CHAPTER 43 of THE COOLEST SPOT IN CHICAGO:
A HISTORY OF GREEN MILL GARDENS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF UPTOWN
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Five months after he vanished from Chicago, Ted Newberry finally turned up. The North Side mobster, who was said to be the Green Mill’s boss, hadn’t been killed, as many people suspected. He’d actually gone into hiding to avoid getting gunned down. “I was in one room for more than 40 days,” Newberry later told Chicago Daily Tribune reporter James Doherty. “If I had stepped out of that room, I would have been machine gunned.”1
When Newberry reappeared, something big had changed. He was no longer allied with the North Side mob’s chieftains, Bugs Moran, Jack Zuta, and Joe Aiello. He’d switched sides in Chicago’s gang wars, moving over to work for his former enemy—Al Capone.
Newberry was arrested as he took a train to New York City to see a highly anticipated boxing match on June 12, 1930, at Yankee Stadium between Max Schmeling and Jack Sharkey, which would determine the new world heavyweight champion. (Schmeling would win.)2
Newberry was traveling with two prominent members of the Capone mob: Jack Gusick, described by the Chicago Daily News as “Capone’s heavy thinker,” and Dennis Cooney, “the grand old man of the vice racket,” who was “known as wealthiest man in Chicago underworld.”3 The trio was carrying $60,000 in a bag—cash they planned to wager on the big prizefight. Newberry told the cops that his name was Ed Morrison, but they learned his true identity from his fingerprints.4
The three Chicago mobsters did not apparently remain in police custody for very long. “The New York police unwittingly seized them when they journeyed there to see the Schmeling-Sharkey fight, but word from their friends among the Chicago police caused the New York department to wish them godspeed,” the Chicago Daily News reported.
Newspapers offered various theories explaining why Newberry switched sides in the gang wars. The Daily News suggested that Newberry had decided to team up with Capone after one of the North Side bosses, Joe Aiello, sent machine gunners to try killing Newberry.5
The Tribune reported that Newberry had “deserted the north side gang … partly because of his hatred for Jack Zuta,” another North Side boss.6 Here’s how the Chicago Daily Times described the situation: “Zuta, once friendly with Capone but always rather independent in his vice domain, made an alliance with the Moran-Aiello gang and began operating brothels and booze joints on the near north side. He made his deal with political grafters and got the protection he paid for. At once his business flourished. … Moran’s underlings hated Zuta because he was a vice monger, and they envied him the harvest of wealth he was reaping.”7
“Zuta figured that the syndicate could dispense with Newberry and as a result, he was pushed out,” the Daily News said in one story.8 According to another Daily News report, Zuta’s scheming removed profitable whiskey sales from Newberry’s control. “Newberry, it is reasoned, went to Capone on his return, pointed out their twin grievances against Zuta and asked his aid,” the newspaper wrote.9
Yet another Daily News story offered a simpler explanation for Newberry’s defection: He’d recognized that Capone’s power was steadily growing. Newberry could see that “lean days” were ahead for Bugs Moran’s gang, so it was an opportune moment for Newberry to establish himself in Capone’s camp.10 Meanwhile, the anonymous author of Bullets for Dead Hoods suggested that it was Capone who’d reached out to recruit Newberry: “Capone recognized his ability and asked him to manage the district for the syndicate.”11
However it happened, Bugs was bitter about Newberry’s betrayal. “Ted Newberry was someone he hated to his dying day,” a member of Moran’s family told author Rose Keefe.12 Moran’s power over the North Side was waning, and he would soon shift his operations farther north, moving into Lake County and areas of southern Wisconsin.13
By the time Newberry resurfaced in the land of the living in June 1930, the Uptown nightclub he’d purportedly controlled, the Green Mill, was dead—at least, for the time being. Police officials had closed down the joint after a shooting during a show by Texas Guinan.
And when Newberry reappeared, Chicago was in shock over a crime that happened just a few days earlier: Alfred “Jake” Lingle, a police reporter for the Tribune, was killed by a bullet to the brain as he walked through a pedestrian tunnel at Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street in the Loop on June 9, 1930.
“The murder of Jake Lingle, which had all the markings of a mob hit, set off an impassioned outcry in Chicago and across the country,” Richard Babcock wrote in a Chicago magazine article looking back on the case. “It was one thing when the mobsters shot up each other, but now they had taken out a man ‘whose business was to expose the work of the killers,’ as the Tribune put it. … And then, within a week or so, the slow drip of rumor broke into a torrent of news—Lingle was corrupt to his core. … it’s likely he acted as a middleman among mobsters, cops, and politicians, brokering deals to allow illegal operations—speakeasies, gambling joints, dog tracks—to operate freely.”
Investigators suspected that North Side mobsters killed the corrupt Tribune reporter when he’d failed to protect them from police raids at the Sheridan Wave Tournament Club, a gambling joint on Waveland Avenue a few blocks east of Wrigley Field.14
Newberry was a top suspect in Lingle’s murder. Some investigators believed Newberry had lured the reporter into the tunnel where he was killed, according to the Daily Times. Ballistics tests showed that the deadly bullet was fired by a certain .38-caliber bulldog revolver—which had been in a batch of guns Newberry purchased, along with hit man Frank Foster, from Peter Von Frantzius, a sporting goods dealer at 608 West Diversey Parkway. They’d had the serial numbers filed off.15
But police detectives were also considering another possibility: The actual mastermind behind Lingle’s killing may have been Newberry’s hated nemesis, Jack Zuta. According to this theory, Zuta tried to frame Newberry for the murder, using a gun that he knew could traced to Newberry.16
Police detectives brought Zuta in for questioning on July 1. When they were done, he asked them for an escort. As a squad car drove Zuta down State Street in the Loop, a blue sedan pulled up alongside it, showering it with bullets. Hundreds of people on the busy street fled in terror. Zuta escaped uninjured, but one bystander was wounded and a streetcar operator was killed.17 Police suspected Newberry in the attack.18
After that brush with death, Zuta went into hiding. His whereabouts were a mystery until August 1, when five gunmen found him at the Lake View Hotel on Upper Nemahbin Lake, near Delafield, Wisconsin. As they entered, Zuta was putting a nickel into a player piano. It started playing “Good for You, Bad for Me.” The men with guns stalked across the dance floor and sprayed Zuta with bullets, sending his body flying onto the piano’s keys. Sixteen bullets were later extracted from his corpse.19 A witness identified Newberry as one of the gunmen,20 and the Daily News said that Zuta’s murder was “generally attributed” to Newberry.21 But he was never charged in the killing.
