![]() Jacob "Whitey Lewis" Seidenschner | |
Founder | Harry Horowitz |
---|---|
Years active | Early 1900s - 1914 |
Territory | Harlem, Manhattan, New York, USA |
Leader(s) | Gyp the Blood, Jacob Seidenschner, Louis Rosenberg, Francesco Cirofici |
Activities | Mugging/robbery, murder |
Allies | Eastman Gang |
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The Lenox Avenue Gang was an early 20th-century New York City street gang led by Harry Horowitz; it was considered one of the most violent gangs of the pre-Prohibition era.[ citation needed ] It was based in Harlem in Upper Manhattan, New York City, around 125th Street, in what was then a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
The Lenox Avenue Gang was started in the early 1900s by Horowitz as an independent group of around twenty members. It consisted mostly of pickpockets and burglars, under Jack Zelig's Eastman Gang. Mainly operating around 125th Street in Harlem, then a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, the gang generally committed muggings and robberies, but Zelig occasionally hired them for murder.
Under Horowitz's leadership, the gang produced many of the top criminals of the early century, including Jacob Seidenschner, Louis Rosenberg, and Francesco Cirofici. Prominent New York police detective Val O'Farrell ranked Cirofici as "one of the toughest men in the world", and police suspected Cirofici of at least six homicides. However, they were unable to charge him due to a lack of evidence. An associate of the gang, Cirofici's girlfriend Dutch Sadie, was known to carry a butcher knife in her clothing, and she assisted Cirofici in several muggings.
While successful in its early years, the gang was brought down after they were hired to murder gambler Herman Rosenthal, a suspected police informant who had complained to the press about police extorting too much of his profits. Horowitz, Seidenshner, Rosenberg, and Cirofici drove to the Metropole Hotel in the early morning of July 16, 1912. After Rosenthal left the hotel about 2 a.m., they shot him several times and fled the scene. The gangsters were seen by dozens of witnesses and were quickly arrested. When questioned, they told police that they were hired by New York Police Department Lieutenant Charles Becker, who had ordered Rosenthal's death after he had informed on Becker.
Gyp the Blood, Jacob Seidenschner, Lefty Louis Rosenberg, and Francesco Cirofici were charged with the murder of Rosenthal. They were each convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair. They were executed at Sing Sing on April 13, 1914. With the loss of these leaders, the Lenox Avenue Gang disbanded entirely within several months. Becker was also convicted on charges of murder and executed in 1915.
125th Street, co-named Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, is a two-way street that runs east–west in the New York City borough of Manhattan, from First Avenue on the east to Marginal Street, a service road for the Henry Hudson Parkway along the Hudson River in the west. It is often considered to be the "Main Street" of Harlem.
Lenox Avenue – also named Malcolm X Boulevard; both names are officially recognized – is the primary north–south route through Harlem in the upper portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. This two-way street runs from Farmers' Gate at Central Park North to 147th Street. Its traffic is figuratively described as "Harlem's heartbeat" by Langston Hughes in his poem Juke Box Love Song. The IRT Lenox Avenue Line runs under the entire length of the street, serving the New York City Subway's 2 and 3 trains.
"Big" Jack Zelig was an American gangster and one of the last leaders of the Eastman Gang.
Charles Becker was a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department between the 1890s and the 1910s. He is known for the scandal of being convicted of first-degree murder and subsequently executed for the killing of Herman Rosenthal, a bookmaker and gambler, in 1912 near Times Square.
Harry Horowitz, also known as "Gyp the Blood", was an American underworld figure and a leader of the Lenox Avenue Gang in New York City.
The Eastman Gang was the last of New York's street gangs which dominated the city's underworld during the late 1890s until the early 1910s. Along with the Five Points Gang under Italian-American Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, best known as Paul Kelly, the Eastman gang succeeded the long dominant Whyos as the first non-Irish street gang to gain prominence in the underworld during the 1890s. Its rise marked the beginning of a forty to fifty-year period of strong Jewish-American influence within organized crime in New York City.
