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The Man with the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block
208Overview
This book brings to life the ghosts who inhabit that row of townhouses on Manhattan's stately Riverside Drive for the first fifty years of the 20th Century, including a vicious crew of hoodlums who carried out what at the time was the largest armored car robbery in American history. It was a daring, minutely planned exploit that ended in blood, when one of the gangsters accidentally shot himself. He was taken to one of the townhouses then, in 1934, an underworld safehouse where he died and was stuffed in a steamer trunk (but his cohorts had to saw off one of his legs to fit him in it). From gangsters to industrialists, from future mayors to murderers, from movie stars to mafia dons, one block in a burgeoning city saw it all. The people who lived in each of the "Seven Sisters" reads like a mini Who's Who. Meet:
* Percy Geary and John Oley, two Albany gangsters with a background in kidnapping and bootlegging;
* Lucretia Davis, baking powder heiress whose parents were engaged in a bitter divorce that included allegations that her mother was trying get her father declared insane and take over his business;
* Jokichi Takamine, the world's first biotech engineer and a rare Japanese scientist in the United States at the turn of the 19th centuryHe discovered diastase, an enzyme to ferment whisky and settle the stomach, and the adrenaline, a major scientific discovery;
* Marion Davies, the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, who rose to movie stardom on the back of W.R.'s publicity machine while living on the block;
* Julia Marlowe, American's greatest Shakespearean actress around 1900;
* The Fabers of pencil fame;
* Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (Albany gang made famous by William Kennedy);
* Duke Ellington; two mayors; and lurking in the background Legs Diamond...
If only the walls could talk? Daniel Wakin makes it so in this unforgettable intimate glimpse into the history of New York City.
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Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781628728453 |
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Publisher: | Arcade |
Publication date: | 01/23/2018 |
Pages: | 208 |
Product dimensions: | 5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Dramatis Personae ix
Introduction xiii
1 The Planning, Stage 1: "Bags of Money" 1
2 Origins: "A Benefit to the Neighborhood" 11
3 The Kidnapping: "You Are His God Now" 20
4 No. 330: Baking Powder: "Their Difficulties Are Well Known" 28
5 The Planning, Stage 2: "One Good Ton Deserves Another" 42
6 No. 331: "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" 48
7 The Heist, Part I: "Ramshackle or Abandoned Mansions" 57
8 No. 333: The Canavans, Bellow, and the Duke 61
9 The Heist, Part II: "Say a Word, and It Spits" 67
10 No. 334: Adrenaline and "Sakura, Sakura" 72
11 The Getaway: Bennie Loses a Leg 87
12 No. 334, Continued: "Four Out of Five Have It" 95
13 The Hunt: "A Motion Picture Director's Dream" 99
14 No. 335: "More Potent for Evil" 113
15 The Gang Disintegrates: "I Lived High, Wide, and Handsome" 122
16 No. 336: Rubber and Clay 131
17 Breakthrough 137
18 No. 337: Miss Havisham's House: "Freedom Was Mine" 153
19 Farewells 168
20 The Fates of Townhouses: "Life Is Particularly Difficult" 178
Chronology 194
Acknowledgments 197
A Note on Sources 200
Bibliography 203