The personal websight of Russ Williams  
Visit Historical Sites of Al Capone, John Dillinger, Roaring 20s, Panczko Gang, Sally Rand.
They're all here in Ken Schessler's Unusual Guide to Chicago.
 
An Unusual Tour of Chicago
 
 
SOUTHWEST
 BACK OF THE YARDS
BILLY SUNDAY GETS MARRIED - While attending the Jefferson Park Church at the corner of Throop and Adams in 1886, evangelist Billy Sunday met Helen Thompson,18. Helen was the daughter of William Thompson, a prominent milk and ice cream manufacturer. The Thompsons lived across the street from the church. Billy and Helen got married in the Thompson home on September 5, 1888.
 
BIRTHPLACE OF BENNY GOODMAN - Musician Benny Goodman was born here at 1342 W. Washburne on May 30, 1909.
 
AL CAPONE'S MILK DAIRY - Al Capone, with the help of fellow gangsters, Murray "The Hump" Humphreys and Frankie Diamond, opened the Meadowmoor Dairies here at 1334 S. Peoria just before he went to prison. Capone insisted that a law be passed that Grade A milk could not be sold as fresh milk more than 72 hours after it left the cow. He convinced the Chicago City Council to pass a law that the date by which milk was to be sold was clearly stamped on the milk container where the consumer could read and understand it. 1334 . Peoria.

UPDATE - In 1961, Meadowmoor Dairy became the Richard Martin Milk Company, although the Meadowmoor name still appeared on the cartons.
 
BENNY GOODMAN'S PARENTS HOME - Benny Goodman's parents lived here in 1905. 1214 W. 14th.
 
BIRTHPLACE OF JACK RUBY - Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, was born here in 1901 in a house near Newberry and 14th.
 
BOYHOOD HOME OF PRESIDENT OF NBC - William S. Paley, former president of NBC, lived in a 4-room apartment in a 3-story building near Newberry and 14th in the late 1890s when he was a baby.
 
GANGSTER BREWERY - In 1919, gangster Johnny Torrio bought the Malt-Maid Brewery at 3901 S. Emerald. The property took up almost the entire block. He changed the name to the Manhattan Brewing Company and hired Lou Greenberg as resident manager. When Greenberg, a pal of Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Dion O'Banion and Hymie Weiss became owner in 1933, he changed the name to the Canadian Ace Brewing Company and the entrance was changed to 3954 S. Union.
 
BREWERY OWNER KILLED BY NITTI GANG - On December 8, 1955, Lou Greenberg, former owner of the Canadian Ace Brewery, and his wife Pearl, had dinner at he Glass Dome hickory barbeque pit at 2724 S. Union. When they left the place and walked across the street to their car, two men stepped from the shadows, killed Greenberg with their 38s and calmly walked away. It was reported that ten days earlier, Greenberg had defied a friend of Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti's son in a business matter. Greenberg left an estate of $4 million. One of Nitti's cousins who attended the funeral said, "Now he's the richest son of a bitch in hell."
 
BIRTHPLACE OF MAYOR DALEY - Former mayor Richard J. Daley was born at 3602 S. Lowe in 1902. Later, his parents moved a few doors away to 3536 S. Lowe, where Daley grew up. He lived at 3536 until his death.
 
INTERNATIONAL AMPHITHEATER - Built in 1934, the Amphitheater was the largest exhibition hall in the country. Five political conventions were held here including the 1968 Democratic convention when riots broke out all over the city. 43rd and Halsted.

UPDATE - The Amphitheater was closed and auctioned off in 1985.
 
CHICAGO STOCK YARDS - Started in 1848, the stock yards once employed over 75,000 workers. The yards covered the area from 39th to 47th, and from Ashland to Halsted. The Armour plant was at Racine & 43rd, and the Swift plant was at Racine & Exchange.

UPDATE - Closed in 1972, the original stone gate entrance is still here at 4100 S. Halsted.
OGDEN PARK AREA
THE MONSTER OF 63rd STREET - Dr. Herman W. Mudgett, also known as Henry G. Holmes, was an almost irresistible attraction to women. He was also a murderer. When he came to Chicago in 1889, he went to work as a clerk in a drugstore owned by a widow named Holden at the corner of Wallace and 63rd. In 1890, Mrs. Holden disappeared and Holmes told the neighbors that she had sold him the business and moved away.

In 1892, Holmes had a building constructed on the southwest corner of Wallace & 63rd, directly opposite the drugstore. It was an imposing structure of three stories with wooden bays covered by sheet iron. It contained 90 to 100 rooms plus a basement. People in the neighborhood called it "Holmes Castle."

