Bootlegging, bombs, murder, and more... all for the price of a drink. This is the history of Prohibition in Pittsburgh. When you work hard, you play hard, and Pittsburgh is a hardworking city. So, when Prohibition hit the Steel City, it created a level of violence and corruption residents had never witnessed. Illegal producers ran stills in kitchens, basements, bathroom tubs, warehouses and even abandoned distilleries. War between gangs of bootleggers resulted in a number of murders and bombings that placed Pittsburgh on the same level as New York City and Chicago in criminal activity. John Bazzano ordered the killing of the Volpe brothers but did so without the permission of Mafia bosses; his battered body was later found on the street in Brooklyn. Author Richard Gazarik details the shady side of the Steel City during a tumultuous era.
Join author Richard Gazarik as he reveals the wicked history of the Steel City. Muckraking journalist Walter Liggett dubbed Pittsburgh the "Metropolis of Corruption" in 1930 when he reported the city had more vice per square foot than New York, Detroit, Cleveland or Boston. Decades earlier, the Magee-Flinn political machine ruled public officials, and crooked police helped racketeers protect brothels and gambling dens. Mayor (later Governor) David Lawrence was indicted several times for graft but acquitted each time. Even Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr. colluded with gangsters, according to FBI reports.
What forces transformed a community in which industrial workers and other citizens exercised a real measure of power over their lives into a metropolis whose inhabitants were utterly dependent on Big Steel? How did a city that fervidly embraced the labor struggle of 1877 turn into the city which so fiercely repudiated the labor struggle of 1919? The Remaking of Pittsburgh is the history of this transformation. The cultural dimensions of industrialization come to life as Couvares calls upon labor history, urban history, and the history of popular culture to depict the demise of the "craftsman's empire" and the birth of a cosmopolitan bourgeois society. The book explores the impact of immigration on the shaping of modern Pittsburgh and the emergence of mass culture within the community. In the midst of these processes of transformation, the giant steel corporations were continually reshaping the life of the city.
Pittsburgh's drinking culture is a story of its people: vibrant, hardworking and innovative. During Prohibition, the Hill District became a center of jazz, speakeasies and creative cocktails. In the following decades, a group of Cuban bartenders brought the nightlife of Havana to a robust café culture along Diamond Street. Disco clubs gripped the city in the 1970s, and a music-centered nightlife began to grow in Oakland with such clubs as the Electric Banana. Today, pioneering mixologists are forging a new and exciting bar revival in the South Side and throughout the city. Pull up a stool and join Cody McDevitt and Sean Enright as they trace the history of Steel City drinking, along with a host of delicious cocktail recipes.
This work is an accurate, wide-ranging, and entertaining account of the illegal liquor traffic during the Prohibition Era (1920 to 1933). Based on FBI files, legal documents, old newspapers and other sources, it offers a coast-to-coast survey of Volstead crime--outrageous stories of America's most notorious liquor lords, including Al Capone and Dutch Schultz. Readers will find the lesser known Volstead outlaws to be as fascinating as their more famous counterparts. The riveting tales of Max Hassel, Waxy Gordon, Roy Olmstead, the Purple Gang, the Havre Bunch, and the Capitol Hill Bootlegger will be new to most readers. Likewise, the exploits of women bootleggers and flying bootleggers are unknown to most Americans. Books about Prohibition usually note that Canadian liquor exporters abetted the U.S. bootleggers, but they fail to go into detail. Bootleggers and Beer Barons examines the major cross-border routes for smuggling liquor from Canada into the U.S.: Quebec to Vermont and New York, Ontario to Michigan, Saskatchewan to Montana, and British Columbia to Washington.
Avoid The Tourist Herds. What could be more uninspiring than seeing the identical attractions that everyone else has for decades? This Twisted Tour Guide escorts you to the places locals don’t want to talk about anymore…the same places people once couldn’t stop talking about. Long after the screaming headlines and sensationalism has subsided, these bizarre, infamous and obscure historical sites remain hidden awaiting rediscovery. Each visitation site in this guide is accompanied by a story. Many of the narratives defy believability, yet they are true. The photography from each profile showcases the precise location where each event occurred. The scenes can seem ordinary, weird and/or sometimes very revealing towards clarifying the background behind events. If you’re seeking an alternative to conventional tourism, this Twisted Tourist Guide is ideal. Each directory accommodates the restless traveler and even resident looking for something unique and different. Historic and Frequently Flawed Personalities: Andy Warhol, George Washington, Mayors Joseph Barker and Charles Kline, Composer Stephen Foster, Biddle Brothers and Mrs. Soffel, Harry Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit, Mary Schenley, Henry Clay Frick, H. J. and Howard Heinz, Actress Eleonora Duse, Prohibition Reformer William King, Joe The Ghost Pangallo, President Calvin Coolidge, Aviator Rose Collins, Father James Cox, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Dr. Jonas Salk, Mister Fred Rogers, Robert Duggan and the Mysterious Hat Bandit Architecture With A Distinctive Past: Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh Bridges, Union Railroad Station, Kaufman’s Department Store and Famed Clock, Lyndhurst Mansion, Pitt University’s Log Cabin, Union Trust Building, Heinz Lofts, Schenley Park Hotel, Hendel Building, Syria Mosque, Saint John’s Hospital, William Penn Hotel, Heinz Field, Crawford Grill, Stock Exchange, Langley Hall Explosion, Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, Bellefield Tower and Iron City Brewery Hospitality and Hauntings Monongahela House Hotel, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Carnegie Library, Chatham College’s Woodland Hall and the Frick Mansion Legacies and Notorious Events Tarleton Bates’ Fatal Duel, Great Fire of 1845, Market Square Riot, Founding of the AFL Labor Organization, Fifth Avenue Fire, Cyclone of 1889, Armstrong-McKelvy Building Collapse, Lion Mauling at Luna Park, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Aetna Dynamite Explosion, Document Establishing Czechoslovakia, Donnelly Building Elevator Fall, Carnegie Ku Klux Klan Invasion, Sunday Blue Laws, Equitable Gas Company Explosion, Pittsburgh Jazz Heritage, Little Sisters of the Poor Fire, Winter Flooding of Point Park, Communist Scare, Commuter Bandit, Kennywood Pavilion Fire, Lottery Scandal, Purolator Heist, Todd Becker’s Dormitory Fall, Braun Baking Company and Town Talk Bread, Homeless Memorial and Operation Pork Chop Historical Scandals: Whiskey Rebellion, Labor Strikes and Accompanying Violence, Thaw-Seymour Marriage and Financiers Michael Carlow and Earl Belle Infamous Killings and Murder Architect Stanford White, Frontier Public Hangings, Dead Man’s Hollow, Suffocation By Folding Bed, Prohibition Gangster Leader Deaths of Luigi Lamendola, Stefano and Sam Monastero, Morris Curran, Giuseppe Siragusa and Jack Palmere, Rum Runner William Gregory, Lobianco Brothers Grocery Massacre, Volpe Brothers Contract Killing, Michael Chervenak, George Lee, Jimmy Goodnight, Spree Shooters Richard Baumhammers and George Sodini, Ricardo Tobia, Serial Killer Sidney Brinkley, Tree of Life Synagogue, Jim Rogers and Uber Driver Christina Spicuzza Transportation Calamities Mt. Washington Christmas Eve trolley crash, Graham Ferry Sinking, Bettis Airfield Balloon Disaster, Railroad Derailments, Island Queen Ship Detonation, Ghost Bomber and Air Disasters
