St. Valentine's Day 1929 began like most other winter mornings in Chicago, with gray skies and stinging cold. A light snow, like confectioner's sugar, powdered the city's sidewalks. Bakers and florists woke early to prepare for the crush of holiday customers. All over the city, children put the finishing touches on cards before leaving for school.
Of course, not everyone was engaged in thoughts of loving kindness. Over at the Cook County Jail, guards prepared for the planned midnight execution of three convicted killers. On LaSalle Street, bankers and stockbrokers nervously watched their stock tickers as trading began in New York. And inside a humdrum garage at 2122 North Clark Street, in a quiet residential neighborhood, an unusually large number of hoodlums gathered for purposes unknown.
Except for a single white light bulb dangling from the ceiling, the big garage on Clark Street was dark, the parked trucks and cars almost lost in the vast shadowed spaces. A bit of weak winter sun filtered through the grimy front window. The garage was rented by the George “Bugs” Moran gang, which controlled much of the North Side's illegal booze traffic and ran most of its brothels and casinos. The garage was used for storage and repairs, not as a hideout or hangout. So there was only one explanation why seven men would be there at an hour when most thugs were still sleeping off the prior night's intoxicants—and it wasn't to exchange valentines. They had a job.
With the exception of the mechanic, the men all were well dressed that morning in suits, ties, tie pins, and street shoes. One of them wore a carnation.
Soon they would all be dead, victims of the most infamous unsolved crime in U.S. history, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
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