During the World's Fair Exposition in 1893, hundreds of people came to the fair and were never heard from again. When relatives of some of the missing reported their disappearance to the police, they discovered that more than 50 of the missing could be traced to "Holmes Castle." When police went to the Castle to talk to Holmes - he was gone. They searched the building. On the second floor they found narrow, winding passages leading to hidden stairways, blind hallways and trapdoors. In Holmes' private apartment, they found a trapdoor in his bathroom from which a stairway descended to a small room below. Besides his apartment, the second floor contained 35 rooms, many of them soundproof.

All the rooms were gas piped with cut-off valves, but they were all fake. the flow of gas was actually controlled from a closet in his bedroom. One of his favorite methods of murder was to lock a victim in one of the rooms and then turn on the gas. The basement of the Castle, which was seven-feet deep under the entire building and extended under the sidewalk on 63rd Street, was his disposal plant, where he burned or destroyed the bodies of his victims, or removed the flesh from their bones and prepared the skeletons for sale to medical schools.

Built into the walls was a crematoy where he burned the bodies. Buried in the floor was a huge vat of acid and two of quicklime, in any of which a body would have been devoured within a few minutes. In the middle of the floor, police found bones which included those of a child between six and eight years old. Police estimated that Dr. Holmes had killed over 100 people in his castle of horrors.

UPDATE - Holmes was arrested on November 17, 1894 in Boston for a murder he committed in Pittsburgh. His trial opened on October 28, 1895, and listed six days. He was found guilty, and on May 7, 1896, nine days after his 36th birthday, Holmes was hanged in the Moyamensing Pennsylvania Prison.
 
MORE MONSTER OF 63RD STREET - Murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes also known as the Monster of 63rd Street" owned a home here in 1891-1892. Neighbors reported that strange things went on in the house. Holmes went into the basement every night and worked for hours on some mysterious project. After a year here, Holmes rented the place and moved out. 7409 S. Honore.
 
34 KILLED IN STREET CAR CRASH - On May 25, 1950, a Green Hornet Chicago street car collided with a gasoline tanker at the intersection of State and 62nd Place. When the street car exploded in flames, 34 passengers were burned to death.
MARQUETTE PARK AREA
BENNY GOODMAN'S HIGH SCHOOL - Benny Goodman attended Harrison High School here at 2850 W. 24th. One of his classmates was Arthur Goldberg son of a fruit and vegetable peddler. Goldberg later was to become a member of President John F. Kennedy's cabinet and a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Columnist Mike Royko also attended school here. 2850 W. 24th.
 
"TERRIBLE TOMMY" O'CONNER KILLS COP - When police tried to arrest "Terrible Tommy" O'Conner for the holdup of the Illinois Central Station in which he killed the watchman Dennis Tierney, he killed Detective Patrick O'Neill in a gun battle outside O'Conner's sister's house here on October 15, 1921. 6515 S. Washtenaw.
 
BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE HALAS - Former Chicago Bear owner and coach George Halas was born on February 2, 1885, in a brick building at 18th & Wood. His dad had built the building a few years before. The family lived on the second floor and had a shop and grocery store on the first floor. They later turned the grocery store into a saloon. Young George went to the Peter Cooper School, a large brick building a block away.
EVERGREEN PARK AREA
Ted Kaczynski, The Unibomber, attended Evergreen High school here on Kedzie between 99th and 100th streets
 
MOUNT OLIVE CEMETERY
 Between 111th and 115th and California and Sacramento.
Catherine O'Leary. Her cow burned down Chicago in 1871. (18??-1895)
Patrick O'Leary. Husband of Catherine. (18??-1894).
Anna O'Leary. Daughter of Catherine and Patrick.
James "Big Jim" O'Leary. Son of Catherine and Patrick. He owned one of Chicago's largest gambling houses in the 1890s.
Al Capone. Capone was buried here in the family plot #48 on January 19, 1947. Murray "The Hump" Humphrey, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, Tony Capezio, Charlie Fischetti, Sam "Golf Bag" Hunt, and Tony Accardo stood shivering in the 4-degree cold to watch their leader lowered into his grave.

UPDATE - When Capone's mother died in 1952, his body and that of his father, Gabriel, were moved to Mount Carmel cemetery at Roosevelt and Wolfe road. Their headstones were left standing. Capone's father died at age 52 at his home in Brooklyn on November 14, 1920. Al later bought plot #48 here and reburied his father here.
 
SAINT MARY'S CEMETERY
 87th and Hamlin in Evergreen Park
Edward "Eddie Gaedele. A midget, Gaedele batted one time in the major leagues with the St. Louis Browns in the 1950s. He walked in his only appearance at bat.

