Johnny Keyes – The Elected Mayor of Chinatown

 

In 1924, just as the area was being transformed from the Five Points into Little Italy/Chinatown, my uncle Johnny Keyes (real name Canonico – he married my mother’s oldest sister, Mary) was re-elected the Mayor of Chinatown for a second time term by a paper-thin margin.

According to the June 21^st issue of the New York Times, my uncle’s opponent was Le Chung Wei. But with the backing of New York City Mayor, John Francis Hyland, “Red Mike” to his pals, Johnny Keyes came out on top by a whopping 67 votes out of more than 4,500 votes cast. World heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey also contributed mightily, in the form of greenbacks, to my Uncle Johnny’s campaign.

Also a former boxer (not very good), and fight manager/trainer of international renown, Johnny Keyes handled over 100 fighters, including my mother’s brother and Johnny Keyes’s brother – in-law – Oakie Keyes (real name Daniel Mucerino). Five of Johnny Keyes’s fighters, including Pepper Martin and Midget Wolgast, became world champions.

Explaining how Johnny “Keyes” Canonico, an Italian/American, could become the Mayor of Chinatown, the New York Times said:

 

The Mayor was born on Bayard Street when it was called the Five Points. He was a local leader from public school days and was deemed the heir-apparent to the late Chuck Connors in the latter part of Connors’s administration. When Chuck died 12 years ago, Chinatown regarded Johnny as the logical successor.

 

The Times went on further to explain how the 1924 election came about in the first place.

 

There is no fixed tenure of office for Chinatown Mayor. An election takes place any time an aspirant feels that he’s strong enough to cope with the administration. A date for the election is fixed, and at a number of secret polling places, the ballots are marked and counted. Those known to the clerks of the polls as natives of Chinatown and its immediate confines are enfranchised.

 

After winning re-election, Uncle Johnny Keyes explained his mayoralty duties to the New York Times:

 

This is a big job and you can’t expect to keep regular hours at it. The Mayor of Chinatown has to sleep with his clothes on. He must be ready at any hour to rush to help Mrs. Grogan keep the old man from throwing the dinner table out of the window. When an argument between children on Mulberry Bend spreads to their parents, he must be able to keep the scratches and bruises down to as few as possible. In other words, he must keep the paddy wagons and ambulances out of Chinatown.

 

The Chinese don’t get into too many scraps. They are hard-working and happy if they are left alone. Occasionally they have a dispute over a business matter, and this comes to me for settlement. If one steals the customer of another by giving a lower price, I am asked to stop the cutthroat competition. If a Chinaman is slow in making payments on something he bought from another Chinaman, I am asked to speed up the installments. This doesn’t happen often because the Chinese are particular about paying debts.

 

However, according to Johnny Keyes, the most important job of the Mayor of Chinatown was to polish the bright image of the neighborhood, and not let it be tarnished by outside influences.

Johnny Keyes told the Times:

 

We have no objection is people want to see a little of Oriental life in Chinatown. But we don’t want the place held up as a nest of opium dens. As mayor, I have fought to keep the moving pictures companies from using scenery in Chinatown in plays in which the Chinese are villains and white girls get kidnapped.

 

Of late, Chinatown has wanted its Mayor to give the neighborhood a better reputation in the eyes of the rest of the world. My men listen to the talk handed out by the guides on the sight-seeing busses, and when it gets a little too harsh we step in and tell them to stop.

 

The truth is there are probably fewer guns to a block in Chinatown than anywhere else in the city. The days of the hatchet men are gone, and there hasn’t been a knife thrown in years.

 

Johnny Keyes also told the Times, that his responsibilities as Mayor of Chinatown included helping the local parents control their wayward offspring.

He said:

 

Speaking to the young men who appeared headed to the Tombs is another of my duties. Parents whose boys are in bad company ask me to tell the kids they are making a mistake. The young fellows listen. I have spoken with hundreds of boys who have found it easier to steal than to work and have managed to save most of them from getting in bad.

 

One of Johnny Keyes first actions after being re-elected Mayor was to throw a grand shindig at Tammany Hall, which he called the Chinatown 400 Ball. The expressed purpose of the events was to raise substantial cash, intended strictly for the pockets of Johnny Keyes, after he threw a few monetary bones to the Tammany Hall brass (Keyes obviously got this idea from his mentor, the dearly departed Chuck Connors).

