino inched his way into total control of the Mafia Commission. By the time of his death in 1976, the Gambino Family boasted 500 made men and thousands of associates, but with Carlo gone, a chasm threatened to rip the Gambino’s in half.
John Gotti used the Ravenite Social Club at 247 Mulberry Street as his headquarters after becoming Gambino Family boss.
Showdown With Big Paul Castellano
On his deathbed, Don Carlo named his son in law Big Paul Castellano the new boss of the Gambino family. A schism immediately erupted between the Dellacroce’s blue collar soldiers and Castalano’s white collar followers. Big Paul had dreams of taking the Gambino’s legitimate, but Mr. Neil’s followers preferred gunplay and drug dealing.
To prevent an underworld war, Dellacroce swore fealty to Castellano and all was well in mob land. Around this time, Dellacroce would take an up-and-coming hoodlum named John Gotti under his wing. The Queens based Gotti would do much to exacerbate the friction between Mr. Neil and Big Paul. Gotti openly trafficked narcotics, despite Castellano’s ban, punishable by burial in the East River.
By the mid-1980’s the center did not hold. Dying of cancer Dellacroce, Castellano, and the rest of the Mafia Commission were facing a RICO trial with 100 year prison sentences. After the death of Dellacroce, Gotti struck, rubbing out Big Paul.
The Short Reign of Gotti
To celebrate his status as the new Gambino chieftain, Gotti picked up his headquarters, moving it from Queens to the Ravenite in 1985. With Castellano in the morgue and the other bosses imprisoned for 100 years, Gotti became the FBI’s top target. Gambino capos paraded in and out of the Ravenite to give Gotti their blessings as the new boss, providing FBI surveillance teams with a road map of the Gambino Family. However, the FBI needed more, they needed wiretaps.
The original floor within the Ravenite Social Club still remains.
The Ravenite Gets Bugged
To take Gotti down, the FBI knew it needed to penetrate the Teflon Don’s inner sanctum: The Ravenite. Jim Kallestrom’s FBI electronics wizards bugged the club in 1988 but their recordings proved to be fruitless. According to Jules Bonavolonta’s The Good Guys:
“Once it was in, however, the thing was virtually worthless. Gotti and his boys played jazz and old show tunes on a radio—constantly… ”-Jules Bonavolonta, The Good Guys
The paranoid gangsters even went as far as to install a white noise machine to further thwart FBI bugs. Bruce Mouw’s Agents listened and waited. Gotti it seemed disappeared for long stretches of time and nothing incriminating was recorded.
Perplexed, the agents questioned their informants and discovered whenever Gotti needed to discuss “real heavy stuff” he exited the Ravenite. Using a side door that entered into the apartment building’s hallway, Gotti crept to an apartment on the third floor rented by the widow of a former wiseguy.
An FBI special operations team planted wiretaps in this apartment and hit paydirt. In this inner sanctum, Gotti discussed murders, mayhem and a bevy of other crimes with his top henchmen, Sammy the Bull Gravano and Frankie Loc Locascio. The Teflon Don was convicted in 1992 of murder, illegal gambling, bribery, tax evasion and a host of other crimes. Federal Marshals later seized the building and auctioned it off to the highest bidder.
Infamous New York 
[…] houses, in the neighborhood over there by John Gotti’s front. [Jackson is referring to the Ravenite Social Club, a well-known Mafia hangout in New York’s Little Italy Gotti operated in the late ’80s. —Ed.] […]
[…] houses, in the neighborhood over there by John Gotti’s front. [Jackson is referring to the Ravenite Social Club, a well-known Mafia hangout in New York’s Little Italy Gotti operated in the late ’80s. […]
Tour information regarding the Ravenite’s earlier years is not accurate. Gambino never frequented social clubs. It was Delacroce who started the Ravenite. Additionally the Alto Knights Social Club was a Genovese club located on the corner of Mulberry and Kenmare and was not the for runner of the Ravenite. A little research is in order.
So who actually purchased the ravenite so the gambinos could occupy it then?
Great history.From the early days at the beginning of the twentieth century,from Lupo the Wolf,to Vito Genovese,Albert Anastasia,Aniello Delacroche and John Gotti,brought down by the FBI and it’s wiretaps.
As I said,great history.
[…] would probably not have called John Gotti to warn him that some of Gotti’s fellow members of the Ravenite Social Club appeared to be engaging in illegal activity.) In any case, it is no basis whatever for discrediting […]
Paul Castallano Was Carlo Gambino’s Brother In Law.
I saw Gotti and 4 guys come out of there, adjust their suits and eye their surroundings. I was directly across the street, straddling a ten-speed bike while pulled over and eating a “rice ball” I had just gotten from this little italy butcher shop (a favorite area routine at the time, huge, and was 1.50). The way those guys looked and carried themselves was unreal and made the most movie-esque scene I have witnessed. I remember the bricked up front and wondering if it was a private club. I didn’t know how right I was until I looked this up but that all makes perfect sense and delightfully matches my memory. This would have been 88-90ish.
Ha that’s a great story. Thanks for sharing.
247 Mulberry was known to locals as “The Pool Room”. No one would call it the Ravenite until the days of John Gotti. Never called the Alto Knights, the club took out a Charter as ‘The Raven Knights’ in 1919. Just two blocks north of the Whiskey Curb, the club was established in response to Prohibition laws. So the name was changed, but it was due to mispronunciation of ‘Raven Knights’ after the Charter document was inevitably lost or misplaced.
Some will say Tommy Rava, who ran the club prior to Dellacroce, had something to do with condensing the name i.e. ‘Raven Knights’ to Rava Knight, heard phonetically as ‘Ravenite’. But that part is mostly conjecture.
Thanks for the info!
Around 96 or 97 me and a friend were coming home from school on University the school was I.A.R. We’d walked thru litle Italy to catch the train back to Queens. We smoke alot of weed, one night after school we decided to go into this lil dark bar to smoke…I remember we sat a a lil table in the back it had a stained glass wiindow next to the table…the manger approached us though we didnt know it at that time…he asked us if he could smoke with us, my friend was like yea man… he then said he needed some dope for some strippers he flew up from Atlanta. He said he was gonna do both of them same time and they was to start working at his uncle’s strip club. He said we where welcome to the strip club and he would hook us up for the favor…we had to go to brooklyn to get the dope. On the way there he told me and my friend he was in the trash business. While crossing the Williamsburb bridge he got a phone call, he became very angry and told us that his whole family was being arrested. Long story short we got him the dope, he drove us back to the city and dropped us off, he said if we ever needed a place to stay we could in the apts above the club..we declined. The very next day i think was Sat morning John Gotti son had been arrested, the story broke on NY 1 news….
Thanks for the story!
I have in my possession, a pay phone that was in the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry St. It was given by John Gotti to a “Friend of his/ours” in Providence RI. That friend gave it to me. Does anyone have the phone numbers for the Social Club so I might verify the phone number on this phone?
Thank you