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Former "Mayor of James Street" and Gangster-turned-Undertaker, 'Roxie' Vanella's Funeral Chapel Sells For $7.8M

   


      If you end up down on Madison and Saint James, near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, you've stepped into the area of the Lower East Side formerly known as the Fourth Ward. With Five Points just to its west, the Fourth Ward composed part of the East River shoreline and is generally folded in with the old Corlear's Hook neighborhood (also known as the "Hook", where once almost one hundred brothels were located and the term "hooker" was coined). This area of Lower Manhattan, around the time of Robert "Roxie" Vanella's birth in 1883, was largely occupied by ship-builders, dockyards, and the assorted tenement. The triangular block that Vanella's Funeral Chapel sits on also houses the former St. James School, noted as the only site of Alfred E. Smith's formal education (who was only ten years Vanella's senior), and neighbors the St. James Church, the second oldest Roman Catholic building in NYC and the home of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. By the time Roxie was a teenager he had linked up with young local gangster Johnny Torrio, and started the James Street Gang. This group of largely teenagers were one of a number of prominent gangs on the Lower East Side at the time, engaging in everything from political extortion, to the looting of ships. A few years later, Vanella and Torrio parted ways, Torrio taking under his wing a young enforcer from Brooklyn named Al Capone, connecting him deeper to a life of crime in the streets of Corlear's Hook. After beating a murder charge in Montana, Vanella would eventually reconnect with Torrio in Chicago when Torrio is tapped to protect Big Jim Colosimo's prostitution business in the Levee District. (Later Torrio would also call upon his former associate Al Capone to come out and work for him, beginning Capone's career in Chicago.) After beating a number more murder charges including involvement in a shootout which left a Chicago Police Sergeant dead, Roxie Vanella seems to leave this life of crime behind and returns to NYC, opening up his Funeral Chapel at 29 Madison Street in 1918.
     This past November, the Vanella's Funeral Chapel property, which stretches to Saint James Pl behind it and contains over twenty residential units and 8,000sf of commercial space, was put on the market for $12.5 million. After a number of months, it closed for a little under $8 million, bought by Eric Pang at Metro City Acquisition LLC at the end of February. By the time I stopped by the building, the gold-leaf "V"'s on the doors had been almost entirely scraped off, and the sign which adorned its Madison Street face had been removed. We will wait and see what becomes of this building in the coming months.


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