Infamous New York

Paul Kelly’s Little Naples Café and New Brighton Athletic Club

July 25, 2013 by Infamous New York

57 and 59 Great Jones Street

Status: Standing

There weren’t many places in old New York where a goon could order up a beer, eat a plate of spaghetti, and kick back and watch a bare-knuckle boxing match, except, for the Little Naples Café and New Brighton Athletic Club located at 57 and 59 Great Jones Street.

These two squat interconnected buildings once headquartered the Paul A. Kelly Association, an organized hoard of repeat voters, ex-pugilists, pimps, and gangland heavies otherwise known as The Five Points Gang. The mostly Irish and Italian Five Pointers controlled every hustle west of the Bowery and were the sworn enemies of Monk Eastman’s Jewish mob that dominated everything east of the Bowery.

Paul Kelly’s New Brighton Athletic Club (right) and the Little Naples Cafe (left) today. Jean Michel Basquiat would later die of an overdose in the loft that was above the New Brighton.

Paul Kelly Gangland Dandy

Their leader, Paul Kelly, proprietor of the combination eatery and boxing arena, was a bucket-load of contradictions. The name he went by was Irish; yet the gangster was an Italian whose real name was Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli. Well
quaffed and well spoken, Kelly played the part of the gangland dandy who could bang with the best of them.

According to Richard Harding Davis, Kelly was,

“exquisitely scented, wearing silk socks, silk ties to his tan shoes, with rings on his well-kept fingers…”

Paul_Kelly

But Kelly’s manicured digits didn’t fool anyone in the know. A former flyweight boxer and catch-as-can wrestler of much renown, the leader of the Five Points Gang was always willing to throw down. Like the time Kelly floored Jake Shimsky, a 6 foot, 230 pound Eastman Lieutenant, with a left hook that put the giant’s brain to sleep.

Spoke Five Languages

To have said that Kelley was smart would have been an understatement. In addition to English, he spoke Spanish, French and Italian. To take advantage of a loophole, which legalized boxing matches in privately chartered athletic clubs, he opened the New Brighton Athletic Club in 1904 in a Civil War era stable located at 59 Great Jones.

A Gangland Nexus Is Born:

The New Brighton Athletic Club and Little Naples Cafe

Now free to hold bare-knuckle bouts without police interference, the customers flooded in. To feed his hardboiled clientele, Kelly opened up the Little Naples Cafe next door, and a gangland nexus was born. On any night, a hoodlum could find Chick Tricker, Louie the Lump, Kid Griffo, Rough House Hogan, 14^th Street Biff Ellison, and the wrestler Leo Pardillo lounging around the bar.

The Little Naples Cafe, 59 Great Jones St., was the headquarters of Paul Kelly’s Five Points Gang

Eat ‘Em Up Jack McManus

To keep the peace, Kelly brought in his best gorilla, the famed bar-room bouncer, Eat ‘Em Up Jack McManus, but even McManus couldn’t keep the peace, and the gunplay was regular.

In less than a year, Kelly’s bare fisted spaghetti kingdom began to unravel. Led by Chick Tricker, Jimmy Kelly, Jack Sirocco, and Biff Ellison, the mutinous troop of Five Pointers loaded up their gats and plotted to knockoff the boss.

Paul Kelly (right) poses with bar-room bouncer Eat ’em Up Jack McManus.

Five Points Lightning

The slugs started to fly just before dawn on May 26, 1905 when words between McManus and Tricker escalated into a full blown pistol duel in font of the Little Naples.

Dodging and weaving from stoop to stoop, McManus blasted a few slugs into Tricker’s calf and left him for dead in the gutter, but Eat ‘Em Up Jack Should have finished the job. Days later Kelly lost his greatest strong armer, when McManus was killed by a Tricker Assassin armed with a lead pipe.

Jack Sirocco and Chick Tricker’s Revenge

Months later Jack Sirocco came looking for revenge for Tricker’s shooting, and earned a bullet in his arm. With their leadership full of lead, the Tricker Sirocco gang sent another team of torpedoes to the Little Naples the following Thursday.

With barking pistols in their hands, Biff Ellison and Razor Riley stormed into the Little Naples spewing bullets. The attackers caught Kelly and his bodyguard Bill Harrington completely by surprise. A shot pierced Harrington’s lung killing him instantly. Another shot knocked Kelly’s hat from his head, and bullet sliced through the sleeve of his coat.

As the shots rang out, showgirls dove for cover, and the lights were doused. For five minuets Kelly and his attackers traded gunfire in the darkened bar. The Little Naples and New Brighton Athletic club were closed by the police shortly thereafter. With his clubhouse padlocked, Kelly changed his name back to Vacarelli, moved uptown, and remade himself as a labor racketeer.

Posted in Five Points, Gangs of New York, Monk Eastman, Paul Kelly, Uncategorized | Tagged Chick Tricker, Eat Em Up Jack McManus, Five Points Gang, Gangs of New York, Great Jones Street, Monk Eastman, New Brighton, Paolo Vaccarelli, Paul Kelly | 30 Comments »

The Assassination of Salvatore Maranzano, 230 Park Ave.

June 30, 2013 by Infamous New York

Salvatore Maranzano, Helmsley Building, New York Central Building

230 Park Ave.

Status: Landmarked

By the fall of 1931, Salvatore Maranzano had clawed his way to the pinnacle of the New York underworld, one bullet riddled corpse named Giuseppe at a time. During the 1930-31 Castellammarese Mafia War, the Julius Caesar obsessed mob chieftain and his allies roved the Five Boroughs in bulletproof Cadillacs, equipped with swivel mounted belt-fed machine guns, popping Giuseppes like squirrels.

