Lexington Hotel Reveals Secrets of Al Capone
The Lexington Resort, situated on the corner of 22nd St. and Michigan Avenue on Chicago’s South Aspect, was the headquarters and nerve center of Al Capone’s bootlegging and racketeering empire. At the rear of the harmless-looking closets of sheets and resort uniforms ended up top secret doorways to stairways top to dozens of rooms, such as the shooting gallery where by Capone and his gangster cronies practiced their aim. Other top secret passageways led to Capone’s very own drugs upper body, and to taverns and bordellos linked to one particular yet another by hidden tunnels. Other tunnels led to hatches on the Levee which delivered routes of escape for mobsters fleeing from raids by law enforcement and rival gangs.
The Lexington Lodge was originally designed in 1892 with structure by architect Clinton Warren, who had also developed the Congress Hotel. The Lexington was alternatively rapidly built of brick and terra-cotta, in purchase to accommodate the masses anticipated to occur pay a visit to Chicago for the World’s Reasonable in 1893. President Benjamin Harrison as soon as gave an handle from the balcony to a substantial viewers in the avenue beneath. Al Capone moved into the Lexington in July, 1928 and, registered officially as “George Phillips”, he occupied the luxurious 5th ground suite of rooms. Capone’s business had a check out of Michigan Avenue.
In the foyer an armed gunmen in a resort uniform thoroughly watched all the entrance doors, and other guards armed with equipment guns patrolled the flooring above. From listed here he directed his significantly-flung and highly rewarding illicit operations till October, 1931 when he was escorted from the resort to jail. The pinnacle of Al Capone’s success – and also the harbinger of his downfall, was the St. Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929, which proficiently wiped out the previous of Capone’s gangster competitors, but also introduced the wrath of the public and federal governing administration (who sent Eliot Ness to the rescue) down on his head.
Al Capone apparently experienced some vaults on the cheapest ranges of Lexington Lodge wherever he had stashed his loot away. These vaults were so perfectly-hidden that even Capone’s closest associates did not know where they were. In the 1980’s, following the Lexington’s glory days were lengthy since past, a woman’s building business seemed into the chance of restoring the Lexington Resort. Researchers discovering the crumbling ruins of the hotel located sealed rooms exactly where the hidden Capone fortune apparently reposed.
In 1986 Geraldo Rivera, the perfectly-recognized Television set converse clearly show host, took a dwell nationwide Tv viewers to the location in his immaculate shirt uniform for a fashionable-working day treasure hunt. IRS agents ended up also in attendance in anticipation of their share of the loot. Rivera’s crew blasted as a result of the 7,000 lb. concrete wall which was assumed to be the secret hiding location of Capone’s fortune … but when the smoke cleared, only an outdated indicator and a number of vacant bottles were found. If there experienced the moment been a fortune there, it had extensive since been taken away.