That same summer, thugs were paying visits to various café owners around Chicago’s North Side. “We’re the new North Side mob,” two men told one proprietor, displaying pistols under their belts. “You’ve got to buy booze from us. We’re in.” Police believed that Capone’s gang was asserting new authority on the North Side, moving in on the territory where Bugs Moran and his allies had long held power.22 Municipal judge John H. Lyle heard reports that Ted Newberry was the North Side’s new boss, using the Lantern Cafe at Broadway and Waveland Avenue as his headquarters.23
In September, the United Press reported that Capone had set up a “giant co-operative organization to control the beer, vice and gambling industries in Chicago and Cook county.” He’d supposedly appointed Ted Newberry and Jack McGurn as his “secretaries of war.”24 Another wire service story described this new hierarchy as “the strange gangland cabinet of the strangest government in the world,” with Capone serving as “prime minister and dictator.” According to this report, Capone had chosen Newberry as his “director of North Side booze, gambling and vice activities.”25
Although Newberry was suspected in many crimes, the police didn’t seem to be doing much about it. “Despite the hullaballoo and great search for Newberry, it is reported on the north side that the gangster continues to go his way unmolested and may be found regularly at all his accustomed spots, seeking to do away with the financial depression by selling Capone whisky in larger lots at higher prices,” the Daily News reported.26
“Almost always a hail fellow, Newberry spent his money freely and was popular with other gangsters,” the Tribune reported. “Even the police who arrested him occasionally confessed that he was a pleasing personality.”27
Seven months after police officials closed the Green Mill, the venue reopened—but it had a new name. On October 18, 1930, it became the Lincoln Tavern Town Club, managed by Jack Huff. 28 Over the next five months, it served as the winter location of Huff’s “gay and lively and colorful” roadhouse on Dempster Street in north suburban Morton Grove, the Lincoln Tavern, which typically closed during winters.29 At Huff’s suburban location, he’d earned a reputation for bringing in top-notch entertainment, such as Kansas City’s popular Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra, which had played at the Lincoln in 1924.30
Nothing quite so noteworthy happened when Huff took over the old Green Mill space. The Lincoln Tavern Town Club opened with the bandleader and violinist Jan Garber,31 “The Idol of the Air Lanes,” leading his Columbia Recording Orchestra. Garber, known for playing mellow jazz in a style similar to Guy Lombardo,32 had recently released recordings of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “When a Woman Loves a Man.”33
By February, someone else was attracting attention at the venue. “The reigning queen at the Lincoln Tavern Town club is Etta Reed, a dainty prima donna with a charming voice,” the Daily Times reported, adding: “This club, though its name changed, has all of its old appeal for the north siders.”34 But in March, the nightclub went dark, as Huff moved his operations back to Morton Grove,35 where he soon presented a four-week residency by Duke Ellington at the Lincoln Tavern.36
On December 21, 1930, police caught a suspect in the murder of reporter Jake Lingle. The arrest sprang out of information from an undercover detective who’d befriended Pat Hogan, a hoodlum who’d worked at the Green Mill. Hogan kept mentioning someone called Buster, hinting that this man was responsible for killing Lingle.
“Nobody knows him,” Hogan said. “He don’t mix around the town at all. He’s being taken care of by some people of the ‘big fellows,’ but some of them don’t even know who he really is. He’s hid like nobody’s business.”37
The detective remembered seeing a man at the Green Mill who matched Hogan’s description of Buster. The police figured out it was Leo V. Brothers, and they tracked him down at an apartment on the South Side.
“I didn’t know what to make of it,” Brothers later said about his arrest. “When I learned they were coppers, I thought of that murder rap in St. Louis. And I said to myself, ‘Well, it looks as if this is going to be St. Louis for me.’ They didn’t say anything to me about Lingle until four days after they had hidden me in the hotel.”38
For 17 days, investigators held Brothers for questioning at the Congress Hotel, keeping his arrest secret for the time being.39
“Why, I was just terribly surprised when I heard they’d arrested Buster,” said Tina Tweedie, a former dancer at the Green Mill. “… They’re just trying to pin it on him because they’ve got to accuse someone. Mother wrote to me about his arrest and you can imagine how shocked I was. I’m sure he’s innocent and I’ll do everything possible to help him.”40
All of the revelations about Lingle’s mob connections had been a huge embarrassment to the Tribune, and rival newspapers now accused the Tribune of trying to railroad Brothers.
“Find the motive of this prosecution,” defense attorney Louis Piquett said during the trial in March 1931. “Is it a prosecution by the state’s attorney or by the Chicago Tribune? … This is the most gigantic frame-up since the crucifixion of Christ!”
Seven witnesses identified Brothers as a man they’d seen fleeing the scene of the murder. Seven witnesses said he wasn’t the man. The jury found him guilty, but gave him the minimum sentence—14 years. “I can do that standing on my head,” remarked Brothers, who ended up in prison for nine years. “The conviction did nothing to explain who ordered Lingle’s murder, however, and the mystery persists to this day,” Babcock wrote in 2009.41
Another gangster with possible ties to the Green Mill, Michael Crowe, kept popping up in the news, though he never seemed to suffer any legal consequences for his alleged misdeeds. Crowe had run a gambling joint called the Up-Town Social Club inside the Green Mill Building around 1923, and he’d also been accused of running a bootlegging operation at Argyle Street and Broadway, just up the street from the Green Mill.
