Monroe Street

Perhaps second only to Wells St., Monroe St. was the home of vice in pre-Fire Chicago.

In the earliest years of Chicago's history, Monroe street was entirely rural, with many farmhouses. It may well have been Monroe that inspired one of the earliest town ordinances, passed in 1833, which imposed a fine of $2 on anyone allowing a pig to run loose in the city "without a yoke or a ring in its nose" (pigs were forbidden on the street entirely, nose ring or not, in 1842).

By the 1840s, Monroe was home to many fine mansions, primarily country-style homes. The architectural vogue in those days was a Chicago version of Palladian, mixing the classical Greco-Roman columns with aspects more familiar to southern plantation estates. The area near Wabash Ave. was known as "Garden City", likely inspired by the city seal ("Urbs in Horto"), but also indicative of the greenery that covered the Loop in those early years. Standing at Monroe and Wabash today, with the clash and clatter of the elevated train passing overhead and darkened by the hulking shadows of steel tracks and skyscrapers, it is difficult to picture the bucolic setting in which early Chicagoans once resided.

But while Wabash and Michigan Ave. retained their large estates up until the Fire, the 1850s saw Monroe St. in decline. Lumberyards sprouted at the west end of Monroe, near the river, and just on the other side of the river. 1850 saw the city's first gas works plant, the Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company, built at the corner of Monroe and Wacker Dr. (then known as Market St.). The presence of a big, dirty, industrial factory lowered surrounding property valuesSeptember 5, 1850 saw the city lit by gas for the first time, and by the end of the year, a series of pipes connected the factory to 112 street and bridge lamps around Chicago.

Another cause for Monroe street's diminishing reputation was the establishment, in 1856, of North's National Amphitheater, one of the city's first commercial venues for amusement, on the north side of Monroe, between Wells and Clark streets. The Amphitheater played host to traveling circuses, carnivals, and other troupes, and the characters who worked in these events were considered unsavory, and frequently stood accused of drunkenness, vice, as well as more serious crimes.

One 1850s newspaper review of a show indicated the precarious position Chicagoans were still in with respect to Native Americans on the plains:

"The Iroquois Indians are a novel feature, and go through their dances, and other aboriginal barbarities, with as much unction as their white brethren of the sawdust. It is also cheering to know that they entertain a high opinion of their audiences, and are invariably in favor of peace."

Levi J. North, the proprietor of the Amphitheater, was one of the 19th century's most famous horsemen. After performing in traveling shows up and down the East Coast, the Caribbean, and in Europe, where he was famed for an act involving galloping bareback, while holding aloft an infant child, North came to Chicago and built the Amphitheater.

(Advertisement of show at North's Amphitheater, Jan. 5, 1859).

Like most great riders, North was relatively small of stature, standing less than five and a half feet, and had long, flowing blond hair, which trailed behind him as he sped around the circus ring. In his later years, one commentator wrote that "He was born on a horse, has always lived on a horse, will die on a horse, and have a horse for a monument, and will rest uneasily if the monument is not trained." He was said to have been the first rider to ever turn a somersault on horseback.

While in Chicago, North also became involved in politics, running for and winning a seat as alderman of the third ward. The election was disputed, since North had only moved into the ward ten days before the election, but he was eventually allowed to keep his seat. After some years, however, misfortune befell the great rider when the theater burned, and the insurance company simultaneously went bankrupt. North rebuilt the circus ring and began performing again, earning $50 per night, which he continued in Chicago and in touring companies for over a decade before retiring in 1870 and moving to New York City. The Amphitheater was demolished in 1864 and the property rebuilt for commercial use.

With the poverty and criminality growing on the street, wealthy residents increasingly moved away from Monroe, lowering property values and attracting even more itinerant and criminal elements, perpetuating a vicious cycle. Cigar stores and houses of prostitution, including most famously Madam Lou Harper's "Mansion" between Wells and Franklin, and Francis Warren's troupe of streetwalkers, who resided between Clark and LaSalle.

