I have a thing for bricks. Ask my wife, she’ll roll her eyes and acknowledge that bricks are one of the many windmills I tilt at. I am not alone. I know many Irvingtonians who share my weird obsession. I recall a conversation years ago with everybody’s favorite Irvington neighbor Dawn Briggs about bricks. She once considered forming a parade group for the Irvington Halloween Festival that would traipse down Washington Street throwing out fake bricks from a wheelbarrow.
“My idea was to have two people, one pushing a wheelbarrow and one marching with what was really cardboard bricks.” Dawn said, “Some people marching with Kerry blueprint drawings for brick structures, some people might have a trowel, some people might have a fake bag of concrete, and when we stopped at certain parade points they would act like they were building something with bricks or all in unison build something.” Sounded like a good idea to me. After all is there any other community in Indianapolis MORE associated with bricks than Irvington?
And with the observance of the St. Valentine’s Day holiday slowly disappearing in the rearview mirror, I thought it might be a good time for a story that pairs the two most perfectly: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago. Every crime buff knows the story. Everyone knows Al Capone called the shots. And every intrepid Chicago crime scene traveler knows the building is long gone. But did you ever wonder what happened to those bullet-scarred bricks?
On Thursday, February 14, 1929, at 10:15 in the morning, George “Bugs” Moran’s Northside gang had assembled at their gang headquarters at 2122 North Clark street (which also served as its bootlegging headquarters). Albert “Gorilla Al” Weinshank was the last of the mob to arrive that day. Weinshank, a speakeasy operator for the Moran gang, was a dead ringer for gang boss Moran. His arrival kicked off the massacre at the Clark Street Garage. As Weinshank entered the building, two lookouts across the street mistook him for Moran and prematurely telephoned the killers to begin their plan of execution. Moran, nursing a nasty cold and walking towards the garage a block away, saw the raid and turned in the other direction.
At 10:30 a.m., a police car arrived, followed quickly behind by a second vehicle. The police entered and ordered everyone inside to line up against the northwest wall. Baffled and perturbed, the Moran boys remain nonplussed by the order, figuring it is just another shakedown for quick cash by dirty cops on the grift. They didn’t realize that these weren’t cops at all. These were gunmen sent by Southside rival crime boss Al Capone himself.
The fake police de-armed the gangsters. Mechanic John May, a former safecracker trying to go straight, was pulled from under the vehicle he was working on despite his protests that he was not part of the gang. Dr. Reinhardt Schwimmer, an optometrist with a gambling problem who liked to hang out with local gangsters, was thrilled when he is told to line up with his hoodlum heroes. Schwimmer loved to brag to anyone who will listen that he can have anyone whacked at any time. He was sure that this arrest would make the papers and he could finally prove that he wasn’t lying about his mobster connections.
May and Schwimmer were lined up alongside Albert Weinshank, Bugs Moran’s brother-in-law Albert Kachellek (alias James Clark) and gang enforcers Frank Gusenberg and Peter Gusenberg. Less than a month before, Patsy Lolordo, a close associate of Al Capone, and his wife, Aleina, were murdered in their Chicago home by Kachellek and the Gusenberg brothers. The murders broke a truce between the Chicago mobsters that had been negotiated six months earlier.
Also lined up against the wall was Adam Heyer, the gang’s bookkeeper and business manager. Heyer was the leaseholder of the S.M.C. Cartage Company garage where the murders took place. Once the seven men were lined up, faces towards the brick wall, the fake police signaled two plainclothes killers waiting in the front office. The two hitmen opened fire with Thompson sub-machine guns, one with a 20-round box magazine and the other a 50-round drum. According to ballistics reports, they sprayed their victims left and right and continued firing after all seven had hit the floor. Not many bullets missed their targets and as many as 70 spent shells were found littering the floor.
