Seven wild Mafia stories hiding behind the streets and storefronts of Little Italy.
This walk rewinds seven ordinary Little Italy addresses to uncover mob hits, bootleggers, rackets, power struggles, and the FBI’s pursuit of John Gotti.
This walk is being developed and is not yet available in the app.
Photo by Katherine Bowers
on PexelsLittle Italy, Manhattan
The story
What you’ll hear on this walk.
Little Italy today is a neighborhood of restaurants, souvenir shops, and crowded sidewalks. But behind some of its most ordinary-looking addresses are stories from a very different New York. Start at the site of Crazy Joe Gallo’s last birthday, then follow Mulberry Street through Lucky Luciano’s rise, a Prohibition-era liquor exchange, a trucking racket, and the power struggle that put John Gotti on top.
By the time you reach the Ravenite Social Club, the FBI is listening from an apartment upstairs. Then the walk jumps back more than eighty years to Giuseppe Morello’s world of counterfeit money and Secret Service surveillance. Seven wild stories gradually reveal something bigger: how organized crime made money, maintained order, exercised power—and what happened when that order broke down.
Little Italy won’t announce these stories to you. Look past the restaurant signs and tourist crowd; the buildings and streets around you are often the only traces left of what happened here.
Listen first
Hear the synopsis.
A short introduction to this walk.
Hear the synopsis
Along the walk
Stops on the route.
01
Crazy Joe’s Last Birthday
A late-night birthday celebration on Mulberry Street became the scene of one of New York’s most notorious unsolved mob hits.
02
How Lucky Luciano Got Lucky
A young Lucky Luciano got into serious trouble on Mulberry Street and showed an instinct for survival that would follow him to the top.
03
The Price of Saying No
Behind a respectable-looking trucking association was a racket that showed New Yorkers exactly what could happen when someone refused to cooperate.
04
The Man Standing Between Gotti and the Boss
At this Mulberry Street address, meet the powerful underboss whose death helped set the stage for John Gotti’s takeover.
05
The Dapper Don vs. the FBI
John Gotti knew the FBI was watching, setting off an extraordinary game of cat and mouse on Mulberry Street.
06
The Mafia Before It Looked Like the Mafia
Decades before the Five Families and celebrity mob bosses, 8 Prince Street offers a glimpse into an earlier and stranger world of organized crime.