In 1928, Crowe allegedly fired a shot at his estranged wife at their home in Rogers Park.42 In 1930, a coroner’s jury recommended that he should be indicted for manslaughter in a hit-and-run that killed John Shea at Broadway and Ardmore Avenue, but he was never charged.43 Crowe faced federal prohibition charges in 1930,44 and local bootlegging charges in 1931, when he was allegedly selling liquor out of his home, at 7609 North Bosworth Avenue in Rogers Park. A witness recanted that accusation, however.45
By this time, “the old lantern-jaw is boss of the Rogers Park district,” according to Bullets for Dead Hoods.46 According to that book, Crowe was the target of an assassination attempt in Rogers Park on December 22, 1930. Someone had fired a shotgun from an apartment at 1710 West Greenleaf Avenue toward an automobile going down the street. Shotgun slugs hit and wounded two bystanders. When police investigated, they found a “machine gun nest” in the apartment.
Three people, identifying themselves as Mr. and Mrs. John J. Collins and Joseph O’Donnell, had moved into the apartment and mounted a machine gun at the window, apparently waiting 22 days for the opportunity to shoot someone. “The shooting was done with a repeating shotgun and five shells were used,” police captain Patrick Harding told the Tribune. “It is a puzzle why, if the gunners sighted their intended victims, they didn’t use the machine gun instead of the shotgun.” (Harding also dished out some local gossip: “There have been rumors that Alphonse Capone has been living in the Rogers Park district but it is not true as far as we know.”)47
According to Bullets for Dead Hoods, these would-be assassins were members of the North Side’s Aiello gang, who were trying to kill Crowe because he’d refused to buy alcohol from them. When the shotgun fired at a passing car, Crowe was driving half a block behind it in an identical auto. “He heard the shooting, turned about, and scrammed.” However, the anonymous author continued, “Mike didn’t let the grass grow under his feet.”
Crowe had his girlfriend, June, make a date with the Aiellos’ business manager in front of the Norshore Theatre at 1749 West Howard Street. When the Aiellos’ man showed up outside the theater on January 16, 1931, “Instead of June, a slowly moving car with a machine-gun and a shot-gun met him.”48
Some men in an automobile opened fire on Howard Street, firing bullets toward a man on the sidewalk, who turned and ran, dropping some food he’d just bought (bread, cheese, and kosher corned beef). A fusillade of around 100 bullets poured into storefronts and parked cars, injuring three bystanders. A woman working in a candy shop was hit by flying shards of glass. A man was struck in the wrist by a ricocheting bullet as he sat in the Tavern restaurant, 1775 West Howard; nearby, his car had 73 bullet holes in it. A witness received a telephone call the next night at her home in Evanston. “Get this, and get it straight,” the man on the other end of the line told her. “You don’t know nothing, and you didn’t see nothing.”
The Tribune reported that “the police theory was that members of the Capone gang were trying to kill one of Bug Moran’s henchmen.”49 But if the book Bullets for Dead Hoods is correct, this violence was actually part of the feud between Crowe and the Aiellos.
“Mike made one mistake,” the anonymous author wrote. “He employed some young amateur gunners from the West Side, and although eighty slugs were fired, the man on the spot got away. When a newspaper reporter suggested to Capt. Patrick Harding that it might have been done by Mike, the Captain appeared quite surprised that a man named Crowe was operating in the district. Of such naivete are policemen made.”50 (After surviving the gang wars, Michael Crowe would die in a car accident in 1941.51)
On June 5, 1931, Al Capone was indicted on charges of income tax evasion, as the U.S. government alleged that he owed $215,080.48 in taxes. He was convicted on October 17 and locked up at Cook County Jail, awaiting transfer to a federal prison.52 As the Prohibition Era’s most notorious gangster was jailed, the era itself seemed to be moving toward an end, as a growing number of Americans concluded it had been a mistake to make alcohol a forbidden substance.
That August, the Chicagoan magazine described some folks reminiscing about the city’s famous drinking spots: “They were all sitting around a table in a night club taking about old times, and old places—Marigold Garden, The House that Jack Built, Edelweiss Gardens, Rienzi’s, Ike Bloom’s, Royal Gardens, the old Green Mill and a dozen other night harbors of a decade or more ago.” One member of the party joked: “But I’m a real ol’ timer. Why, I can even remember when you used to hide the bottles under the table.”53 The joke? Apparently, these folks no longer saw any need to hide their bottles of booze.
The Green Mill soon reopened—in yet another incarnation. Earl J.F. Stein leased the space, transforming it into the Green Mill Ballroom. “The old cabaret floor is being ripped up and the establishment is being converted into a ballroom,” the Tribune reported in November 1931.54 As a ballroom, the venue would try to attract young couples out for a night of romance, like the dancers who filled the nearby Aragon Ballroom—though it would hard to compete with the Aragon’s glamor or scale.
As the Green Mill Ballroom opened on November 21, an advertisement noted: “With an Entirely New Management, Policy and Atmosphere.” The first musical act to perform in the renovated space Lou Sale and His Band, who were billed as “Dispensers of Red Hot Music.”55 The Daily News reported: “The Green Mill ballroom, uptown, Chicago’s latest offering to dance enthusiasts, seems to have scored an immediate hit in its first week.”56
In late December, Jimmie Campbell & Band were playing. One of the venue’s ads prominently featured the words “FREE BEER.” But if the ad caught the eye of any beer enthusiasts, they were probably disappointed by the words that followed: “… Would Attract Crowds Anywhere — But — the Green Mill Ballroom IS PACKING THEM IN BECAUSE of More Refined and Intimate Surroundings.”57
Over the coming year, the Green Mill Ballroom hosted charity balls,58 political rallies,59 waltz music conducted by Elmer Kaiser (broadcast live on WCFL),60 and an Omaha band called Dave Cunningham and his Gloom Chasers.61
As the Green Mill went through all of these changes, judges and lawyers were trying to untangle the messy question of who actually owned the building. Catherine Hoffman insisted that she was still the rightful owner. As the only surviving child of Charles “Pop” Morse, the man who’d built the original roadhouse at the site in 1897, she’d inherited the property. She was the landlord leasing it to Tom Chamales, who’d built Green Mill Gardens there in 1914.
