The Ankara was a popular Pittsburgh nightclub and restaurant. Located just outside the city limits on Route 51 in Pleasant Hills, it opened in 1946. For more than 20 years, the Ankara fed and entertained Pittsburgh residents. Its floor shows, dancing, and ice revues were part of the city’s nightlife golden era. The Ankara, though, was mob owned and operated.

Charles Jamal was a Turkish immigrant who bounced around North America in the years before World War II. He named his new Pittsburgh nightclub for the city in his homeland. Jamal’s organized crime ties beyond the club remain opaque. In 1952, muckraking journalists Jack Lait and Mortimer Lee described Jamal, “a Turk who runs the swank Ankara nightclub” as one of Pittsburgh’s “big boys” in the county outside the city limits, in their survey of American organized crime, U.S.A. Confidential.

You can read more about the Ankara and Jamal in this August 2020 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article. This post digs into the crime family that was closely associated with Jamal and the Ankara from the time the club opened until the early 1960s: Nathan Mattes, et al. MobsBurgh previously featured Nate Mattes and his brother, Irwin, a..k.a., Pittsburgh’s “Big Six” of Gambling. This time around we’re going to highlight the nightclub’s Miami Beach, Florida, namesake, the Ankara Motel.

Mattes Family Rackets

The Mattes boys grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Nate and his brothers in the 1920s began racking up arrests for bootlegging, gambling, and political corruption. Nate’s stepson Sidney Rubin (1915-1993) had been implicated in Mattes’s gambling rackets as early as 1935 when he was arrested (and later released) in 1935 after borrowing his stepfather’s car. Pittsburgh police had seized the car after it ignited while parked downtown and Rubin was arrested when he tried to claim it. The cops found two shopping bags full of numbers slips in the car after the fire was extinguished.

Rubin went on to open the Merry Go-Round nightclub on Washington Boulevard in the east side neighborhood now known as Lincoln-Lemington. That venture lasted until the early 1940s. Shortly after the Ankara opened, Jamal made Rubin the nightclub’s manager. After Rubin left, Nate Mattes took over. When Jamal sold the Ankara in 1952, Mattes appeared to be the owner in all respects except for the names on the deed and liquor license. His daughter told me in 2020 that her father was its “maitre d’ and owner.”

But back to Rubin. Nate Mattes married Rubin’s mother, Esther Horvitz Rubin. It’s unclear at this point (pandemic shutdown) how Esther’s first marriage ended. Her first husband, Harry Rubin, was a barrel dealer who registered for the draft in 1917. Three years later, four-year-old Sidney was living with his grandfather, Tevya Horvitz, and uncle Bennie Horvitz.

Rubin left the Ankara after a year. In 1949, he and Nate Mattes opened a nightclub in Morgantown, West Virginia, the Cheat Lake Supper Club. By 1953, Rubin revived the Merry-Go-Round on Washington Boulevard, this time going into business with his cousin Norton “Tut” Harvey (1922-2007). Harvey took over the business in 1967.

Confused yet? Buckle up, it’s gonna get a little more disorienting.

In the 1930s, it appears that some of the Horvitzes began to legally change their name from Horvitz to Harvey. Ben (Bennie) filed to legally change his name to Ben H. Harvey in October 1930.

Ben (1910-1973) in 1936 married a woman from Jacksonville, Florida. By the time the United States entered World War II, he was in real estate. It appears that Harvey began by buying up Squirrel Hill houses and apartment buildings; he graduated to home building. In 1946, Harvey was part-owner of the Harvey-Miller Corporation. The Pittsburgh Press in 1946 reported that the company was completing new prefabricated homes in Oakland for “ex-GIs and their families.”

A deeper dive into Ben Harvey’s story is an essential post-pandemic research task. He apparently did well for himself in the postwar years. By 1949, Miami newspapers were running advertisements for his new firm, the Harvey Construction Company. Continuing the business model he perfected in Pittsburgh, Harvey began building homes for baby boomers in sunny Miami.

