Broughton Quarterly - Spring 2009 - (Page 30) sites. Among the stops was the Holy Name Cathedral at 735 N. State Street, where Dion O’Bannion, who used his flower shop as a front for his more lucrative bootlegging business, was snuffed out. On the south side, we cruised through neighborhoods where Al Capone once instilled fear in the lives of everyday citizens. We made a stop in front of the Biograph Theatre, where notorious bank robber John Dillinger was duped by a two-timing madam who agreed to tell police where she and Dillinger would be on the evening of July 22, 1934, in exchange for a cash reward and the FBI’s assistance in preventing her deportation back to her native Rumania. The plan went off without a hitch as Dillinger and his two female companions, one of whom was the madam, strolled out of the theater around 10:30 p.m., turned left, and walked past a doorway where an agent lit a cigar to signal for the other men to close in. Sensing what was about to take place, Dillinger instinctively reached for his pocket pistol as he bolted toward the alley to make his escape. It looks as if his trigger finger was faster than his two legs, though, because after a hail of FBI gunfire, Dillinger lay dead on the pavement. The Biograph Theater is still intact, although it recently underwent a name change and upgrade. It is now The Greenhouse Theater Center, home to a local performance troupe. The tour’s grand finale brought us to the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The carnage took place the morning of February 14, 1929, at the SMC Cartage Company when seven men from Bugs Malone’s north side gang were unknowingly lured by the likes of Al Capone and his men, including some dressed as police officers. The event was over within seconds, the gangsters riddled with machine-gun bullets. No trace evidence of the bloodbath can be found at 2122 N. Clark Street because the building was demolished An entertaining mix of shtick and history, the tour takes visitors to some of Chicago’s most notorious sites, including the Biograph Theater (above left) where John Dillinger, the FBI’s “Public Enemy No. 1,” was gunned down in 1934. 30 broughton Quarterly SPRInG 2009
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