In 1922, Catherine and her husband, Charles Hoffman, signed over the property to Otto Annoreno, but they later said they didn’t know what they were doing when they signed those documents. Annoreno turned over half of his ownership to Chamales. And then, the two of them sold off a chunk of the land for the construction of the Uptown Theatre.
For some reason, Annoreno conveyed his half-ownership in the remaining property back to Catherine Hoffman in 1928.62 On the same day, Catherine and her husband took out a trust deed to secure a $168,000 loan from Chicago Title and Trust Company. But they said they never received that money—it actually went to Annoreno and Chamales, who’d made “fraudulent misrepresentations,” taking advantage of the Hoffmans’ “financial distress,” they alleged.63
In 1929, Chamales sued the Hoffmans, asking the Cook County Circuit Court to divide up the property. Chamales didn’t want to share ownership with the Hoffmans any longer.64 The Hoffmans responded with accusations of fraud, alleging that Chamales and Annoreno had “conspired and confederated together” to take away the Hoffmans’ property,65 hoodwinking them into signing an “unfair, unjust, and unconscionable” contract.66
While Annoreno and Chamales were supposedly overseeing the property for the Hoffmans, they’d never given the Hoffmans any “true and accurate” information about how much rent was being collected from the Green Mill building’s tenants.67 “Annoreno and Chamales have always failed to deliver to these defendants the usual and proper monthly statements of receipts and expenses,” the Hoffmans’ lawyer said.68 Instead, “Annoreno and Chamales doled out a little money from time to time.”69
Chamales denied all of these accusations. And the Hoffmans never got a chance to prove their story. The court simply ignored their fraud allegations70—perhaps because the Hoffmans were having trouble paying their legal bills. Their lawyer, Willis H. Hutson, sued them to get the money he was owed, and a court ordered the Hoffmans to pay him $4,567.50—a bill they were simply unable to pay.71
The Hoffmans said they were told that nothing would happen in court while their lawyers tried negotiating a settlement with Chamales.72 But in reality, the case was moving forward. On March 24, 1932, judge Stanley H. Klarkowsi ruled that Chamales and the Hoffmans each owned half of the Green Mill property. But he concluded that both parties owed large debts on it—unpaid mortgages. So, he ordered that “a division and partition of all of the said premises be made.”73 The Hoffmans appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, insisting that they should be allowed to present their allegations in court. But their appeal was dismissed on June 30.74
It’s not clear whether Ted Newberry stayed involved in the Green Mill as it went through name changes and new owners. If the place served any alcohol, Newberry may have still had a hand in things. But in May 1932, Newberry made the surprise announcement that he was leaving organized crime and becoming an egg merchant.
“Newberry in explanation pointed out that he has lived thirty-four years without being shot and decided to tempt luck no further,” the International News Service reported. “Seeing his former pals cut down by machine guns or taken off to various penitentiaries decided him on going into the less hazardous egg business, he said.”
Newberry made this statement three weeks after Al Capone was sent to prison in Atlanta for tax evasion,75 as new bosses were jockeying for power in the organization Capone had ruled. The Daily Times reported that Newberry’s departure from the mob wasn’t voluntary—he’d actually been “thrown out.” With Newberry out of the picture, the mob reportedly assigned a beer and gambling territory on the North Side to Leonard “Red” Boltz (who’d been the Green Mill’s owner back in 1926 and 1927) and his associate, George “Red” Barker. But on June 16, 1932, Barker was killed by a burst of machine gun bullets—fired from an apartment at 1502 North Crawford Avenue (now Pulaski Road).76 He had 36 slugs in him.77
Prohibition was a hot topic when the Democratic Party held its national convention at Chicago Stadium from June 27 to July 2, 1932.78 An Illinois state representative, Michael L. Igoe, urged the party to take a strong position in favor of repealing the 18th Amendment and making alcohol legal again. He pushed for a “dripping wet plank” in the party’s platform, as the Tribune put it.79 And when the delegates voted overwhelmingly for repeal, the newspaper observed: “the Democrats are now become the party of abolition of the ‘noble experiment.’”80
After New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt won the Democrats’ nomination for president, he declared: “This convention wants repeal. Your candidate wants repeal. And I am confident that the United States wants repeal. … I say to you now that, from this date on, the 18th Amendment is doomed.”81 (This portion of his speech is at 4 minutes and 50 seconds into the video below.)
Meanwhile, the Republican president, Herbert Hoover, vowed to “enforce the laws as they exist,” even as he suggested taking prohibition out of the federal government’s hands. “Each state shall be given the right to deal with the problem as it may determine,” Hoover said.
Curiously, Hoover and Roosevelt both vowed to prevent “the return of the saloon,” even if alcohol did become legal again. As Hoover explained, “In no part of the United States shall there be a return of the saloon system with its inevitable political and social corruption.”82
Roosevelt won in a landslide that November, taking 472 electoral votes over Hoover’s 59, while receiving 58 percent of the popular vote.83
Ted Newberry’s supposed retirement from the mob didn’t last long. “He returned after a few months to his old haunts, … and between the alcohol business and a few attempts to muscle into taxicab organizations, again attained notoriety,” the Tribune reported. “It was reported that he hung out a good deal at the Vanity Fair cafe, near Grace street and Broadway.”84
Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who’d been elected to the office in 1931 ( replacing Big Bill Thompson), was cracking down on the old Capone mob at this time, trying to reduce Chicago’s crime before the opening of the 1933 world’s fair.85 But Cermak seemed to favor certain mobsters—including Ted Newberry—over others. “It was … reported that Newberry had Cermak’s permission to operate gambling resorts,” judge John H. Lyle later wrote.
