The local streets now home to high-end strollers and farm-to-table restaurants were once the stomping grounds of one of the country’s most infamous gangsters. Brooklyn is where Alph💝onse “Al” Capone got his start.
The mob boss liked to claim that his parents were “American-born and so w💟as I,” but Gabriele and Theresa Ca💖poni (the surname was later changed) emigrated from Italy in 1895 and first settled near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Al was born in 1899, and it wouldn’t be long before the Brooklyn streeꦚts wo♋uld drag him into a life of crime.
All this and more is laid 🏅out in the new book “” (HarperCollins) by mystery writer Max Allan Collins and historian A. Brad Schwartz.
S🧔chwartz gave The Post a tour of Capone’s old Brooklyn haunts.
21 Garfield Pl., Park Slope
The budding gangster spent his childhood in Park Slope at several addresses along Garfield Place, including this one. ꦚThe Capones moved from their Navy Yard apartment to the new home after dad Gabriele became an American citizen in 1906.
“While young Al watched his father 💧make an honest living, he also went down the block to the corner of Union Street and Fourth Avenue, to the headquarters of a very different role model: gangster Johnny Torrio,” Schwartz said.
Torrio used local boys to run errands — some innocent, some illicit — and it’s likely Capone was in his 🍒service.
Corner of Flushing and Broadway, Williamsburg
Capone became a member of a local youth gang known as the Boys of Navy Street, and this was his turf: a rough corꦡner he shared alongside drug dealers and bookies.
When Capone was 8 years old, he and the gang set out to punish a group of Irish who had been harassing Italian women in the n⛦eighborhood. Capone strapped a washtub to his chesওt and beat it like a drum, as his cronies gathered outside the Irish hangout and taunted their antagonists into a street battle.
PS 133, 610 Baltic St., Boerum Hill
Capone attended school here — and apparently was a g💮ood student — but dropped out at age 14.
“Teachers subjected students to physical abuse ඣand racial slurs,” Schwartz said. “When Capone’s sixth-grade teacher hit him for misbehavi ng, he reportedly returned the blow and left school for good.”
Harvard Inn, formerly near Schweikerts Walk and Bowery St., Coney Island
Capone earned his nicknam♒e “Scarface” while working as a bouncer at this mobster-owned nightclub, which no longer exists. One night in 1917, a local tough named Frank Galluccio arrived with his sister in tow. Capone took a liking to the woman, telling her, “You got a nice ass, honey, and I mean🌺 that as a compliment.”
Galluccio grew enraged and when Capone tried to apologize, Galluccio drew a knife and slashed him three times on the cheek. “ꦜAl would always try to hide both his disfigurement and the embarrassing truth behind it, making up lies about serving iꦚn World War I,” Schwartz said.
923 44th St., Borough Park
In 1928, Brooklyn gangster Frankie Yale ran afoul of Capone after hijacking liquor shipme♊nts. Scarface sent his top killers, the “American Boys,” to take reveꦚnge.
While𝕴 at his Brooklyn club, Yale received a phone call claiming his wife was ill. He raced home in his new Lincoln, with Capone’s men following in what became a high-spee🌄d chase.
The American Boys caught up with Yale on 44th Street and riddled his Lincoln with🐼 gunfiꦓre. It crashed into the home at this address. “This was the first time Capone’s trademark weapon — the Thompson submachine gun — claimed a life in New York,” Schwartz said.