Category Archives: #Mobsburgh

Guyasuta Gangsters

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Independence Day fell on a Friday in 1930. That day Pittsburgh newspapers reported that a new greyhound racing track would open in the evening with a slate of nine races planned. The Guyasuta Kennel Club had rented a portion of the National Amusement Park Company’s leased property (known as National Park) between Aspinwall and Blawnox and built a dirt track and grandstands. Over the next 24 hours, the track, which was backed by Pittsburgh numbers racketeers, would find itself featured in newspaper articles across the region for a series of opening day mishaps and the betting taking place out in the open.

In May I will be doing a virtual program about the Guyasuta Kennel Club and its place in Pittsburgh History. The program will take place on two successive Wednesday evenings, May 13 and May 20:

Participants must register to receive the Zoom link and login instructions. Continue reading →

The Aurora Club

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Welcome back to #Mobsburgh (Social Distancing Edition).

For much of the 20th century, Fifth Avenue was one of Pittsburgh’s major ethnic business corridors. It begins downtown and then winds up the city’s hills towards the eastern suburbs. Its first mile forms a boundary separating the city’s Hill District from the Bluff (or Uptown) neighborhood. That stretch included bars, restaurants, and drugstores that were key sites in the city’s bustling numbers gambling rackets. There were popular places, like Darling’s Drug Store at Fifth and Stevenson, where gamblers placed their bets and numbers bankers, controllers, and runners mingled.

And then there was the Aurora Club at 11 Pride Street. Pittsburgh’s numbers bankers gathered there to drink, play cards, and share information about the city’s rackets. It wasn’t as well-known as the Crawford Grill No. 2 in the Upper Hill nor was it as flashy as Squirrel Hill’s Beacon Club. Yet, for several decades the Aurora Club was an important part of Pittsburgh’s entertainment economy and vice ecosystem.

Former Aurora Club in 2020, corner of Pride St. and Fifth Avenue.

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Where the racketeers played: Squirrel Hill’s gambling joints

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This installment of #Mobsburgh returned to Squirrel Hill with a visit to a pair of gambling clubs.

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, December 12, 1952. Source: newspapers.com.

Squirrel Hill is a fashionable Pittsburgh neighborhood long associated with the city’s Jewish residents. In the 1920s, first- and second-generation European immigrants accumulated sufficient capital to move away from crowded Hill District tenements and other parts of the city where they had settled. They brought with them European cultural and religious traditions adapted to American urban life. And, they carried new additions to their economic and social repertoires: Organized crime rackets, including bootlegging and gambling.

Two organized crime institutions associated with sports gambling, games of chance, and numbers gambling emerged in Squirrel Hill. The Beacon Club and the Squirrel Hill Veterans Club provided cozy spaces where the city’s racketeers could drink, gamble, eat, and share information. Racketeers from across the region patronized these clubs and the establishments became frequent targets of Pittsburgh law enforcement raids. Continue reading →

Welcome to “Mobsburgh”: Morris Kauffman’s last ride

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Last summer I inadvertently stumbled upon a story about organized crime in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since August, I have been poring through archival records, historical newspapers, and interviewing the descendants and extended kin of people involved in Pittsburgh’s gambling and bootlegging rackets between 1920 and 1980. As I work my way through this research I will be posting stories in this space: #Mobsburgh.

The first #Mobsburgh story begins far away from Pittsburgh in the U.S. 301 and U.S. 1 highway corridors between Richmond, Virginia, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1933 and 1934, a loosely organized crew committed a string of robberies and murders. They were called the “Tri-State Gang” for the territory (Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia) where they operated.

Pittsburgh was a bit far afield for the gang, best known for hijacking cigarette trucks out of North Carolina and for robbing postal facilities in Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Yet, their crime spree extended to Pittsburgh in 1934 when the body of one of the gang members was found behind an apartment building in the city’s emerging Jewish neighborhood, Squirrel Hill.

Wendover Apartments, Squirrel Hill, December 2019.

The Baltimore evening Sun, May 23, 1934. Source: newspapers.com

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Ghosts and gangsters: 1129 Ridge Avenue, “America’s Most Haunted House”

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Screen capture, 13 Creepy Pittsburgh Ghost Stories, www.pittsburghbeautiful.com

While researching organized crime in Pittsburgh I stumbled upon a colossal haunted house story. My work documenting the history of a Pittsburgh family with two generations of bootleggers and numbers racketeers inadvertently led me to 1129 Ridge Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Northside neighborhood. The family I am researching was associated with the family that owned 1129 Ridge Avenue for more than 30 years.

By the last decades of the twentieth century, stories attached to the property had earned 1129 Ridge Avenue the dubious title, “America’s most haunted house.” This post, which began as an article for a community newspaper, documents how a modest 1880s home became fodder for decades of contemporary legends. Continue reading →