The 1850s and 1860s saw masses of poor immigrants, primarily from Ireland, building a shantytown of low, tumble-down buildings centered around Monroe and Wells St., known as "Mrs. Conley's Patch". Longtime alderman and world-renowned dandy "Bathhouse" John Coughlin, was raised there. However, "the Patch" was also notorious in its day, not only for the decrepitude of its dwellings, but also for the depravity and dark crimes of some of its residents.

Chiefest among these was the city's first -- and perhaps greatest -- king of vice, Roger Plant. I have already covered Plant's exploits to some degree in this earlier post. A Yorkshire-born Englishman, Plant arrived in the city about 1857. Legend has grown around Plant, who was always tight-lipped about his personal history, such that it is impossible today to discern fact from exaggeration, but purportedly Plant had been convicted of a felony in England and was scheduled to be exiled to Australia when he escaped and made his way to Chicago.

By 1858, Plant had built "Roger's Barracks", a set of poorly-constructed shacks centered on the northeast corner of Wells and Monroe. The Barracks, later known as "Under the Willow", so named after a single sad willow tree which stood on the corner, was the center for all vice in the city up through the end of the Civil War. It was Plant who popularized the catchphrase "Why Not?", which was emblazoned on each of the blue window shades in the complex.

Plant himself was diminutive, at just over five feet tall and no more than 100 lbs, but he was apparently a vicious fighter, skillful with pistol, knife, and club, but especially with his fists and teeth. The only one who could ever whip him, it is said, was Mrs. Plant, a mountainous woman weighing at least 250 lbs. Plant kept order in the saloon on the premises, and operated as a fence and a bail bondsman, while his wife ran a brothel with no fewer than 80 inmates, rented out cubbies on the property for use by streetwalkers, and made a trade in "white slaves".

During the war, Under the Willow ("that shadowy haunt of sin", as the Tribune put it), played host to battalions of soldiers and was rarely empty at any hour. It was a fearsome place, however, with many men finding themselves robbed, beaten or knived, and discarded in the alleys (oftentimes by Mrs. Plant herself) after imbibing too much or falling asleep in one of the decrepit cribs.

Some of the permanent residents of the Plant complex included Mary Hodges, an apparently fantastically talented shoplifter, who it is said (again in tall tale fashion) would drive a cart into the shopping district several times a week to bring back her takings. Another was Mary Brennan ("an audacious old sinner", as the Tribune described her), who was herself a thief, but also the trainer of thieves and pickpockets. Mrs. Brennan's two daughters were caught breaking into a home whose owner was away on business one afternoon in 1866, and as punishment, were placed in the Catholic Asylum, separated from their mother until adulthood.

Another long-time tenant was Lib Woods. Miss Woods arrived in Chicago in 1855, and was described in 1860 as "one of the gayest, prettiest, most fascinating creatures that could be found among her class in this city....with a splendid head of hair that made her rivals all despair. It hung down below her waist, in long, glassy ringlets."

Woods was girlfriend to Billy Meadows, a successful prizefighter. But when Meadows took sick and died in 1861, Miss Woods' decline into dissipation was quick. She took up residence at Under the Willow as a prostitute shortly after, and was then seized with smallpox, which disfigured her beautiful features. She was frequently drunk and became increasingly violent as she aged. She died a sad death in 1870, found in a gutter of Wells street.

Roger Plant was also notorious for paying off the police to keep the heat away from Under the Willow and his other nefarious doings. In October, 1866, he was arrested for robbing a man he had helped bail out of the bridewell of $25. A few days later, the police discharged him, much to the uproar of the city's more righteous denizens. Most likely, the increasingly wealthy Mr. Plant greased a few palms on his way out of the police house. In a later committee investigation before city council, Plant was directly asked whether he had every paid off the police, and, displaying honor among thieves, he refused to perjure himself -- he "took the fifth" and was eventually dismissed for being unwilling to answer questions.