It was also rumored that Newberry paid a cop to murder Frank Nitti (or Nitto), who was rising in power as a new boss in the mob formerly run by Capone. “It was reported that Ted Newberry … had offered $15,000 to anyone who would kill Nitti,” Lyle wrote.86 Some people believed that Newberry was working in cahoots with Mayor Cermak when he ordered this hit. “As the Outfit later learned from its spies, Teddy Newberry met with Cermak ‘special squad’ detective sergeant Harry Lang, paying him the then astronomical sum of $15,000 to dispose of Nitti once and for all,” Gus Russo wrote in his 2001 book The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America.
On December 19, 1932, Lang shot Nitti three times but failed to kill him.87 “Nitti, so the story goes, knew well enough why he was shot,” wrote the anonymous author of Bullets for Dead Hoods.88
On December 27, the Green Mill building was sold at a public auction, going to the highest bidder, an entity concealed as Trust No. 1157 of the Chicago City Bank and Trust Company, for $300,000.89
The Tribune later reported this sale put the property into the hands of John L. Patten,90 son of the late “wheat king,” Chicago Board of Trade member James A. Patten, who’d left an estate of $18 million when he died.91
Even though this auction seemed to take the property away from Tom Chamales and the Hoffmans, Chamales somehow managed to stay involved in his old building.
Ted Newberry was found in a ditch in the Indiana Dunes near Chesterton on January 7, 1933. He had a bullet hole in his head. His body also showed signs of a struggle: He’d been struck on the head, and one of his hands was crushed.92
Reginald Larson of Chesterton points to a spot at the side of a road where he found Ted Newberry’s body. Chicago Daily Tribune, January 8, 1933.
A book of coded telephone numbers was in one of his pockets.93 A dollar or so in change lay near his body. His platinum watch and watch chain were gone, but the dead man was still wearing a belt buckle studded with diamonds and emeralds—a gift from Al Capone. “The men who slew him knew that buckle, Chicago police believe, and they knew that it would be ‘too hot’ to handle,” the Daily News wrote.94
The Tribune’s underworld sources said Newberry had been “lured to his death by a friendly voice.” As reporter John Doherty’s article explained: “It was said he was called from a conference with friends telling them he had to go out for a few minutes. His point of departure … was vaguely given as ‘somewhere on the north side.’” 95
Doherty proposed a few conjectures about which mob factions might have killed him and why. But the police shrugged off all the theorizing, giving Doherty a more rudimentary explanation: “He must have done something. They don’t kill you for nothing.”96
Five weeks after Newberry was killed, Giuseppe Zangara shot Anton Cermak as the Chicago mayor was alongside president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami. Cermak died from peritonitis 19 days later, with his bullet wound likely contributing to his death.97
“The accepted version of the murder has it that Zangara was a complete psychopath who, despite being a sharpshooter, missed his real target, Roosevelt, a man whom he paradoxically said he admired,” Russo wrote. “But in Chicago, another theory held sway: Cermak’s killing was intentional, a fallout from the Outfit-Cermak power struggle.”
According to this conspiracy theory, the mob hired Zangara, who reportedly owed gangsters money for gambling debts, to whack the mayor.98 If this were true, both Anton Cermak and Ted Newberry may have targeted as revenge for the botched assassination attempt on Frank Nitti.
But many authors and historians remain skeptical. “The bottom line is that evidence of a conspiracy has never been established,” Mars Eghighian Jr. wrote in the 2006 book After Capone: The Life and World of Chicago Mob Boss Frank “the Enforcer” Nitti.99
On February 20, 1933—five days after Giuseppe Zangara shot Anton Cermak—Congress approved a new amendment to the United States Constitution, repealing the prohibition of alcohol. The 21st Amendment was sent to the states for ratification. It looked like the Prohibition Era would soon be coming to an end, making it legal once again for Americans to make, transport, and sell alcohol.100
A fire broke out around 7 a.m. on April 26, 1933, in the basement below the Walgreen drugstore at 4800 North Broadway—in the corner of the Green Mill building. Flames spread rapidly through the building, burning through the storefronts and expanding into the second story.
As fire engines arrived to battle the blaze, traffic was stopped in the busy intersection of Lawrence Avenue and Broadway. The smoke was so dense that Ella Winters, who was standing next to a hook-and-ladder truck, was overcome by fumes and collapsed.
Fred Kinsler, a 39-year-old101 firefighter with Engine Company 128, became trapped inside the building. According to the Daily News, Kinsler was in the Walgreen store when the floor caved in. He fell into into the basement, where he was pinned under falling ceiling beams. Lieutenant James W. O’Malley started dragging Kinsler out, but another portion of the floor gave way, pinning both men under a mass of timbers.
However, the Tribune reported that Kinsler was trapped beneath a pile of falling debris in the Green Mill Restaurant at 4806 North Broadway, a few doors north of the drugstore. When O’Malley tried to rescue him, a portion of the roof fell, pinning O’Malley to the floor, the Tribune said.
A rescue squad managed to pull the two men out of the building. O’Malley’s back was crushed, and he’d suffered internal injuries. “Lieut. O’Malley was injured because he adhered to the old fire department tradition that a superior officer should dash in when one of his men is endangered,” the Daily News commented. His injuries were was so serious that a Catholic priest administered last rites in the ambulance rushing O’Malley to a hospital, but he would survive. Kinsler was also seriously injured, with both of his legs broken. By the time the fire was extinguished, another four firemen would be injured: R.J. Lowell, William Shay, Oscar Siewerth, and Frank J. Kubek.