Harvey’s wife began divorce proceedings against him in late 1949. The Miami Herald reported in December 1949 that Harvey’s wife returned home from visiting relatives “to find his clothes gone and a $10 bill on a dresser.” In June 1950, a Florida judge hearing the case declared that Harvey’s construct company, for which he transferred stock to his brother Louis, “a sham and fiction.” The judge placed it into receivership and ordered the receiver to pay June Harvey child support and maintenance. The company continued doing business for years after the divorce and in 1954, Ben Harvey went into the motel business.

The Motel Ankara

Miami newspapers reported in May 1954 that building permits had been issued for a new two-story motel in Miami Beach, across the street from the landmark Roney Plaza Hotel. The Miami News wrote that the new facility would be “the first motel built in the mid-beach area.” The announcement came just a few months after the same newspaper had reported that Ben Harvey was moving his company from mainland Miami to Surfside.

Shortly after the groundbreaking, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette society columnist Harold V. Cohen included an announcement for the new motel in August 1954:

Nat Mattes, manager of the Ankara, says his brother-in-law, former Pittsburgher Ben Harvey, is borrowing the name of his place for a new 90-unit motel Harvey’s putting up in Miami Beach on the site of the old Fisherman’s Wharf Restaurant right across the street from the Roney Plaza Hotel.

Harvey and his partners Morris Goldman, Max Fischer, and Jack Amron were pictured at a ceremonial groundbreaking in July of 1954 published in The Miami News. Designed by architect Donald J. Reiff, the Ankara Motel had 90 rooms (efficiencies and sleeping rooms) when constructed ended that December. Amenities included a swimming pool, coffee shop, and a fishing pier.

The new motel’s owners planned a festive opening that was widely advertised. Highlights included Turkish dancers, an “authentic Turkish dinner,” and a speech by the Turkish ambassador to the United States. One ad published in the Philadelphia Inquirer the week before the motel opened touted, “A motel across from the Roney?” noting the Ankara’s proximity to beachside luxury without the beachside price tag: “The new Motel Ankara, combining the luxury and modern informality at motels far uptown with convenience.”

It’s probably no coincidence that the Miami Beach Kennel Club was located two miles to the south. Greyhound racing, which was born in South Florida decades earlier, was a favorite among racketeers throughout the United States (recall the ill-fated Guyasuta Kennel Club in Aspinwall). The Miami Beach track for decades had been linked to organized crime figures. Ads for the track began appearing in early 1955 touting an “Ankara Motel Feature Race.”

Ben Harvey owned the Ankara Motel until his death in 1973. The the motel was enlarged several times since the 1950s, including the construction of an eight-story tower. The Ankara became a contributing property to the Collins Waterfront Historic District when it was designated a local Miami Beach historic district in 2001 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. Local architectural historians described the motel as a distinctive example of mid-century modern “resort motel” architecture:

The Ankara’s two hotel room wings form a T that embraces the pool deck on one side and the parking lot on the other. The Wings feature exterior catwalks with redwood guardrails. A stair tower, featuring angular stucco planes with a raised front of slump brick that frames a grid of open clay tiles crowned by the hotel’s signage, prominently marks the point of the peninsula that forms the site. The most distinctive feature of the Ankara Motel is the lobby, whose angular roof plane forms a tilted delta wing that shelters the glassed-in space below …

… The Ankara is organized around an extensive pool and pool deck that plays to the strength of its unusual site between a canal and a lake; the deck steps down to the water, providing a full host of amenities within a condensed motel package. [Collins Waterfront Architectural District, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form]

 

The motel’s name changed several times after Harvey’s estate sold it in 1973. Since 2016 it has been  known as The Gates Hotel and it is owned by Hilton. None of the historic preservation designation documents discuss the Ankara’s ties to Pittsburgh and organized crime. Yet, I wonder how many of Pittsburgh’s numbers barons who “retired” to Miami — Frank Nathan, Harry “Kid” Angel, and Hyman “Pittsburgh Hymie” Martin — found themselves on the property? And what about Ben Harvey? Was Harvey mobbed up or simply mob-aligned? Stick around MobsBurgh as I try to find some answers.

Did you stay at the Ankara? Tell us about it in the comments.

© 2020 D.S. Rotenstein

 

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