UPDATE - When this writer worked for Newsprint Engraving on south Des Plaines, Eddie would come in to make deliveries and pickup printing plates that we made for The Back of the Yards Journal. It was at this time Eddie, a delivery boy for the Journal, was used by Bill Veeck in the stunt.
Edward J. Kelly. Former Chicago Mayor. (1892-1969).
Brian Piccolo. Chicago Bear football player. After he died of cancer at age 27, the movie "Brian's Song" was made of his life. Section AM. (1943-1979).
 
EVERGREEN CEMETERY
 8700 S. Kedzie
Ray Schalk. Baseball player. is in the Hall of Fame.
 
LINCOLN CEMETERY
 12300 Kedzie
Andrew "Rube" Foster. Baseball player. Is in the Hall of Fame. He founded the Negro Baseball League.
Lil Hardin. Jazz singer and pianist. One of the most influential women in jazz, she led an all-girl band and later, an all-male band. Married to Louis Armstrong from 1924 to 1938, she died in 1971 just after taking part in a concert in his memory. (1898-1971).
 
MT. HOPE CEMETERY
 115th S. Fairfield
Gustavus F. Swift. Founder of the Swift Meat Packing Co. (1839-1903).
CICERO AREA
AL CAPONE'S CASTLE - Early in 1924, Al Capone made his headquarters here in the Hawthorne Inn at 4823-33 W. 22nd Street. Called "The Castle," Capone ruled Cicero from the Inn until 1931. It was here at the Inn at noon on September 20, 1926, that eleven automobiles filled with Hymie Weiss gangsters, drove slowly past the Inn and poured more than 1,000 bullets from machine-guns, pistols and shotguns into the building. Capone, who was having lunch in a restaurant next door, escaped injury although bullets whizzed over his head as he lay on the floor.

It was also here on May 7, 1929, during a dinner-meeting of the Syndicate, that Capone beat to death three of his men with a baseball bat, John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, and Joseph Giunta. Capone discovered that all had been disloyal. Scalise and Anselmi were the first to coat their bullets with garlic, and the first to use the handshake murder. They were suspected to be two of the killers in the the St. Valentines Day Massacre. 4823-33 W. 2nd Street.

UPDATE - Hymie Weiss lived just 20 days after his attack on Capone. On October 11, 1926, Weiss, 28, was killed by ten machine-gun bullets as he was entering his headquarters above Dion O'Banion's flower shop at 738 N. State.

The Inn, renamed the Towne Hotel, remained a meeting place of the Chicago Syndicate through the 1960s. The Turf Lounge next door at 2208 S. Cicero, was still a gangster hangout. It had an underground passageway leading into the Towne Hotel. On February 17, 1970, a fire, which started in the kitchen, destroyed the hotel.
 
BENNY GOODMAN'S FIRST JOB - Benny Goodman's first professional engagement was here at the 2,400-seat Central Park Theater in 1921. 12-year-old Benny was too young to perform on stage, so he stood on the conductor's podium in the orchestra pit, and while in a Buster Brown collar and bow tie and wearing knee pants, he did an imitation of Ted Lewis playing his clarinet. He was paid $5. 3535 S. Central Park.

UPDATE - Built in 1916, the theater was the midwest's first motion picture palace. It is now a church.
 
TUCKER AUTO PLANT - The Dodge-Chicago Aircraft Engine Plant was built in WWII at 67th and Cicero. After the war, The Tucker Auto Company moved into the plant. When Tucker closed, it became the Ford Motor Company.
ALSIP AREA
BURR OAK CEMETERY
 127th and Cicero.
Dinah Washington. (Ruth Jones). Singer known as the "Queen of the Blues." She died from a drug overdose in 1963. She is in the Elmgrove Section, Lot 155, Grave 4. (1924-1963).
Alice Jones. Mother of Dinah Washington.
FOREST PARK AREA
FRANK "THE ENFORCER" NITTI COMMITS SUICIDE - When gangster Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, Al Capone's successor as head of the Syndicate was indicted for tax evasion in 1943, he went for a walk along the railroad tracks here near his home in North Riverside. At a spot southeast of 22nd and Harlem, he put a gun to his head and shot himself to death.

UPDATE - In 1992, the spot where he died was between a Toy R Us and a Firestone Store.
 
FOREST HOME CEMETERY
 836 S. Des Plaines.
Charles Chamberlain. He wrote the words to the state song "Illinois." In Lot 32, Section 4.
Emma Goldman. An anarchist who published a journal called "Mother Earth," she advocated revolution and free love. She was blamed for the assassination of President McKinley. Deported to Russia in 1919, she died in Toronto in 1940. She is buried here near fellow radicals who were hanged for inciting violence in the Haymarket Square riot in 1886. (1869-1949). She is in Lot 1044, Section N, across the road from the Chapel.
Grunow Mausoleum. He was the founder of the Grunow Majestic Radio Corporation. In Lot 1, Section 24.
Haymarket Monument. Buried here are George Engle, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Oscar Neebe, Albert Parsons, Michael Schwab and August Spies.