Within a few years after the war, Plant had amassed such a fortune as allowed him to depart his vile surroundings for a country estate outside of Chicago, and by 1871, the Tribune reported that "Roger is now a member of the church in good standing, drives an elegant team, and lives like a Christian."

Plant had many children, by some counts as many as fifteen, and a number of them went on to establish their own houses of vice in the Custom House Place district during the 1880s and 1890s, including daughters Kitty and Daisy Plant, and son Roger Plant, Jr. Many other former tenants not related to Plant also went on to develop vice businesses as well. He is rightly known as the father of vice in Chicago.

By the time of Roger Plant's retirement, Under the Willow extended halfway down the block on both Monroe and Wells streets, and the centerpiece of the property, rebuilt after the Great Fire, was a four story building. Plant continued renting the property for large sums into the 1890s, until it passed out of the family's hands in 1908, purchased by the city's top sporting man, J.J. Corbett for the sum of $100,000.

After the Fire, most of the residents of Mrs. Conley's Patch, having had their homes destroyed, moved to the south side, where many of the neighborhoods to this day still have substantial Irish populations. The west end of Monroe street was redeveloped largely as a warehouse district, while business and commercial buildings arose closer to the Lake.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Apartment

In April, 1963, Martin Luther King wrote in his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

In January, 1966, Dr. King brought civil disobedience to Chicago to support "open housing" and the end of neighborhood segregation in the city. After years of marches through Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, the "Chicago Freedom" movement was the first major action of the civil rights movement in the north.

During the spring and summer of 1966, Dr. King lived three days a week in a slum apartment on this site, at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. "You can't really get close to the poor without living and being here with them," he said.

Dr. King moved in on January 26, 1966, and began paying $90 per month in rent to the landlord, Alvin Shavin & Associates. The building was a three floor walk-up with six flats, and Dr. King and his wife, Coretta, lived on the third floor.

Aides to King had selected the apartment with the goal of obtaining a home in what they called a "typical ghetto apartment". The fact that the ultimate tenant would be the world-famous civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner was kept secret from the landlord, as well as from the press, in order to avoid either an attempt to keep King out of the building, or, contrarily, any attempt by the landlord to clean up the building in order to avoid embarrassment.

In fact, the landlord did clean up the apartment substantially before he moved in, though it remained very dreary. The Tribune described it:

From the green painted entranceway of Dr. King's new home, up the three flights of bare wood stairs, to the partment on the right side of the third floor landing, poverty is everywhere.

If Dr. King toured his new home yesterday he could hardly be impressed. Tho it was freshly painted, there seemed to have been little pains taken to make it comfortable. In the white painted living room, including the fake fireplace, there was only one sofa. A chair and small table were nearby. In the large bedroom, painted gray, there is a new Hollywood-type bed. An adjoining bedroom, also painted gray, has a similar bed as well as a folding bed which could be stored in a closet. The yellow-painted kitchen contained only a sink. There was no stove or refrigerator. The unwashed kitchen windows looked out over a row of roof tops, cluttered with debris. Next to the kitchen is a bathroom. The tiled floor is cracked and seemed to be symbolic of the apartment's roundown condition. Across from the washbowl is bathtub, dirty and stained with age.

Mrs. King, dressed in a Persian lamb coat with mink-trimmed collar, admited she had some trepidation about living in the apartment: "I hear the accommodations are
not the best."

(Pictured: Dr. Martin Luther King and wife (center window) waving from their apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin.)

Dr. King's purpose in Chicago was primarily to lead a movement for "open housing". Although a 1948 Supreme Court decision had ruled that neighborhood restrictive covenants were unenforceable, Chicago and many other cities remained de facto segregated through social stigma and intimidation. Blacks therefore faced serious difficulties in moving out of slum conditions like those in North Lawndale, where King's apartment lay.