There was said to be almost 1,500 guests at the ball, and the highlight of the night was a grand procession scheduled for 12 midnight, which was supposed to be led by the famous writer, Damon Runyon, a close friend of Johnny Keyes. But Runyon had neglected to take his tuxedo to the grand ball, and a Tammany Hall bootlicker was sent by taxi to fetch Runyon’s tuxedo, which was at his upper west side apartment.

By 1 a.m. there was still no tuxedo. And by 1:30 a.m., a member of the Chinatown 400 floor committee rushed up to the Silver Slipper Box, where Runyon and Keyes were holding court, and said that the taxi with Runyon’s tuxedo and come and gone, but no one from Tammany Hall had been there to take possession of the tuxedo.

Disgusted, Runyon turned to Keyes and said, “This is your ballgame now, Pally. I’m drunk, my belly is full, and I’m off to grander places.”

“Hey, Cousin, you can’t do that (Keyes called everyone Cousin or ‘Cuz’)!” Keyes said.

“Watch me,” Runyon said.

And the next thing Johnny Keyes saw was Runyon’s back shrinking in the distance.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, Johnny Keyes was nonplused, and he decided to head the grand march himself, accompanied by his lovely wife, Mary (this writer’s aunt).

The Eagle wrote under the headline:

 

Chinatown Ball Joyous

But Damon Runyon Misses “Tux” and Disappoints.

Was Scheduled to Lead March.

Oriental Setting Lacks Nothing but Chinamen

 

Promptly at 2 o’clock, Johnny Keyes, Mayor of Chinatown, stepped down from his box to lead the march for the guests.  Mrs. Keyes, in white georgette (sheer silk) embroidered in gold, was at his side, affecting one of the novelty Poiret dolls.

 

Huge bouquets of American Beauty roses were the favors of the evening. The stately march was followed by the song “Chinatown.” Its jazz not only kept the dancers on the floor, but several went atop tables to give exhibitions of the art decried by the generation not familiar with its movements.

 

The imposing headdress of the Chinatown 400, said to have cost $4 each,  gave the wearer a dignity alike to a potentate of the Mystic Shrine and a Chinese Mandarin.

 

Everybody had a wonderful time. Empty square bottles were everywhere.

 

And Johnny Keyes made a mint.

After my Aunt Mary died at a-much-too-young age, Johnny Keyes moved from his beloved Chinatown to Los Angeles and then to San Diego, where he opened a restaurant named Spaghetti Joe’s, which is the nickname Damon Runyon anointed Keyes with in New York City. While in Los Angeles, Keyes was also the boxing promoter at the East Side Arena.

According to a Runyon syndicated newspaper column in 1937:

 

Johnny Keyes, the five-foot-three-inch former Mayor of Chinatown and now over 200 pounds, lost over $5,000 last night at the new Del Mar Racetrack in San Diego. His only reply was, “Money don’t mean nuthin’ to me. It ain’t your life. It ain’t your wife. It’s only money.’

 

When Runyon wrote his famous play, Guys and Dolls, one of the degenerate gambler characters, Nicely-Nicely Johnson, was based on my uncle, Johnny Keyes.

You can’t make up stuff like this.

 

 

*****

 

Besides being a savvy politician, Johnny Keyes fancied himself as somewhat of an entrepreneur, and an international one at that.

In 1925, with the backing of several prominent Chinese businessmen, Johnny Keyes traveled to the Canton region of China with several of his world-class fighters, including lightweight Pepper Martin, flyweight Mickey Nelson and bantamweight Terry Martin, ostensibly to teach the locals the refinements of boxing.

But, as usual, Johnny Keyes had his ulterior motives.

Keyes told the New Castle Herald in New Castle, Pennsylvania, “The Chinks are deficient, if one might not say utterly lacking in pep. A few smacks on the whiskers may stir up something in the fight business there, and then I’ll be the only fight manager on the spot.”

But, alas, Johnny Keyes’s trip to China was also deficient, if one might not say utterly lacking in pep, too.

The idea of an American staging boxing matches in China was slapped down by Chinese officials. And when Keyes proposed to the United States authorities that he should be allowed to import several Chinese boxers into the United States, he ran into the exclusion law – the Geary Act – or as it was previously called “The Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Persons into the United States of May 1892.”

