$1 Million Will Get You Al Capone's Home

Friends of ours: Al Capone

For a former home of possibly the country’s most notorious mobster, the three-story building with beige siding at 21 Garfield Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is totally unremarkable. Of course, the young Al Capone and his family moved there in the early 1900’s, long before he made his name as a murderous bootlegger in Roaring Twenties Chicago.

The house, one of at least two on Garfield Place where the Capone family lived after their move from Vinegar Hill, just east of the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, is for sale. The broker handling it, Peggy Aguayo of Aguayo & Huebener, said recently that a buyer was about to go into contract, for a little more than $1 million.

Ms. Aguayo, who lives in Park Slope, said she was unaware that the Capones had lived in the building, though she knew they had lived at 38 Garfield Place. At any rate, she said, she doubted that the building’s infamous former resident affected its value one way or the other for the buyers, who plan to maintain it in its current state, as a three-family house.

Capone stories still abound among old-timers in the neighborhoods where he spent his formative years. For example, Carroll Gardens residents will be happy to tell you that he was married at St. Mary Star of the Sea church on Court Street. But Laurence Bergreen, author of the 1994 biography “Capone: The Man and the Era,” said there was little at the time to distinguish the future Public Enemy No. 1 from his young compatriots in Brooklyn’s street gangs, which had names like the South Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors.

“Other people were doing those same things and went on to become mechanics or dentists, or nothing,” Mr. Bergreen said. “He did not come from a criminal background. His father was a barber, his mother was a seamstress, and those weren’t mob trades.”

Still, Mr. Bergreen said, the Al Capone of Garfield Place was no angel. He was often truant from Public School 133 on Butler Street, and he was finally kicked out of school for hitting a teacher (as the story goes, she hit him first). He also picked up a case of syphilis that incapacitated him later in life, probably while hanging out by the Brooklyn docks.

Today, even Capone might be impressed with the potential for legal moneymaking in Park Slope real estate. But Mr. Bergreen, who spent time on Garfield Place years ago researching his book, said some residents there had other treasure in mind. “People were wondering if there was cash stashed in the walls,” he said. “I heard that more than once.”

Alas, whoever buys 21 Garfield will most likely have to be satisfied with rental income, Mr. Bergreen said, adding, “Capone was poor then.”

Thanks to Jake Mooney