First to eat lead was Giuseppe “The Clutch Hand” Morello, the claw fingered capo de tutti capo of the New York Mafia, and his aide, Giuseppe Pirariano. Next to be fitted for pine overcoats by Maranzano’s torpedos were Giuseppe “Fat Joe” Pinzolo and Giuseppe “Joe the Baker” Catania, leaving behind one last living Giuseppe. Maranzano’s arch rival: the corpulent, bullet dodging, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Massaeria.

Walking with Vanderbilts

Working with the vigor of a machine age tycoon, Maranzano put the blast to last of his rivals, convinced Lucky Luciano to betray his overlord, Joe the Boss, and unified the American Mafia, like Rockefeller had monopolized oil. And like Rockefeller, Gotham’s newest kingpin needed a headquarters befitting his swollen ego, a command center that projected opulence and power and sophistication, a place where Maranzano could rub shoulders with Vanderbilts, stock brokers, and advertising execs.

That place was the New York Central Railroad Building at 230 Park Avenue. A sky-scraping, neo-renaissance, 32 story spire, rising out of the center of Park Avenue, the New York Central Building (now the Helmsely Building), as it was then called, towered over Grand Central Station, giving William K. Vanderbilt II’s office a majestic panorama of the city. It would be a picturesque spot for a gangland assassination.

A Vast Criminal Empire

From the 9^th floor office of his Eagle Building Corporation, Maranzano oversaw a vast criminal empire of speakeasies, hard cider farms, and a fishing fleet that fronted for a $20 million a year immigrant smuggling network. However, a scant three months into his reign, the empire began to crumble. IRS agents were battering down the doors, the INS wanted him deported, and Lucky Luciano wanted him dead, a problem Maranzano hoped to remedy at 2:00pm, September 30, 1931.

Double Booking A Meeting with Death

It seems Maranzano had double booked a meeting with Luciano to coincide with a courtesy-call by noted machine gun artist, freelance assassin, and all around psychopath, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll. But as usual, Lucky was lucky. A four man team of Murder Inc. shooters from Meyer Lansky’s and Dutch Shultz’s mobs arrived on Luciano’s behalf, beating Coll to the punch.

Salvatore Maranzano, Lucky Luciano, Mad Dog Coll, Joe the Boss Masseria,

Whipping out detective’s badges, the revolver brandishing assassins howled, “We’re the police,” before lining-up everyone in the office against a wall. Snapping open switchblades, they stormed Maranzano’s private chamber, hoping to silently eliminate the mob boss, but their target proved tougher than a billy goat.

Maranzano Tough as an Old Billy Goat

A flurry of rights and lefts knocked the fedoras from the gunmen’s heads, and they let Maranzano have it, stabbing him six times and pumping five bullets into his body as Mad Dog Coll made his way up to Maranzano’s office. The gangsters scrambled down the steps, bumping into Coll as they ditched their revolvers and bloody knives, before disappearing into the crowds of Midtown. Lucky Luciano was now the new king of the New York underworld.

Posted in Castellammarese War, Five Families, Joe The Boss Masseria, Lucky Luciano, Mafia | Tagged 230 Park Avenue, Castellammarese war, Helmsely Building, Joe The Boss Maranzano, Joe the Boss Masseria, Lucky Luciano, Mad Dog Coll, Murder Inc., New York Central Building, Salvatore Maranzano, Vincent coll | Leave a Comment »

Tommy Hadden’s Shanghai Hotel

June 15, 2013 by Infamous New York

374 Water Street

Status: Demolished

Of all the Shanghaisters of Water Street, Tommy Hadden was the best. The barkeeps in the business of shanghaiing sailors called this salty little man with a wandering eye the Lime Juicer, because he could drug drinks with chloral hydrate as easily as squeezing a wedge of lime into a mug of grog.

Chloral Hydrate + Alcohol = The Original Mickey Finn

In his twenty-five-year-long career, the police figured that Hadden had kidnapped at least 1,000 sailors, but in addition to shanghaiing, Tommy excelled in both murder and evading the law. Like the time the Lime Juicer crushed a man’s skull with a slung shot in 1852 and walked away scot free. Hadden’s secret of how he stayed out prison was no secret at all.

The Man Who Ran Water Street

As the New York Tribune explained:

“The primary elections which he has controlled or broken up in the interests of Tammany may be counted by the score; the ballot boxes he has stuffed by hundreds; while the false votes he has cast and caused to be cast are simply innumerable.”

Although John Allen and Kit Burns often got the press, Tommy Hadden ran Water Street. Hadden’s Hotel at 374 Water Street existed as boarding house for sailors, which in the words of the New York Tribune, “…implies fleecing them; and in providing captains of ships with a man or two…” The club was little more than a filthy cellar strewn with a maze of lice infested beds that combined charm of a flop house with the stench of a saloon.

Hadden served two sentences for sailor-napping in New York, but the salty character overstepped his bounds in New Jersey in 1870 when the authorities sentenced him to ten years in state prison for an attempted shanghaiing. He was never heard from again.

Posted in Corlear's Hook, River Pirates, Water Street Revival | Tagged Corlear's Hook, Kit Burns, Shanghaiing, South Street Seaport, Tommy Hadden, Water Street | Leave a Comment »

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