Immediately after moving in, Dr. King announced a plan to lead rent strikes against "slumlords" like Shavin and Associates, "which have created infamous slum conditions directly responsible for the involuntary enslavement of millions of black men, women, and children. Our primary objective will be to bring about the unconditional surrender of forces dedicated to the creation and maintenance of slums." King planned to organize tenants into a "union" of sorts, and use collective bargaining to lower rents and force improvements in substandard housing. Returning to his theme of higher law, King told reporters, "It may be necessary to engage in acts of civil disobedience in order to call attention to specific problems. Often an individual has to break a particular law to obey a higher law, that of brotherhood and justice."

(Pictured: Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King, in their Chicago apartment)

It is unclear, however, how an attack on landlords in Black neighborhoods would solve the problem of discrimination in housing in white neighborhoods. If anything, the use of political force to reduce rents could have the primary effect of reducing the supply of cheap housing and minimizing the incentive of landlords to improve property in order to achieve higher rent.

King's initial tactics along these lines also backfired politically. His first target was a decaying brownstone at 1321 S. Homan, a few blocks from his own fetid apartment. On February 23, 1966, King and twenty members of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference announced they were taking over the building, which was in a serious state of delinquency with city codes, as a "trusteeship". Tenants, he announced, would pay their rents to the SCLC instead of to the landlord, and their rents would be used to improve the building.

Naturally, the landlord was none too happy about the scheme. It turned out that he was no slimu Leona Helmsley-type character, but instead an elderly, debilitated man, who himself had few means of support. When told about King's actions, the property owner, 81-year old John Bender, from his wheelchair, told reporters that the building was a "white elephant," and that he hadn't seen a cent from it in the years he owned it. In fact, he said, he had lost $25,000 in the investment, and he would be more than happy to give it to Dr. King or anyone else, provided they simply pay the $150 a month mortgage.

Public opinion swung towards Bender. King's actions were a violation of Bender's property rights, and were illegal -- at least depending on one's definition of law. "I won't say that it is illegal, but I would call it supra-legal. The moral question is far more important than the legal one," said King.

But the courts didn't agree. In April, 1966, Chancery court issued an injunction against the SCLC and handed the property back to Bender, who promptly died within the month. The property fell into the hands of a court-appointed receiver, who did little about the code violations. The building still stands, more than 40 years later, as dilapidated as ever.

Open housing wasn't King's only goal during his time in Chicago. In a June rally at Soldier Field, King declared a number of others: school desegregation in Chicago, a city income tax, a $2/hr minimum wage, Black history courses in all public schools, and an expansion of the elevated trains to O'Hare airport and the Northwest side (in order to allow Blacks to reach these primarily-White neighborhoods). The Soldier Field rally was also notable for the appearance of a number of Chicago street gangs, including the Blackstone Rangers. The Rangers unfurled a huge banner that read "Black Power", the slogan of the more radical element in the civil rights movement, and one that King was uncomfortable with.

Dr. King's relationship with street gangs in Chicago was one of wary acceptance. After a perceived snub during the Soldier Field rally, the Conservative Vice Lords, who were also in attendance, stood up and walked out, and were followed by the Rangers and another major gang, the Gangster Disciples. King's apartment was just a block away from CVL, Inc. headquarters on 16th street, so it may have been a desire for peace that lead him to invite CVL leadership to a meeting a few weeks later at his apartment. He told them that SCLC needed help from gang members, needed them to be his "troops" on the ground, and street gang members were a part of King's efforts in Chicago throughout that summer, despite the discomfort they inspired in many SCLC members. King was probably right; if he were to lose the support of street gangs, who controlled the streets in many Black neighborhoods, he would likely lose the support of Blacks in the city generally.

While King's "trusteeship" takeovers of slum dwellings were generally unproductive, his marches against discriminatory real estate agents were far more successful. In July and August, 1966, the SCLC led marches through all-White neighborhoods on the Southwest side, including Gage Park, Bogan, and Evergreen Park. These events invariably turned violent. In one August march, crowds of white residents blocked the marchers path along Kedzie Ave., between 63rd and Marquette Rd. Dr. King arrived on the scene and, as he got out of his car, was pelted on the back of the neck with a rock. Falling to the ground, he steadied himself, saying "I have to do this -- to expose myself -- to bring this hate into the open. I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today."