Parsons, Engle, Fischer and Spies were hanged on November 11, 1887 for inciting the Chicago Haymarket Square riot in 1886 in which eight policemen were killed. Louis Lingg escaped the gallows by exploding a fuse cap in his mouth just before he was to be hanged. Neebe and Schwab were given life sentences

They are buried in a section known as "Dissenter's Row" because of the numerous rebels buried here. In Lot 789, Section N.
William "Big Bill" Haywood. Union organizer. One-half of his ashes are here. (1869-1928).
Clarence Hemingway. Father of Ernest Hemingway. In Lot N 1/2 66, Section 10.
Grace Hemingway. Mother of Ernest Hemingway. In Lot N 1/2 66, Section 10.
Billy Sunday. Baseball player and evangelist. In Lot 106, Section 32. (1863-1935).
Winder brothers. The young boys died in the Iroquois Theater fire on December 30, 1903 in which over 600 were killed. In Lot 82, Section 40.
 
WALDHEIM JEWISH CEMETERY
 1400 S. Des Plaines (adjoins Forest Home on the south)
Adam Heyer. Gangster. He was killed in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929. In Section R .
Mike Todd. Producer. He was married to Elizabeth Taylor when he was killed in a plane crash in 1958. He is buried next to his father. (1907-1958).
Adam Weinshank. Gangster. He was killed in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929. In the Sons and Daughters of Jacob Gate Section. (1893-1929).
 
WHITFIELD CEMETERY
 Roosevelt Road and Winfield.
Colonel Rupert McCormick. Former owner of the Chicago Tribune. The granite tomb of McCormick and his wife stands near the McCormick mansion on his former estate.
 
WOODLAWN CEMETERY
 Northwest corner of Cermak and 22nd.
Circus Performers. When 86 performers of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus were killed in a train wreck in Ivanhoe, Indiana on June 22, 1918, the Showmen's League of America buried 56 of them here. Five granite elephants mark their graves in the Showmen Rest Section.
 
FOREST PARK CEMETERY
 On Roosevelt Road
Between Lombard and Wheaton in Glen Ellyn.
Richard "Dickey" Kerr. Baseball player. He pitched for the infamous Chicago "Black Sox" in 1919. In Section 29, Lot 667, Base 12, six rows behind the Sewall marker. (1893-1963).
Don Vogler. Race driver.
Rich Vogler. Race driver. (1950-1990).
 
OAKRIDGE CEMETERY
On Roosevelt Road west of Mannheim Road.
Harold Lincoln Gray. Cartoonist who created "Little Orphan Annie." (1894-1968).
Chester "Howlin Wolf" Burnett. Musician.
 
QUEEN OF HEAVEN CEMETERY
 At corner of Western and 12th in Hillside.
Tony "Big Tuna" Accardo. Mafia boss. Also known as "Joe Batters." (1906-1992).
Sam "Teets" Battaglia. Gangster. A member of the old "42 gang" along with Sam "Mooney" Giancana, Battaglia joined Al Capone's gang in 1924, and by the late 1930s, had risen high in the Syndicate, specializing in loansharking. Known as an uneducated moron, he spent most of the time in prison after 1967. He died in 1973.
George Kirby. Comedian. (1925-1985).
Paul "The Waiter" Ricca. Gangster. He was best man at Al Capone's wedding. Following Frank Nitti's death in 1941, Ricca assumed control of the Chicago mob with Tony Accardo as his sub-boss. He was jailed for income tax evasion in 1949 and served 27 months of a nine year sentence. He died of natural causes on October 11, 1972.
William Wightkin. Chicago Bears football player. Section 23, Block 13, Lot 322.

RESURRECTION CEMETERY
 Northeast corner of Archer and Bedford.
GHOST OF MARY BUGOSI - Over the years, many people have reported seeing a mysterious young lady standing in the street in front of the Resurrection Cemetery and also in Chet's Melody Lounge across from the cemetery gates, but she always mysteriously disappears. Patrons of the lounge believe the figure is the ghost of Mary Bugosi who was killed in a traffic accident on Wacker Drive in 1934.

TINLEY PARK
TINLEY PARK CEMETERY
167th and Harlem in Tinley Park.
Melvin "Tony" Betenhausen. Race driver. He was killed in the Indy 500 in 1961.

WORTH
HOLY SEPULCHER CEMETERY
6001 W. 111th.
Richard J. Daley. Former Chicago mayor. In Section 19, Lot AA, Block 1, Grave 6. 1902-1976).
Helen Morgan. Torch singer. In Section 14, Lot 10, Block 2, Grave 2. (1900-1941).
 
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