“Shortly before 8:15 the north wall of the building occupied by the Walgreen store fell, endangering spectators who had pressed close to the fire lines,” the Tribune reported. This was apparently a wall at the Green Mill building’s north end—perhaps the wall just south of the narrow Fannie May candy shop at 4812 North Broadway, which is sandwiched in between the Green Mill building and the Uptown Theatre. The candy store building caught on fire too, and the flames soon reached the walls of the Uptown Theatre.
“With the Broadway-Lawrence area filled with fire fighting apparatus, firemen began making strenuous efforts to prevent the flames from reaching the Uptown theater,” the Tribune reported. Firefighters later said the theater’s “stout walls” stopped the fire from spreading into the structure. (By that afternoon, the Uptown Theatre was hosting its scheduled shows, just as if nothing unusual had happened.)
Meanwhile, the fire reached the Green Mill Ballroom’s dance floor, located in the building’s northwest corner. (The Daily News said the ballroom was on the second floor. This might reflect a change that had taken place when the space was renovated in 1931; earlier, the entertainment space had been two stories tall with a balcony.)
When the fire was finally under control, around 9 a.m., Green Mill Ballroom manager Earl Stein went up to his office and retrieved his cash box. He said the ballroom was “a total loss,” estimating the damage at $25,000.
The fire also reportedly “destroyed” the drugstore at 4800 North Broadway, Wolf’s Jewelry Shop at 4802, the Stop and Eat restaurant at 4804, and Excell Photo Studio at 4810. (The jewelry shop and portions of the drugstore occupied the space where today’s Green Mill jazz club is located.) Dr. Edwin Sager, a physician with an office directly above the drugstore, reported that all of his equipment had been ruined. Other offices on the second floor surely suffered extensive damage, too.
The fire’s total damage was estimated at $100,000 (roughly $2.4 million in 2024 dollars). A day after the fire, the Tribune reported that the Green Mill building had been “destroyed.” The newspaper also noted: “Tom Chamales, owner of the two story structure, announced that he planned to replace the building with one of similar proportions.”102 (Was the Tribune unaware that Chamales had lost ownership of the building in an auction four months earlier? Or had Chamales somehow succeeded in grasping onto the property’s ownership?)
The building had not, in fact, been destroyed. The fire certainly seemed to cause extensive damage, judging from the newspaper reports. But enough of the structure remained intact that it could be repaired instead of torn down and replaced. On November 1, 1933, the city issued a building permit to “repair fire damage” at 4800 Broadway.103
How had the fire started? It doesn’t appear that newspapers ever reported whether a cause was determined. The Green Mill was the first of nine nightclubs and roadhouses that would burn in and around Chicago over the next year and a half. When the Tribune took note of that fact, it seemed to be suggesting it was a curious coincidence that so many of these joints were going up in flames.104
As construction work began to fix up the burned-out Green Mill building, the federal prohibition against alcohol was repealed on December 5, 1933, when the 21st Amendment became law. It officially became legal again to sell alcohol at 4:32 p.m. Chicago time, the moment when Utah ratified the change. “Once the drinking started, … the downtown bars were lined five and six deep, and stayed that way until they closed,” the Tribune reported.105
It’s unknown exactly how long the construction project at the Green Mill building took, but the Green Mill Tavern appeared in Chicago telephone books for the first time in February 1935, listed at 4802 Broadway. It was operated by the RM (or R and M) Corporation, with Tom Chamales’s brother William serving as the company’s president.106
Over the previous 15 years, it had been a crime whenever booze was served in the Green Mill building. Now, for the first time in a decade and a half, it was legal to store and sell alcohol on the premises—and drinks began flowing in the new tavern at 4802 North Broadway, just north of the corner with Lawrence Avenue. That tavern is still there today.
PREVIOUS CHAPTER / TABLE OF CONTENTS
Also see the Addendum: 1930 Photos of Lawrence Avenue in Uptown
Fire photos: Chicago Daily News, 1933. DN-A-0821 and DN-A-0823. Chicago History Museum.
Footnotes
1 James Doherty, “Texas Guinan, Queen of Whoopee!” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 4, 1951, Grafic Magazine, 4–5.
2 “Schmeling, Max-Jack Sharkey I on Site Full Ticket,” Jo Sports, accessed August 6, 2024, https://www.josportsinc.com/products/schmeling-max-jack-sharkey-i-on-site-full-ticket-1930-schmeling-wins-heavyweight-title.
3 “‘Lest We Forget,’ the Roll Is Called Again on Gangland,” Chicago Daily News, June 18, 1930, 1, 4.
4 “Moran Chief Among Those Held in East,” Belvidere (IL) Daily Republican, June 12, 1930, 1; “Police Smash at Gangs Again; 664 Seized,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 13, 1930, 2.
5 “‘Lest We Forget.’”
6 John Boettinger, “Tell of Search for Motive in Lingle Murder,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 29, 1931, 6.
7 “Hunt Ted Newberry, Lingle Death Lure,” (Chicago) Daily Times, July 3, 1930, 2, 31.
8 “Ted Newberry Found Slain,” Chicago Daily News, Jan. 7, 1933, 1, 4.
9 “Jack Zuta Shot Dead by Gang Foes,” Chicago Daily News, August 2, 1930, 1, 3.
10 “Zuta Missing as Case Comes Before Court,” Chicago Daily News, July 5, 1930, 1, 4.
11 Anonymous (John Corbett, ed.), Bullets for Dead Hoods: An Encyclopedia of Chicago Mobsters, c. 1933 (Chicago: Soberscove Press, 2020), 148.
12 Rose Keefe, The Man Who Got Away: The Bugs Moran Story: A Biography (Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2005), 262.
13 Keefe, Man Who Got Away, 276, 292.
14 Richard Babcock, “Prince of the City,” Chicago magazine, November 2009, https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/november-2009/prince-of-the-city-the-mysterious-mob-hit-on-1920s-tribune-reporter-jake-lingle/.