For its part, the Chicago Tribune was openly hostile to Dr. King and his efforts throughout his time in the city. In one particularly inflammatory editorial, the paper wrote

These "rights" leaders and the foggy clergymen who abet them on are not heroes. For all their pious protestations of nonviolence, they are working hand in glove with the criminal element to create confusion and turbulence and to compound the danger to Chicagoans. They can no longer even pretend to be ignorant of this link. Chicago has already paid too high a price for this deliberate campaign of sabotage. Causing violence to achieve political ends is criminal syndicalism, a statutory crime in many states. There are other laws, in addition, against inciting violence. If the marchers keep up their sabotage, it will be time to indict the whole lot of them.

Mayor Daley took a more nuanced approach. While publicly respecting Dr. King's efforts, he also worked to undermine them by emphasizing the city's own efforts to improve conditions in Black neighborhoods, implicitly implying King's work was unnecessary. Nevertheless, Daley too was troubled by the increasing violence associated with the marches on the Southwest side. When King announced the next target would be suburban Cicero, elements in various White Power groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, made it clear that they would confront and oppose any civil rights march in the city.

Daley and others pleaded with Dr. King to cancel the march in Cicero, to no avail. Finally, just a few days before the event, a compromise was achieved. Mayor Daley, the Chicago Real Estate Board, and a number of other city leaders signed a statement agreeing to the principles of open housing, and promising to end "steering" practices, by which Black residents were discouraged from purchasing property in white neighborhoods. In return, King postponed the march in Cicero indefinitely. (More radical elements were not dissuaded, however, and a smaller march did take place in Cicero in September, and in fact, it was marked by violence).

Having apparently brought the city on board with the principles of open housing, Dr. King declared victory in Chicago, and moved on to new challenges, leaving an affiliate, Jesse Jackson, to continue the SCLC's operations in the city under the banner of Operation Breadbasket.

When King was assassinated in April, 1968, riots erupted on the West and South sides of Chicago, with burning and looting throughout these neighborhoods. One of the buildings burned in the riots was the one where King had lived at 1550 S. Hamlin. The building survived, however, at least to some degree, and remained a burn-out for another decade. It was demolished in 1979.

The property remained an empty lot for the next thirty years. In spring, 2009, developers announced plans to build a $17 million complex called the "Dr. King Legacy Apartments," including commercial space and an "exhibition center". A sign was planted indicating the complex would break ground in fall, 2009. As of November, 2009, there is no sign of any construction, and the sign is gone.

Marie Kerrigan Sues Colosimo

Marie Kerrigan was a cigarette girl at Colosimo's Cafe in 1919 when she was assaulted by a waiter and manager at that establishment. She subsequently sued Colosimo, making the tough characters who populated his restaurant a news item, and leading the city's biggest gangster to retreat from his life of crime. Kerrigan lived here, at 627 W. 46th St. Her home is gone, but has been replaced by another on the same lot. In her lawsuit, she claimed to live with her sister, and to be the only breadwinner for the family, which included her lame father and mother.

Kerrigan was working after midnight on May 19, 1919 when she saw a drunken woman stumble into the employee dressing room. As she went to assist and redirect, Marie Kerrigan was grabbed and manhandled by one of the cafe's waiters and one of Colosimo's business partners, Mike "The Greek" Potson. The two thugs dragged the hapless girl through the restaurant and threw her out into the alley.

Kerrigan sued the Cafe's owner, "Big Jim" Colosimo and Potson for $5,000, and her story made the papers. At this time, the Prohibition movement was sweeping the country, and soon to become federal law. At the same time, Colosimo's activities in Cook County, especially his suburban brothels in Burnham, were attracting the attention of law enforcement. This was not the kind of publicity "Big Jim" needed.

In fact, Kerrigan was not quite the angel she appeared to be, as one might expect given her employ at Colosimo's. Despite her sad story and her $5,000 demand, she settled for only $125. She signed the settlement papers at her other place of work, an exotic night club called the Midnight Frolic.