Philip "Red Phil" Davidson was an American criminal and underworld figure in New York City during the early 20th century. A known associate of Jack Sirocco, a lieutenant in Paul Kelly's Five Points Gang, he was responsible for the 1912 murder of Eastman Gang leader "Big" Jack Zelig, though at the time of his arrest police were unable to find a police record.
Louis William "Bridgie" Webber was an underworld figure in New York City and a former associate of gang leader Monk Eastman who later testified against police lieutenant Charles Becker during his murder trial in 1912.
The East Harlem Purple Gang was a gang or organized crime group consisting of Italian-American hit-men and heroin dealers who were semi-independent from the Italian-American Mafia and, according to federal prosecutors, dominated heroin distribution in East Harlem, Italian Harlem, and the Bronx during the 1970s and early 1980s in New York City. Though mostly independent of the Italian-American Mafia and not an official Mafia crew, the gang was originally affiliated with and worked with the Lucchese crime family and later with the Bonanno crime family and Genovese crime family. It developed its "closest ties" with the Genovese family, and its remnants or former members are now part of the Genovese family's 116th Street Crew.
Giovanni de Silvio or Jimmy Kelly was an American saloon keeper, political organizer and underworld figure in New York City during the start of the 20th century. He was the owner the Fourteenth Street saloon The Folly as well as the popular Mandarin Cafe in Chinatown, located in the notorious "Bloody Angle" along Doyers Street, and was a hangout for politicians, gang leaders and other noted criminals of the era. His cafe was also the scene of several violent incidents, especially during the Tong War, which included, in 1910, the fourth attempted suicide of Chinatown character John "Dippy" Rice and the 1912 murder of Hen Ken Yum, the latter a high-level member of the On Leong Tong and a lieutenant of Mock Duck.
Frank Moss was an American lawyer, reformer and author. He was involved in many of the reform movements in New York City shortly before the start of the 20th century up until his death. As a longtime assistant to District Attorney Charles S. Whitman, he was involved in several high-profile criminal cases such as the Rosenthal murder trial in which police detective Charles Becker was found guilty of murder and executed.
Jacob Rosenzweig was an American gambler and underworld figure in New York City. He was one of several star witnesses in the Becker-Rosenthal trial, among these being fellow gamblers Bridgie Webber, Harry Vallon, and Sam Schepps. Rose's testimony was the most damaging because he directly implicated Becker in arranging the murder of Herman Rosenthal. As Becker's debt collector, Rose confessed to hiring the Lenox Avenue Gang, providing the getaway car. He testified he did it all on the orders of Charles Becker.
Sam Paul was an American gambler and underworld figure in New York City at the start of the 20th century. Founder of the Sam Paul Association, he was also a major political organizer for Tammany Hall.
George Samuel Dougherty was an American law enforcement officer, private detective and writer. He was considered one of the leading detectives in the United States, first for the Pinkerton Detective Agency and then as a private investigator. Dougherty was responsible for the capture of many notorious criminals during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He also introduced the modern-day fingerprinting to the police force.
John Lewis (died April 1, 1910), better known by his alias Indian or Spanish Louie (Lewis), was an American criminal and member of the Humpty Jackson Gang, serving as the gang leader's longtime lieutenant from around the turn of the 20th century until his murder in either 1900 or 1910. His death was the first recorded use of a drive by shooting as a means of gangland execution in New York City.
Francesco Cirofici was an Italian-American criminal and gangster, who, along with Harry Horowitz, was responsible for the July 16, 1912 murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal outside the Hotel Metropole.
Samuel Schepps, also known as Schapps, was a New York City mobster with the Monk Eastman Gang. Schepps ran gambling houses for Jack Zelig as part of his work with the gang.
The Becker–Rosenthal trial was a 1912 trial in New York City for the murder of Herman Rosenthal (1874-1912), a bookmaker, by NYPD Lieutenant Charles Becker and members of the Lenox Avenue Gang. The trial ran from October 7 to October 30, 1912, and restarted on May 2 to May 22, 1914. Other procedural events took place in 1915.
The Nine Trey Gangster Bloods or Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods (NTG) are a violent set of the United Blood Nation street gang, which is itself a set of the Bloods gang. The gang operates on the East Coast of the United States.
Organized crime in the 1910s.