15 “Gambler Sought as Lingle’s Killer,” Chicago Daily News, July 3, 1930, 1; Associated Press, “Police Forge New Link in Lingle Case,” (Champaign, IL) Daily Illini, July 3, 1930, 1; “Hunt Ted Newberry, Lingle Death Lure,” (Chicago) Daily Times, July 3, 1930, 2, 31.
16 “Jack Zuta Shot Dead by Gang Foes.”
17 Associated Press, “Zuta is No. 50 on Gang List,” (Bloomington, IL) Pantagraph, August 3, 1930, 1l; Babcock, “Prince of the City.”
18 UP, “Newspaper Names Editor Arrested With ‘Al’ Capone,” Belleville (IL) Daily News Democrat, July 15, 1930, 2.
19 Keefe, Man Who Got Away, 272; “Police Promise to Curb Capone on North Side,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 12, 1930, 1; Associated Press, “Zuta is No. 50 on Gang List,” (Bloomington, IL) Pantagraph, August 3, 1930, 1.
20 Keefe, Man Who Got Away, 271.
21 “Capone’s Sally ‘Across River’ Fails M. Ablin,” Chicago Daily News, September 12, 1930, 4.
22 “Hold 3 Girls in Search for Zuta Slayers,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 4, 1930, 1, 2.
23 “Lyle Demands Raid on Newberry Gang,” (Chicago) Daily Times, August 11, 1930, 2.
24 UP, “‘Scarface Al’ Syndicating Vice Racket,” (Murphysboro, IL) Daily Independent, September 9, 1930, 1.
25 Central Press, “Capone Installs Self as Chicago Dictator of Gangs to End ‘War,’” Belleville (IL) Daily News Democrat, September 15, 1930, 1, 12.
26 “Capone’s Sally ‘Across River’ Fails M. Ablin,” Chicago Daily News, September 12, 1930, 4.
27 “Ted Newberry Taken on Gang Ride and Slain,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 8, 1933, 1, 14.
28 Advertisement, (Chicago) Daily Times, Oct. 18, 1930, 20.
29 Grady Foster, “Morton Grove Before the Baby Boom: Life and Times at the Lincoln Tavern,” Along the Graydent blog, January 13, 2015, https://gradyent.blogspot.com/2015/01/morton-grove-before-baby-boom-life-and.html; “Morton Grove,” Cook County Herald, November 9, 1923, 4; John Drury, Dining in Chicago (New York: John Day, 1931), https://archive.org/details/dininginchicago00drur/, 260.
30 Charles A. Sengstock, That Toddlin’ Town: Chicago’s White Dance Bands and Orchestras, 1900–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2004), 139.
31 Advertisement, (Chicago) Daily Times, October 18, 1930, 20.
32 “Jan Garber,” Wikipedia, accessed August 7, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Garber.
33 “Jan Garber and his Greater Columbia Recording Orchestra,” DAHR: Discography of American Historical Recordings, accessed August 7, 2024, https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/mastertalent/detail/323139/Jan_Garber_and_his_Greater_Columbia_Recording_Orchestra.
34 “Dancing Clubs and Cabarets,” (Chicago) Daily Times, February 14, 1931, 19.
35 “Dancing Clubs and Cabarets,” (Chicago) Daily Times, April 4, 1931, 18.
36 David Palmquist, “The 1931 Lincoln Tavern Residency: supplement to “The Duke— Where and When A Chronicle of Duke Ellington’s Working Life and Travels,” accessed December 15, 2022, http://tdwaw.ellingtonweb.ca/TDWAWLincolnTavernJuly-August1931.html.
37 John Boettinger, “Story of Clews Leading to the Lingle Slayer,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 22, 1931, 6.
38 “Texas Guinan May Testify for Brothers,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, January 23, 1931, 1.
39 Babcock, “Prince of the City.”
40 Louise Leung, “Brothers a Sober, Home-Loving Boy, Says Entertainer,” (Chicago) Daily Times, Feb. 7, 1931, p. 4.
41 Babcock, “Prince of the City.”
42 “Hunt Gambler After He Fires at Wife, Flees,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 9, 1928, 2.
43 “Hit and Run Car Traced; Girl and Companion Held,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 6, 1930, 3; “Ex-Roadhouse Owner Jailed as Auto Victim Dies,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 10, 1930, 11; “Michael Crowe in Court Today for Auto Death,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 8, 1930, 9; Case 11081, Homicide in Chicago 1870–1930, https://homicide.northwestern.edu/database/10660/.
44 “2 Bootleggers to Society Folk Appear in Court,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1930, 18.
45 “Delay Trial of ‘Society Bootlegger’; Witness Balks,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 4, 1931, 6.
46 Bullets for Dead Hoods, 57–58.
47 “Trace Clews to Gun Nest in Rogers Park,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 24, 1930, 2.
48 Bullets for Dead Hoods, 57–58.
49 “Machine Gun Rakes Street; Three Injured,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 17, 1931, 1; “Warn Witnesses to Forget North Side Shooting,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 25, 1931, 20.
50 Bullets for Dead Hoods, 57–58.
51 Death notice, Chicago Daily Tribune, April 6, 1941, 38; “O’Hallaren Kin Hurt in Crash on Halsted st., Died,” Suburbanite Economist, April 6, 1941, 1.
52 Jonathan Eig, Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 330, 366.
53 “Old Time Customs,” Chicagoan, August 1931, 14. http://chicagoan.lib.uchicago.edu/xtf/view?docId=bookreader/mvol-0010-v012-i01/mvol-0010-v012-i01.xml#page/14/mode/1up.
54 “Old Green Mill Leased for Use as a Ballroom,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 15, 1931.
55 Advertisement, (Chicago) Daily Times, November 21, 1931, 41.
56 “Stay-Up-Late Places,” Chicago Daily News, December 5, 1931, 11.
57 Advertisement, Chicago Daily News, December 24, 1931, 4.
58 “Rogers Park to Hold 2d Charity Ball on Jan. 27,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 17, 1932, 46.
59 “‘Think,’ Act, in ‘Crisis,’ Custer Plea,” (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald, April 1, 1932, 4.