This act of Congress said that only Chinese laborers would be allowed to shuffle back and forth between China and the United States, and not too many of them, at that. And try as he may, Johnny Keyes, the revered New York City “Mayor of Chinatown,” and blessed with the gift of gab, could not convince immigration officials on either continent that the gaggle of Chinese boxers he wanted to bring to New York City’s Chinatown could in anyway be categorized as “laborers.”

As for the tens of thousands of dollars Keyes spent on his trip to China; which was, of course, the money of others, Keyes was again philosophical.

Upon returning empty-handed to Chinatown, Keyes told the Chinese businessmen who had financed his excursion, “It ain’t your life. It ain’t your wife. It’s only money.”

Johnny Keyes was nothing if not consistent.

 

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EZCFVNU

Johnny Keyes in the middle of the cover of the Boxing Blade. 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – The Old Brewery

It was called the “most decadent building ever built,” and there is no doubt the Old Brewery, located in the Five Points area of Lower Manhattan, was the quintessential den of iniquity.

The Old Brewery was originally what the name implies: a brewery, built by Isaac Coulthard, just southeast of a body of fresh water called the Collect Pond. After more than a hundred years of being polluted by various industrial enterprises, including Coulthard’s Brewery, Collect Pond was filled in during the time period of 1811-1812. New streets sprung up on the former body of water and other existing streets were extended.

By 1812, Cross Street (then Park Street, now Mosco Street) passed in front of the Coulthard’s Brewery, and Orange Street (now Baxter Street) intersected Cross just north of the brewery. At the intersection of Cross and Orange, Anthony Street originated, and soon two more streets intersected at this very point: Mulberry Street and Little Water Street (which no longer exists). This became the notorious area known as the Five Points, and Coulthard’s Brewery was the hub.

After the Financial Panic of 1837, during which 363 United States banks closed completely and thousands of businesses fell into financial ruin, Coulthard’s Brewery went out of business. It was converted into a tenement building and renamed the Old Brewery.

The Old Brewery, which was partitioned off into over 100 small rooms housing over 1000 people, was five stories high, but only the top three floors had windows. Most rooms had no sunlight and fresh air, and some of the babies born there did not see the light of day until they were into their teens. The outside of the building was originally painted bright yellow, but by the time it had been converted into a tenement, the outside walls were peeling, and now had a sickly greenish color, looking like an old dragon ready to die.

There was a narrow three-foot-wide alley on the south side of the building, which narrowed even further, until it ended at a large first floor room called the “Den of Thieves.” More than seventy five men, woman, and children lived in the Den of Thieves without furniture, or any conveniences whatsoever. The woman were mostly prostitutes, and they entertained their customers in this large room in full view of everyone who occupied the room with them.

The cellar, which formerly stored brewery machinery, was converted into twenty small rooms, occupied only by black men with their wives, who were mostly white. In one basement room about fifteen feet square, twenty-six people lived under conditions that can best be described as misery and squalor. One day, a little girl was stabbed to death there, when it was discovered she was in the possession of a bright new penny. The girl’s dead body lay in a corner for five days before her mother buried her in a shallow grave in the floor.
On the top three floors, which were occupied by Irish-Catholics, ran a long corridor aptly named “Murderer’s Alley.” Along Murderer’s Alley there were seventy-five rooms, occupied by murderers, thieves, pickpockets, prostitutes, and degenerates of every type known to man. Incest was common and fights were a constant occurrence. During every hour of the day there was some sort of disturbance going on in Murderer’s Alley. Victims, who had been lured into the brewery with the promise of booze, or sex, or both, were killed and stuffed into the walls and under the floor boards. It was estimated that during the last fifteen years of its existence, at least one murder a night was committed in the Old Brewery.

Things were so dangerous, if only a handful of policeman entered the brewery to quell a disturbance, they were instantly attacked and killed, and their clothes stolen, before their bodies were buried in some small crevice in Murderer’s Alley. As a result, when the police did storm the building, they came in full force of 50-75 men, armed with clubs, bats, guns, and knives.

Just as it was dangerous for people to enter the building, it was just as dangerous for the building’s inhabitants to venture outside into the fresh air. The denizens of the Old Brewery were so hated and feared by the general public, any human who walked out the front door of the brewery was immediately pelted with stones and hit with bats. This caused people who wanted to leave the brewery to do so through a maze of tunnels that snaked throughout the Five Points area.

