Al Capone will forever be associated with Chicago, City of the Big Shoulders, as Carl Sandburg put it in 1914, where “gun[men] kill and go free to kill again.”
But America’s most notorious gangster was born and raised in New York City, a product of rough-and-tumble Downtown Brooklyn. The three gashes on his left cheek — which earned him the nickname Scarface — were souvenirs from Coney Island.
How he got them is one of the many incidents in Capone’s early New York days that are depicted in AMC’s “The Making of the Mob,” which returns July 11.
Capone got his scars at the Harvard Inn on what was then called Seaside Walk in Coney Island. Its fancy name notwithstanding, the Harvard Inn was a seedy dance hall owned by Frankie Yale, one of Brooklyn’s toughest mobsters. (Yale, who was born in Calabria, Italy, had a thing for the Ivy League. His real name was Francesco Ioele.) Capone worked for Yale, waiting tables, washing dishes and tending the 20-foot bar that ran the length of the club.
One night, a young couple came in for drinks. The girl was a fetching Italian, about Capone’s age, 18. Capone sauntered over to their table, eyed her up and down, and said, “Honey, you have a nice ass, and I mean that as a compliment.” The man she was with — Frank Galluccio — exploded: Capone was talking about his sister. Galluccio threw a punch, but the burly Capone didn’t flinch. He raised his fists. Terrified, Galluccio pulled a knife and slashed Capone’s cheek and neck three times.
“There was blood everywhere now, blood on the knife, blood all over Capone, blood on the floor,” Laurence Bergreen writes in his definitive 1994 biography “Capone: The Man and the Era.”
Galluccio grabbed his sister and high-tailed it out of there. For the rest of his life, Capone refused to be photographed from the left.
The Harvard Inn is long gone — burned down in 1925 — as is the Capone family’s first apartment, at 95 Navy St., right by Commodore Barry Park. But here and there around the park are similar tenement buildings that were standing when Al Capone was born in this neighborhood on Jan. 17, 1899.
His parents, Gabriele and Teresa, arrived in Brooklyn from Naples, Italy, in 1894. Teresa was a seamstress, Gabriele a barber. As Gabriele’s barbershop became successful, the family moved to better apartments in Park Slope.
In 2006, one of the Capones’ former homes, at 21 Garfield Place, sold for a little over $1 million.
An office for the John Torrio Association, which was on the second floor of the building that today houses Brownstone Bagel & Bread Co. on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Union Street in Park Slope, also loomed large in the early days of Capone’s life of crime.
“It was here, in these utterly ordinary surroundings, that the first modern racketeer held court,” Bergreen writes.
Torrio ran everything from brothels to crap games, loan sharks to labor unions. Always on the lookout for loyal followers, he spotted the teenage Capone, who lived around the corner, and put him to the test. He asked Capone to come to the office one day. When he showed up, Torrio wasn’t there. But on his desk was a pile of cash. Capone didn’t touch it. He passed the test, and Torrio became his mentor.
“If any man could be said to have invented Al Capone, … that man was Johnny Torrio,” Bergreen writes.
When Torrio left for Chicago to cash in on Prohibition, he called on Capone for help. In Chicago, the Brooklyn kid became Public Enemy No. 1.
But he still had some business to deal with back home. Capone found out that his old boss at the Harvard Inn, Frankie Yale, was hijacking some of his trucks that carried liquor from New York to Chicago.
On July 1, 1928, as Yale was driving his armor-plated Lincoln on 44th Street in Brooklyn, a Buick closed in on him. Machine-gun fire shattered the windows of Yale’s car. Capone had ordered the hit.
The Lincoln jumped the curb, throwing Yale’s body from the driver’s seat onto the sidewalk in front of 923 44th St.
The house is still there.
1. St. Michael-St. Edward Church, 108 St. Edwards St.
Capone was baptized at the then-rathershabby church (top) on Feb. 7, 1899. “Sever all snares of Satan which heretofore bound him,” the priest would have said — and never were more futile words spoken in Brooklyn.
2. P.S. 133, 610 Baltic St.
Young Capone was kicked out of this school in fourth or sixth grade (reports vary) for hitting a teacher.
3. Brownstone Bagel & Bread Co., 671 Union St., at Fourth Avenue
Capone’s mentor, Johnny Torrio, kept his headquarters on the second floor of this building (above). He helped steer Capone to the heights — or depths — he attained.
4. Garfield Place between Fourth and Fifth avenues
The Capone family lived at No. 38, then No. 46 and eventually settled at No. 21 (pictured below). All are still standing.
5. St. Mary Star of the Sea church, 467 Court St.
Capone was married to Mae Coughlin here on Dec. 30, 1918. They remained married until his death in 1947. She lived until 1986.