60 Yank Taylor, “Radio,” (Chicago) Daily Times, April 21, 1932, 52.
61 Yank Taylor, “Listening In,” (Chicago) Daily Times, September 30, 1932, 48.
62 Document 10195740, listed in Tract Book 543 A-2, 226, Cook County Clerk’s Office, Recordings Division; copy in Tom Chamales v. Catherine Hoffman et al, Circuit Court Case B180140C, 1929, Clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court Archives.
63 Catherine Hoffman, Charles E. Hoffman, and their solicitors, Hutson & Traeger, answer to the bill of complaint, June 28, 1929, 4, Chamales v. Hoffman.
64 Tom Chamales and his solicitor, Francis E. Hinckley, bill of complaint for partition, April 29, 1929, 1, Chamales v. Hoffman.
65 Catherine Hoffman, Charles E. Hoffman, and their solicitors, Hutson & Traeger, answer to the bill of complaint, June 28, 1929, 8, Chamales v. Hoffman.
66 Catherine Hoffman, Charles E. Hoffman, and their solicitors, Hutson & Traeger, cross-bill of complaint, September 25, 1929, 8, Chamales v. Hoffman.
67 Catherine Hoffman, Charles E. Hoffman, and their solicitors, Hutson & Traeger, answer to the bill of complaint, June 28, 1929, 9, Chamales v. Hoffman.
68 Catherine Hoffman, Charles E. Hoffman, and their solicitors, Hutson & Traeger, answer to the bill of complaint, June 28, 1929, 12, Chamales v. Hoffman.
69 Catherine Hoffman, Charles E. Hoffman, and their solicitors, Hutson & Traeger, answer to the bill of complaint, June 28, 1929, 9, Chamales v. Hoffman.
70 Supreme Court of Illinois, order dismissing appeal, June 30, 1932, Chamales v. Hoffman.
71 Willis H. Huston, Lawrence C. Traeger and John D. Bolger, doing business as Hutson, Traeger & Bolger v. Catherine Hoffman and Charles E. Hoffman, Circuit Court of Cook County case B240834, 1932, Clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court Archives.
72 Charles E. Hoffman, affidavit, August 17, 1931, filed with: Catherine Hoffman, Charles E. Hoffman, and their solicitors, Short, Rothbart, Willner & Lewis, objections taken by, August 18, 1931, Chamales v. Hoffman.
73 Stanley H. Klarkowsi, decree, Chamales v. Hoffman.
74 Supreme Court of Illinois, order dismissing appeal, June 30, 1932, Chamales v. Hoffman.
75 Eig, Get Capone, 373.
76 “Police Net Spread for Nitti, Fusco, Woman and 2 Pals,” (Chicago) Daily Times, June 17, 1932, 2, 4.
77 Mars Eghighian Jr., After Capone: The Life and World of Chicago Mob Boss Frank “the Enforcer” Nitti (Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2006), 215.
78 “1932 Democratic National Convention,” Wikipedia, accessed August 14, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Democratic_National_Convention.
79 Arthur Evans, “Demand Plan for 2.75% Beer and Prosperity,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 28, 1932, 3.
80 Arthur Evans, “Repeal Plank Wins, 934-213,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 30, 1932, 1.
81 “Text of Gov. Roosevelt’s Address Accepting Nomination,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3, 1932, 2.
82 Associated Press, “Voting Affects U.S. Liquor Law,” Minneapolis Tribune, November 8, 1932, 7.
83 “1932 United States Presidential Election,” Wikipedia, accessed August 14, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_presidential_election.
84 “Ted Newberry Taken on Gang Ride and Slain,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 8, 1933, 1, 14.
85 Eghighian, After Capone, 218.
86 John H. Lyle, The Dry and Lawless Years: The Crusade Against Public Enemies and Corrupt Officials in Chicago (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960), 265.
87 Gus Russo, The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2001), 92.
88 Bullets for Dead Hoods, 148.
89 Judge Hugo M. Friend, decree approving master’s report of sale, December 27, 1932, Chamales v. Hoffman et al.
90 Al Chase, “Famed Uptown Night Spot of ‘Dry’ Era Sold,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 12, 1939.
91 “John L. Patten,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 24, 1932, 2.
92 “Ted Newberry Taken on Gang Ride and Slain.”
93 James Doherty, “Portrait of a Gangster,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 11, 1951, magazine 6-7, 10.
94 “Ted Newberry Found Slain.”
95 “Ted Newberry Taken on Gang Ride and Slain.”
96 Doherty, “Portrait of a Gangster.”
97 “Giuseppe Zangara,” Wikipedia, accessed August 8, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Zangara; “Anton Cermak,” Wikipedia, accessed August 8, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Cermak.
98 Russo, Outfit, 94.
99 Eghighian, After Capone, 251.
100 “Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Wikipedia, accessed August 8, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-first_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution.
101 1930 U.S. Census, Illinois, Cook, Chicago, District 2608, 7B, Ancestry.com.
102 “Fire Sweeps Green Mill; Six Injured,” Chicago Daily News, April 26, 1933, 1, 3; “4-11 Fire Hits Uptown Area; 3 Are Injured,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 26, 1933 (late edition?); “Acts to Rebuild Green Mill, Lost in $100,000 Fire,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 27, 1933; United Press, “Once Bright Spot in Night Life Burns,” Urbana Daily Courier, April 26, 1933, 1. https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=d&d=TUC19330426.2.10&srpos=5&e=——193-en-20–1-byDA-img-txIN-%22green+mill%22———.
103 Chicago Building Permit Street Index Reel UID CBPC_IND_012, 3903.
104 “Gunmen Seize Watchman and Burn the Dells,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 9, 1934.
105 “Liquor Flows Again; Chicago Gaily Responds,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1933, 1.
106 R and M Corporation, Liquor Control Commission: License Record, ID: 404/002, Illinois State Archives, Springfield.