As outlandish as it might seem, some of the inhabitants of the Old Brewery had once been prosperous people of some importance. The Panic of 1837 had something to do with that, but mostly people who knew better sank to the level of the slime-balls who surrounded them. It was rumored that the last of the Blennerhassetts, the second son of Harman Blennerhassett, who conspired with Aaron Burr to form a Western dictatorship, died in the Old Brewery, as did other families of a higher calling. They decided of their own free will that they would spend their last days entrenched in the violence, insanity, drunkenness, and promiscuity that was the daily way of life in the brewery.

The churches of that time voiced great distress at the goings-on in the brewery. However, they were unable to make a dent in the brewery’s myriad of problems because those churches were mostly Presbyterian, while the inhabitants of the brewery were overwhelmingly Irish Catholics, who detested the Protestants due to the prosecution of the Catholics back in Ireland, where most of these wretched people were born.

In 1840, a Congregational Church called the Broadway Tabernacle was built on Broadway near Anthony Street, just a short walk from the brewery. But although many attempts were made to do humanitarian social work at the brewery, nothing of consequence was ever accomplished.

In 1850, the Ladies’ Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church sent the Rev. Lewis Morris Pease into the Five Points, along with his wife, to open a mission on Cross Street near the brewery. Pease was considered one of the great humanitarians of his time. But he soon realized that the ills in the brewery could not be combated unless the conditions that caused the crime, vice, and poverty were eliminated. Pease stared schools for both adults and children, and he also established work rooms in the brewery where clothing manufacturers sent clothing materials, so that Pease and his wife could manufacture decent clothes for the brewery inhabitants. This did not please the Ladies Home Missionary Society, who insisted that preaching the word to God was Pease’s job, not getting involved with worldly activities.

A year into his work at the Old Brewery, Pease was replaced by the Reverend J. Luckey, a noted evangelist. The reason Pease was let go was because a group of ladies from the Ladies Home Missionary Society visited Pease’s mission and discovered, that since Pease and his wife were so busy manufacturing clothes for the poor, Pease had not give a religious sermon in more than two days. However, Luckey fared no better than Pease, and it was decided that in order for the misery and decadence to end, the brewery had to be razed to the ground and replaced by a church.

In 1852, the Ladies Home Missionary Society, with money raised from a group of philanthropists headed by Daniel Drew, bought the Old Brewery. The purchase price was $16,000, and the city of New York contributed $1,000 to the purchase. On December 1, 1852, the Ladies Home Missionary Society asked the police to raid the brewery and evict the wretched people still living there. Scores of armed policemen stormed inside, and numerous vicious battles at close quarters took place.

By the end of the day, the police had arrested twenty known murders, and children, who had never seen sunlight, blinked in terror as they were led from the building by the police.

The next day, the demolition of the Old Brewery commenced. As the building was being torn down, laborers were seen carrying numerous sacks of human bones that had been found inside the walls, underneath the floorboards, and in the cellar. In the next few days, dozens of gang members raided the premises looking for buried treasure they heard had been hidden there. Yet, nothing of value was ever found.

It cost $36,000 to build, and on January 27, 1853, Bishop Jones laid the cornerstone for the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was now on the site of the Old Brewery.

The City of New York rejoiced at the demolition of the Old Brewery and the creation of the church. The Reverend Thomas Fitz Mercein was so moved, he wrote a poem celebrating the occasion. It said:

God knows it’s time thy walls are going!

Through every stone

Life-blood, as through a heart, is flowing:

Murmurs a smothered groan

Long years the cup of poison filling

From leaves of gall;

Long years a darker cup distilling

From withered hearts that fall!

O! this world is stern and dreary,

Everywhere they roam;

God! Hast thou never called the weary

Have they in thee no home?

Foul haunt! A glorious resurrection,

Springs from thy grave!

Faith, hope and purified affection,

Praising the “Strong to save!”

God bless the love that, like a angel,

Flies to each call,

Till every lip hath this evangel,

“Christ pleaded for us all!”

Oh! This world is stern and dreary,

Everywhere they roam;

Praise God! A voice has called the weary,

In thee has found a home!