Bars that have had mob ties in the city. (Chicago: Valentine's day, apartment)

[Golfer31]

I love history and I love true crime.

Anyway I thought that I would make a topic to start conversation on what bars throughout the city of Chicago that have had ties to the mafia.

This came to my mind after watching Goodfellas over the weekend and seeing the guys hanging out in Henry Hill's bar called the Suite Lounge which was located in Queens. Another was Roberts Lounge which was owned by Jimmy Burke. Robert Deniro played him in the movie Goodfellas. They of course changed his last name to Conway for the film.

New York has tons of history when it comes to bars that mobsters would hang out at. What about Chicago?

[Plzeň]

I've always heard Capone hung out at The Green Mill. I'm sure there are plenty of others, but that's the one that comes to mind.

[Vlajos]

Simons in Andersonville was a speakeasy.

[rparz]

They're still run by the syndicate so they're not spoken of. Ask IrishTom.

[jonnynonos]

The Green Mill is really the only one of note that is still around. It was a Capone bar, specifically owned by his henchman Jack McGurn, and it is really a city treasure because it is virtually untouched; walking in there is pretty much exactly what it was like walking in in the 20s.

The story behind it is amazing, they even made a movie centered around it called The Jokes is Wild, starring Frank Sinatra.

The big mob bars from the 20s would have been the Circus Cafe, Colisimo's, the bars at the Lexington Hotel... dozens of others too.

The Green Mill was rare in that it was a north side bar while Capone controlled the south side. He briefly controlled the whole city before going to jail, after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, but that was short lived.

A cool mob site from the Giancana era would be Andrea's Restaurant in Oak Park, where he ordered the deaths of approximately 200 men. It used to be called the Armory Bar. The feds had it wired. Now it's a pretty decent little diner.

A lot of the mob stuff from the 50s on was in the burbs, as they all moved out there to avoid being in the limelight, and most of it is also gone.

There are still a number of mobbed up bars in the city but I don't really feel comfortable announcing them here. Doesn't seem like it would lead to much good for anyone.

There are different sites on line with a lot of good information on past mob sites, you can find them without looking too hard.

[Attrill]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

The Green Mill is really the only one of note that is still around....A lot of the mob stuff from the 50s on was in the burbs, as they all moved out there to avoid being in the limelight, and most of it is also gone....There are still a number of mobbed up bars in the city but I don't really feel comfortable announcing them here. Doesn't seem like it would lead to much good for anyone.

Yep. Many of the mob places in the 'burbs during the 70's and 80's were really dependent on mob money, and once that dried up the places shut down. Most of them really weren't that great, and couldn't stand on their own. I've been to a few mob bars in the burbs here, as well as in Providence and Boston in the 70's and 80's. They were all pretty unexceptional and uninteresting places (which was kind of the point).

[jonnynonos]

Here's a few fun ones though: Well, maybe fun the wrong word. But still:

Mama Luna's Pizzeria on W. Belmont (near Belmont Cragin neighborhood) is where one of the city's most notorious hitmen, Harry Ailman, blew a bookie away. Infamous because Chicago had always done things sneaky--made people disappear--but Aleman "went NY" by putting on a ski mask and blowing the guy away in broad daylight. Aleman just died in prison recently.

There's a certain business open now on Grand Ave. on the near west side which used to be called Rose's Sandwhich Shop, and it's where, in the 70s, a few hitmen lined up Richard Cain, who was probably the most corrupt police officer in the country, and partly the inspiration for the film The Departed, was blown away. Possibly by Joey Lombardo, Aleman, Frank Schweihs

Aforementioned Andrea's Restaurant, formerly Giancana's HQ

I wouldn't hang out there but the Old Neighborhood Italian American Club was built by Angelo "The Hook" LaPietra, who has a fortress-like house nearby in Bridgeport. He was one of the most notorious mofos in the history of the Chicago mob.

You can walk by the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Bugs Moran had an apartment in Lincoln Park in a building that's still standing.

You can still see the alley where Dillinger was murdered outside the biograph.

That Walgreen's on North Michigan near the Water Tower used to have a diner where the mobsters would meet in the 70s, if you can beileve it!

Well, there have been something like 2,000 mob hits in Chicago since the turn of the century, so the list is endless. I guess those are a few off the top of my head.

[Plzeň]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

The Green Mill is really the only one of note that is still around. It was a Capone bar, specifically owned by his henchman Jack McGurn, and it is really a city treasure because it is virtually untouched; walking in there is pretty much exactly what it was like walking in in the 20s.

Totally. I felt like I was stepping out of a time machine the first time I walked in there. I've heard rumors of a tunnel connecting the place with the Aragon. Do you know anything about that?

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by Plzeň

Totally. I felt like I was stepping out of a time machine the first time I walked in there. I've heard rumors of a tunnel connecting the place with the Aragon. Do you know anything about that?

It's true there is a tunnel under it; I don't know where it goes.

Another interesting thing about it is that no one set out to preserve it. When the current owner bought it, I don't know when, but I was talking to him one time, and when he bought it it was when Uptown was in absolutely horrific shape. It was just some rundown bar in the the ghetto. So it was preserved really more out of negligence than anything else.

When the bar first opened it took up the entire block; eventually it was shrunk down to what it is now. I think it was called "Green Mill Gardens" and it was like this big attraction. This was pre-Capone. By the time Capone owned it it was what it is today.

The remarkable story that they made the movie about was that there was a singer named Joe E. Lewis who really brought the crowds in. So he got a counter offer at a place called the Rend-A-Vouz cafe, which I think was where the Days Inn Lincoln Park is now on Diversey and Clark. So he told McGurn (basically the Frank Nitti character in The Untouchables film; Nitti in real life was a bookish type) that he was leaving and McGurn said "No you're not." But Lewis went anyway. So then some of McGurn's thugs, and maybe McGurn (his real name was Vincenzo Ribaldi), slashed him to pieces in a hotel room, cut his throat, face, cut his tongue half out... disgusting.

So the miracle was that with his vocal chords cut he couldn't sing anymore but he recovered, went to Vegas, reinvented himself as a comedian and became one of the biggest comic acts in Vegas. That's what they made the Sinatra movie about.

Apparently Capone felt really bad about the attack and apologized to Lewis saying he never authorized it and paid for all his hospital bills, etc.

McGurn ended up getting assissinated in that building on the northwest corner of Chicago and Milwaukee after Capone went to prison. It was a bowling alley then. He had run dry with the Outfit, who had no use for him after Capone left. Most likely he threatened to start turning people in if they didn't cut him in on some action

[Chi-town Native]

the tunnels connected multiple buildings, and allowed gangsters to evade club raids by popping up blocks away. the basement of the Green Mill was where the "action" was, the bathroom down there was 6x the size of the current ones upstairs.

Chicagoist Historianista: What Lurks Below the Green Mill: Chicagoist


Ric Addy & The Green Mill - YouTube

but I think too many people are hung up on the Italian joints - keep in mind the Outfit was the only multi-ethnic grouping in the country, it's very likely any German, Irish, Polish or Jewish bar/tavern/restaurant that dates before the 80s had some connection to organized crime.