It's hard to believe that even as we discuss organized crime on this forum, it was a hundred
years ago, almost to the exact date. The poisoned fruit of the seeds of despair, sown in the festering cobblestone streets of the Lower East Side, and fertilized by the open sewage of poverty, were ripening into the likes of Luciano and Lansky, who by 1924, were running bootleg whisky down the Hudson in the height of Prohibition. Al Capone was already in Chicago soon to be implicated in the May 1924 murder of Joe Howard. J. Edgar Hoover became head of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924 and Frankie Yale, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi executed Dion O'Bannon in his flower shop, in Chicago, in November of the same year. Arnold Rothstein was at the height of his power, eluding the fixed World Series investigation and reaping in profits from bootlegging and fixed gambling dens throughout the city. It was a fascinating period in American and New York City history and gave birth to what would become the most influential, profitable, criminal, enterprise in the history of the world.

Note, what you said is very true...I enjoyed your "flowery" chronology of it too. lol

that's funny NYM, I knew you, out of all the subs on this forum, would appreciate my descriptive prose.
On a serious note, it blows my mind that even as we're corresponding on this thread, a hundred years ago, exactly. Arnold Rothstein was holding court at Lindys in Times Square, expounding the virtues of organized crime to his cronies Luciano, Costello, Lansky and Siegel. The four horsemen also resided in Times Square, at the Hotel Claridge just a few blocks down Broadway from Lindy's and just around the corner from the Hotel Metropole, where Rothstein ran the 2nd floor casino for Big Tim Sullivan, boss of Tammany Hall.
It is a fascinating period in American history in that many of the same social issues existing then are still plaguing us now, a hundred years later. Warren G. Harding and the Teapot Dome scandal dominated politics in Washington. Uncontrolled immigration pouring in through Ellis leading to a population density in The Lower East Side, greater than that of Calcutta, India, at the time. F. Scott Fitzgerald was scripting The Great Gatsby, calling attention to the disparity of life between the classes in 1925. His description of the Valley of Ashes, which really existed near where the Flushing River meanders near Citifield is today. Fitzgerald even pays homage to Rothstein by introducing a fictional character in the novel based on the criminal entrepreneur. Pigtown, Brooklyn was a similar area as described in the Valley of Ashes, with mounds of ash so large, they resembled houses and herds of feral swine roaming the area.
I often rode my bicycle across the Brooklyn Bridge to L.E.S. and Little Italy and would ride up and down Mott and Mulberry streets thinking about what was going on on in those tenements a hundred years ago.

I agree with you on the historical aspect CNote. It even goes back further in the neighborhoods you mention, with the gangs of 150 years ago being perhaps even more dangerous. Also in old time Brooklyn.

CNote, whats that old adage?..."Everything old is new again."

Some things never change...It's just "the human condition" I guess. Each generation pretty much goes through the same experiences as the previous one... Yet, we like to "think" we've evolved. lol