When we think about organized crime in New York City, most of us immediately conjure up images of the notorious Five Families of the Italian Mafia. It’s been that way for nearly one hundred years.
And, although, very deservingly, the Italians have ranked as the #1 organized criminal entity for many years already, from at least the 1920s era through the 1960s and 1970s era, Irish gangsters – Irish organized crime – were a major component in the Big Apple and other cities throughout the United States as well.
But once upon a time here in New York, as in many other cities, Irish gangsters and racketeers generally ruled the roost as the most powerful and influential organized crime faction.
New York City’s Irish Mob, more commonly known and referred to on the streets of New York as “The Arsenal Gang,” was a major force to be reckoned with among the various other criminal factions in the Big Apple.
And although, in later years, they would sometimes interact with the Italians as both competitors and, later, sometimes as allies in mutually beneficial joint ventures, the Arsenal Mob was a completely separate and distinct underworld organization. They generally worked alone, ran their own criminal network, and were considered completely autonomous.
The exclusive Button Guys chart below represents the core membership and most of the allied hoodlums and racketeers directly tied to the Irish Arsenal Gang. This unique chart also lists many of the corrupt labor union leaders, big businessmen, elected government officials as well as New York and New Jersey policemen and other law enforcement officials who were “on the take” and who worked “hand-in-glove” with this criminal network through many decades to facilitate their goals while the Irish mob was in power.
We name over 175 top racketeers, hoodlums, and other key functionaries who comprised their vast criminal network. No doubt, there were many others who remain unknown to law enforcement. But the men listed below represent the better part of the “Irish Mob” for the New York and New Jersey areas.
A Rich and Tempting Plum
To set the stage properly, it must be stated that back in 1953, the Port of New York was considered a prized plum, rich beyond any hoodlum’s wildest dreams. Its waterfront comprised over 700 miles of piers and handled cargo worth an estimated $7,000,000,000 annually.
In a formal statement put into an investigative grand jury’s court record that same year in 1953, the New York Anti-Crime Committee further stated that the city’s organized criminal underworld imposed an estimated 5% tax levy — receiving a “cut” on every dollar’s worth of cargo that went through the piers — for a minimum take of $350,000,000 each year. No wonder that thousands of Irish and Italian hoodlums across the five boroughs all flocked to the docks over the years. How could they resist a temptation like that?
From the 1920s forward, the New York-New Jersey waterfronts quickly became the “goose that laid the golden egg” and would keep on doing so for many decades to come….literally!
On the Waterfront
The Irish Mob operated from their traditional headquarters and power base running along the North River Piers, up and down Manhattan’s West Side. They also operated their rackets from other Irish strongholds like the Queens Village, Sunnyside, Woodside, and Jackson Heights sections of Queens County, and over the bridge in the Jersey City section of northern New Jersey.
This potent criminal gang maintained its power by exercising a nearly half-century stranglehold over the International Longshoremen’s Union that represented stevedores, dockworkers, and other allied employees along the waterfront docks on both sides of the Hudson River.
Local #824 of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), widely referred to on the docks and throughout the underworld simply as “The Pistol Local,” was always considered the Irish Mob’s main headquarters.
A second key dock workers union they controlled was ILA Local #1730, the Inland Terminal Workers, headquartered nearby on West 14th St. At one time, Eddie McGrath and Connie Noonan themselves both served as the top officers of these notorious locals. These two locals held an ironclad grip over all dock operations from Pier 14 through Pier 41.
Eddie McGrath also, at one time, held the coveted position of International Organizer for the ILA. He was appointed to that powerful post by elected lifetime ILA President, Joe Ryan.
Many years later, after they were put into the glaring media spotlight and criminal investigations began probing conditions on the waterfront, McGrath and Noonan wisely resigned from their posts in a failed attempt to fade back into the shadows.
The domain of racketeer Mickey Bowers and his gang, who were closely allied with McGrath and Dunn, ran from approximately West 42nd Street up to West 57th Street, along the North River. These equally notorious gangsters held sway between them over such major cruise lines as Cunard, Grace Lines, American Export Lines, United States Lines, French Cruise Line, and other international lines and freight companies.
Here is just a small sampling of all the other key longshore-related unions and businesses, from union locals right up to their respective internationals, that were under the control of Eddie McGrath and his gang:
- Local #791 ILA, which held sway along the Chelsea piers in Lower Manhattan
- Local #1247 ILA of New Jersey
- Local #1346 ILA at Christopher St. (Manhattan)
- Local #1823 ILA Warehousemen Union (Jersey City, NJ)
- Local #1478 ILA Warehouse Union (Jersey City, NJ)
- The Allied Stevedoring Corporation
- The International Longshoremens Association District Council of New York
Labor Union Rackets Was Their Thing
But aside from their pervasive infiltration of the Longshoremen’s Union, per se, the Irish Mob also held dominant control over several other key labor unions representing a variety of industries. Through strong-arm methods that included murder, over the years, Dunn and McGrath and their men successfully intimidated, killed off, or ran all the legitimate union officials out of office and then placed their own men into these elected union offices.
Here is a smattering of some of the other labor unions they controlled through the years:
- Local #807, of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen and Helpers of America (AFL-CIO)
- Local #138, of the Operating Engineers Union (AFL-CIO), run by racketeer Big Bill DeKoning and his son, Bill Jr.
- Local #21510, of the Motor & Bus Terminal Checkers (AFL-CIO)
- Local #1804 Dock Maintenance Workers Union of NY (AFL-CIO)
- Local #798 Stagehands Union
- Local #29 Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Union (IATSE)
- Local #5 Boilermakers Union (AFL-CIO)
In addition to their extensive extortion and labor-racketeering activities, Eddie McGrath, and his brother-in-law, “Cockeyed” Dunn, also controlled a huge bi-state gambling network of horse and sports bookmaking, several major dice games that “floated” between the five boroughs and north Jersey, organized cargo theft, truck hijacking rings, armed-bank robbery and loft-burglary crews, and a huge city-wide police bribery network that underwrote it all.
In fact, through the years, all of these criminal rackets were made possible and underwritten by the pervasive influence and control the Irish Mob exerted over the then largely Irish-oriented membership of the New York City Police Department, and their counterparts over the bridge in New Jersey.
Through a widespread bribery racket known as “the pad,” they bribed and corrupted a good portion of uniformed policemen and plainclothes detectives. But this decades-long scheme also reached up into the highest levels of the department to include desk sergeants, precinct captains, division commanders, and even the top brass.
It was an open scandal, second to none.
Yet, it allowed the Irish Mob to pretty much operate unimpeded in New York City with almost total impunity for well over half a century.
The Mysterious “Mr. Big”
Listed in the chart below is a man named Mr. William J. McCormack. He was born into poverty, but during his extraordinary life and career, he rose from squalor to become one of the country’s wealthiest businessmen, a business titan, and a philanthropist.
He also reportedly became a “behind-the-scenes” powerhouse within New York’s Tammany Hall machine and an acknowledged political kingmaker in his own right…at least outwardly, that is.
McCormack, the son of poor Irish immigrant parents, was born in 1887. For many decades, McCormack was considered an almost mythical, “beyond reproach” figure, who seemed to enjoy total immunity from local, state, and federal laws and the enforcement of those laws.
He repeatedly skirted the business laws and penal laws at will. And through the years, this enabled him to become the potentate that he did, in fact, become. The laws of the land that govern the rest of us never seemingly applied when it came to Big Bill and his myriad business activities.