Nevertheless, Kerrigan's story made for good press, and brought public attention to Colosimo's vice empire and the continuing red light district in the old Levee. Reporters, investigators, and law enforcement agents increased their surveillance of Colosimo's businesses, eventually leading the gangster to try renouncing crime to live a life of virtue with his honest and pure new bride, Dale Winter.

Once in the underworld however, it is nearly impossible to leave, and Colosimo was assassinated in May, 1920.

Those not familiar with Chicago in the winter may wonder about the furniture strewn around the front yard in the photo above. This is a unique form of extra-legal property rights, in which Chicago residents lay claim to parking spots they have dug out after a big snow storm by placing old pieces of furniture in the spot during the day. City government perpetually threatens to shut down this informal system, but without it, there would be little incentive to dig out spaces on the street in high-traffic areas.

Tremont House Hotel

The Tremont House Hotel, first built at the corner of Dearborn and Lake in 1833, burned and was rebuilt three times. During the 1860s, when all the buildings in Chicago were lifted several feet out of the mud, the Tremont was the largest building in town, and resisted all efforts in lifting her foundations, until George Pullman, later of train car fame, managed to engineer the feat.

The second floor of the first Tremont House became home to Chicago's first billiard hall in 1836, and was the favorite hangout of an itinerant criminal named John Stone, who in 1840 became the city's first executed criminal, having been convicted of the rape and murder of a Mrs. Lucretia Thompson.

In 1862, a heavily-inebriated Cap Hyman, the famous Hairtrigger Block gambler and shotgun-spouse of Gentle Annie Stafford, invaded the lobby of the third Tremont house and used his pistol to hold everyone in the hotel hostage for an hour, until police reinforcements arrived.

The fourth and final Tremont was also the site of a shooting in January 27, 1897, according to the New York Times on that date:

D.B. Chandler of New York, agent for the Colgate Soap Company, was shot in the left hand and kicked and beaten until unconscious in Room 203 of the Tremont House at 4:45 o'clock this morning.

According to Chandler's story, he was assaulted by Edward Kirkland, manager of the house, Smiley Corbett, an ex-deputy coroner, and B. McIperson, a former ticket broker. "Early in the evening," said Mr. Chandler, "I went to the Schiller Cafe, where I remained until after midnight. Kirkland, Corbett, and McIperson were also in the cafe. They insulted me several times, and I requested them to stop. At last, I left the cafe and returned to my room. As I was winding my watch, I heard John Bruno, the night watchman, say: 'Open the door.'. I was about to do this when I heard some other person say: 'Break it in.'

The door was finally broken in, and I ran into the bathroom. Then somebody fired three shots through the door, one bullet striking me in the left hand and the others barely missing me. Then the men burst in the door. They jumped on me and kicked me on the head and body until I fainted.

The Times story concludes, "The hotel proprietor will discharge manager Kirkland," which seems awfully unfair, as only one of the bullets hit the guest.

The site of the original Tremont is now the "Theatre District Self Park," a twelve-story parking garage built in 1987, catering to the nearby Randolph Street theaters.

Johnny Torrio Shot

After Dion O'Banion double-crossed him at Sieben Brewery, Johnny Torrio's south side organization came into constant conflict with the North side gang. With encouragement from the Genna brothers, Torrio had assented to O'Banion's murder.

In retaliation, O'Banion's followers targeted Torrio. After the bust at Sieben, Torrio had turned over his major operations to Al Capone, making him think he was safe from rival gangsters. However, Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran, two of O'Banion's lieutenants, were motivated by revenge, not business matters, and about 4:30 p.m. on a cold January morning in 1925, they ambushed Torrio in front of his home, pictured here, at 7011 S. Clyde Ave.