The Moran gang was wiped out instantly except for Frank Gusenberg, who had sustained 14 bullet wounds and was found crawling towards the door when the real police arrived. He survived for three hours. When asked by police who shot him, Gusenberg answered “No one shot me.” Frank’s brother Peter was shot eleven times and died kneeling in a chair. Weinshank had nine bullet holes in his body, Mechanic May, a total of ten entrance/exit wounds. Adam Heyer had 15 bullet wounds, Albert Kachellek “only” nine. Dr. Schwimmer, the wannabe gangster, got more than he bargained for that day. He died with a total of 25 entrance/exit wounds, sixteen of which are lead “double-aught” buckshot pellets in the back from shotgun blasts no doubt intended for Bugs Moran. Two shotgun shells were found at the scene, each containing eight large pellets.
Adam Heyer’s Alsatian dog “Highball” was tied to a truck bumper during the massacre. It was Highball’s frantic barking and whining that alerted people to the carnage inside the building. The dog was so frightened by the gunfire that he never recovered. The newspaper photographer who took the gruesome photos of the victims that day said that he adopted the animal, but that the dog was too wild after the event and had to be put down. After the massacre, the killers made a clean getaway. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was over. The killers are never prosecuted. Al Capone had the perfect alibi: he was 1,400 miles away in Miami, Florida.
Almost immediately after the massacre, the building at 2122 North Clark was boarded up. In 1930 it was purchased by Frank C. Brusky, who owned a trucking firm known as Brusky Overland Movers. Brusky discovered a secret trap door in the ceiling directly above the bullet-riddled brick wall. It lead to a hidden 35 ft. long by 4 ft. wide and 13 ft. high concrete chamber. This secret passageway contained funnels, a stool, and a glass alcohol hydrometer measure along with an attached block and tackle system tied to the chamber ceiling with a crate. The crate could perfectly hold a 5-gallon container of alcohol. Police concluded that the chamber was merely an alcohol stash.
Brusky added 53 rows of new bricks (approximately 7500) and two windows atop the building, allowing for more storage, a second floor, and confusion for collectors, speculators, and historians in the years to come. By 1935, the building was occupied by Red Ball Movers inc. The trucking company embraced the infamous wall and even hung a sign outside welcoming the public to come in and take a look at the deadly spot where the Moran gang was massacred.
In 1936, the building became home to Anaconda Van Lines, owned by Samuel J. McArthur. Over the years the building was reconfigured with walls and partitions added and removed. In 1949, German/Swedish Americans Charles and Alma Werner took over the building for use as a shipping center and storage facility known as the Werner Storage garage. By this time the massacre wall was plastered over and a sliding partition added to hide it. The Werners owned the building for 18 years (1949 to 1967).
Over the years, Alma became increasingly annoyed by visitors knocking on the door at all hours asking to see the bullet-pocked wall. Depending on her mood, Alma either turned them away or acquiesced to their wishes. Visitors were often disappointed to find that the brick wall had been plastered over to hide its infamous past. By the late 1960s, Alma often stated how she wished they had never bought the building.
During Halloween week of 1967, the Werners sold their troublesome building to Chicago Urban Renewal and move away. The city announced its plans to sell the massacre wall section to the highest bidder and demolish the building. Chicago planned to turn the property into a home for the elderly (which occupies the site today).
In the summer of 1967, George Patey of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, was driving in his car when he heard the radio announcement that the city planned to tear down the site of the most famous gangland murder in American history. Patey, who’d spent his life working in show business, decided on a whim to purchase it. He outbid two other bidders for this unusual auction in Chicago. Patey had no way of knowing that some people had removed several bricks out of the garage wall before he could retrieve his section. Turns out that Mrs. Werner had been letting people purchase a brick from the wall after it was announced the building would be razed.
Adding to that, many other interested radio listeners showed up after Patey’s purchase to scavenge leftover bricks surrounding the actual massacre wall section and the other remaining walls. Many bricks from other parts of the building were sold minutes before the demolition. Patey had the 6’ high by 10’ wide brick section that had encompassed the deadly firing line painstakingly removed and individually numbered. He packed them carefully and shipped them home to Canada. On the customs form, Patey declared the bricks as construction material at mere pennies apiece for duty. You might think the story ends there. But it is only the beginning of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre bricks.
Next Week — Part 2
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
