A Speakeasy in New York – The Museum of the American Gangster

Museum Of The American Gangster

Museum Of The American GangsterThere are charms aplenty for the millions of tourists that visit Manhattan’s East Village. There is a coffee bar on every block, some of the greatest pizza mankind has ever conceived, and enough gossip about Woody Allen to fill a Mia Farrow three-day holiday weekend.

But in addition to these tasty tidbits there are also secrets. Sure every city has their share, but the East Village has its own breed of secrets. And the best place to hide a secret is right in plain sight.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Museum of the American Gangster.

Nestled between swank little bistros and quaint brownstones around 80 St. Mark’s Place, you’ll find an unassuming stoop that leads to the Museum of the American Gangster.

Sharing the same property with the theater next door, the modest staircase lulls you into thinking that this will be the run-of-the-mill local museum, run by old ladies with blue hair and an unhealthy obsession with local, mundane events.

While the obsession may be unhealthy it is certainly not mundane.

Divided into two rooms, the museum is a shrine to the criminal past of not only the local mob bosses (which would be good enough. This IS New York after all) but American crime in general.

Housed in the museum are exhibits such as the Manville machine gun, a true killing machine, which held 24 bullets, had no trigger guard, and did not give the operator an option of a single shot. It was built, as the museum founder Lorcan Ortway says, “to clear the streets.”

Other exhibits from the spotted past of American crime, include such highlights as a bullet collection that contains slugs from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, machine gun shells from the car that Clyde Barrow was gunned down in, and a slug from the corpse of Pretty Boy Floyd himself.

The museum also hosts the death mask of John Dillinger, wanted posters for Bonnie and Clyde, a Prohibition-era “mouthwash” display, (the mouthwash being mostly booze), an Appalachian still, and a baseball bat with some rather ominous stains on it, courtesy of its owner, Roy DeMeo of the Gambino crime family.

The museum itself is an intimate setting, where the tour guides escort you through two rooms of artifacts and do their best to put the crimes of the past in their proper context. They take their audience to the smugglers of the Underground Railroad, where history has judged those “criminals” as heroes.

From there they cover Prohibition and modern crime, where the principle characters are less heroic but still human, building their empires on more basic human appetites.

Museum Of The American GangsterAfter the tour of the museum rooms and a quick video, visitors are treated to an excursion of the Speakeasy and tunnels running under the museum to the theater next door.

It is estimated that there were between 30,000 and 100,000 Speakeasies in NYC from 1917 to the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Most were lost to antiquity, because… well… secret! But the Speakeasy under the museum is a rare exception.

“It’s like a living archaeological dig,” Otway told the New York Post in 2010. “The story of looking at gangsters and looking at the government’s reaction to gangsters reminds us America’s at its best when it steers toward moderation.”

The tunnels and the Speakeasy were built by New York gangster Frank Hoffman during prohibition, who sold it to Walter Schieb, who in turn sold it to Otway’s father.

While Schieb was eager to sell the place to the actor who was interested in turning it into a performing space, he was less than diligent about cleaning. When the elder Otway took over the space, he found the speakeasy tunnels, as well as two unopened safes.

Rather than run the risks of a booby-trapped safe, as well as the wrath of the speakeasy’s former owner, Otway turned the safes over to Schieb. The two discovered over $2 million in cash and a grateful Schieb promised Otway a cut of the riches.

It was the last time Otway saw Schieb, who fled the country.

The theater was eventually built, but the tunnels underneath remain the same, with copper wiring lining the walls and an ancient phone system hooked up to alert guards that a raid is imminent. From the main tunnel are three branches that serve as escape routes from the cops that lead to the basements of local buildings.

The actual speakeasy area beneath the theater has since been restored as a bar, where theater patrons can imbibe an excellent cocktail or scotch while they also soak up the atmosphere of ancient crimes and illegal but undoubtedly excellent parties.

If you should find yourself in Manhattan’s East Village and you’ve had your fill of Venti Macchiatos and Froyo, do yourself a favor and step over to the Museum of the American Gangster at 80 Saint Mark’s Place.

Just make sure you call ahead for the password.


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