Torrio and his ever-loyal wife, Ann, had spent the day shopping in the Loop, and had just returned to their South Shore home. Accompanied only by their driver, they walked up to the front door, with Torrio carrying a load of packages, unaware of the blue Cadillac that had arrived moments after them. Weiss and Moran jumped out and unloaded a hail of bullets, first at the Torrios' car (wounding the driver, who was still inside), then at Johnny Torrio himself. One bullet in the arm, another in the groin, both at point blank range. Finally, Bugs Moran put his pistol to Torrio's head for the coup de grace. Click. No bullets left.

Torrio survived the hit, though barely. After four weeks in the hospital, protected by Al Capone personally at his side day and night, Torrio served his nine-month sentence for the Sieben bust at Lake County Jail, then departed immediately for Italy, where he lived for several years before returning to New York. He never set foot in Chicago again, and Al Capone took over the leadership of his organization.

O'Banion Homes

448 W. Surf (above), and 2800 N. Pine Grove (below) were among the homes occupied at various times by the founder and leader of the North Side Mob, ex-singing waiter and floral artist, Dion O'Banion, in the early 1920s. 2800 N. Pine Grove stands opposite the Commonwealth Hotel, where, a few years later, entertainer Joe Lewis was brutally attacked after he switched venues from a Capone-controlled bar to a North Side Mob saloon.

Joe Lewis, the Rendezvous Cabaret, and the Commonwealth Hotel

Joe E. Lewis was a popular comedian and singer from New York, who became a favorite at "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn's speakeasy, the Green Mill in Uptown. In August, 1927, a rival saloon, the Rendezvous Cabaret, located at 622 W. Diversey, where this Panera Bread currently stands, lured Lewis away from the Green Mill with a big raise and a share of the business.

McGurn was an associate of the Chicago Outfit, while the Rendezvous was operated by their mortal enemies, the North Side Mob. Lewis had committed treason. McGurn was a close associate of Al Capone, and a loyal lieutenant of the Torrio-Capone Outfit. Worse yet, on opening night at the Rendezvous, November 2, 1927, Lewis played to a packed audience and ridiculed McGurn as a part of his act. Perhaps he thought he was safe since gangsters only killed other gangsters.

A few days later, November 9, Lewis awoke in his room at the Commonwealth Hotel, 2757 N. Pine Grove (pictured below), to three armed men, who proceeded to bludgeon Lewis with a revolver and slice his face and neck with a hunting knife.

Jack McGurn, who later masterminded the "Crime of the Century," the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, was a one-man bad publicity machine for the Capones. In this case, his men failed to finish the job.

Unbelievably, Lewis survived the attack and, after some time, regained the ability to speak (his attackers had paid special attention to his jaws, the source of his income). He even returned to entertain an overflow audience at the Rendezvous, taking on the moniker "The Man the Mob Couldn't Kill."

After gaining fame in this unfortunate way, a star-studded group of entertainers, including Al Jolson, held a benefit for Lewis and raised $14,000 (most of which Lewis, an alcoholic, managed to drink away). Sensing the growing bad publicity for his group associated with the hit, Al Capone offered Lewis his old job at the Green Mill at terms matching those the Rendezvous had offered him, and made sure he and McGurn never tangled again.

The Commonwealth Hotel, where Lewis was attacked, still stands, though its days as a posh hotel are long over. It currently serves as a home for the elderly.

Satan's Mile

The most famous red-light district in late-19th century Chicago was Satan's Mile, stretching along State St., from Van Buren to 22nd St. The famous Levee segregated district was a part of Satan's Mile, as was "Coon Hollow," the two blocks south of 9th Street, where bawdy houses catering to black men congregated.

The most famous resident of Satan's Mile was Kitty Adams, a robber known as the "Terror of State Street," who operated during the 1880s and 1890s. Living in a brothel in Coon Hollow, she learned to cut men with a razor, and always carried one in her cleavage for protection. Police estimate that Kitty Adams committed on the order of 100 robberies each year between 1886 and 1893, when she was sent to prison at Joliet. Feigning tuberculosis by puncturing her gums with toothpicks until they bled, she received a pardon from the governor, and returned to Satan's Mile to continue her life of crime until 1898, when she was again sent to Joliet, where she died, of tuberculosis in fact.