The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosimo and the Ladies of the Levee

Art Bilek
Cumberland House (2008)
ISBN 9781581826395
Reviewed by Kathleen Dowdell for Reader Views (11/08)

 

This is a wonderfully-written book filled with detailed information about Chicago’s Big Jim Colosimo and the Ladies of the Levee. No one better than Bilek, a former chief of the Cook County Sheriff's Police and currently an adjunct professor at Loyola University, to condense years of research into a factual accounting of vice and corruption in Chicago during the years between 1893 and 1920. Included are pictures of the area along with maps of the 1st Ward and South Side Levee.

Vincenzo Colosimo (later known as Big Jim or James), was born in 1878 in the small town of Colosimi, Italy. In 1891 Vincenzo's father Luigi sent him to America hoping Vincenzo would become wealthy and send money back to Italy to help support the Colosimo family. He chose Chicago because of its huge railroad hub to the west and its great potential to find employment. Little did Luigi know that the rest of his son’s wealth would come from corruption and vice after his first and only legitimate occupation as a newspaper hawker.

Two memorable political figures in Chicago who helped Jim move up in the ranks as a vice-lord were Aldermans “Bathhouse” John Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna. Although they had totally opposite personalities, they worked well together in getting the job done which was apparent in the fact that they wielded authority and power in the First Ward that lasted for years.

For readers who aren’t familiar with the prostitution that took place in Chicago during those years, Bilek goes into great detail explaining brothels, white slavery, and levees. He devotes three chapters to the infamous madams of the Levee, Ada and Minna Everleigh. The Everleigh Club, called “the most famous and luxurious house of prostitution in the country” flourished for 11 years before being shutdown by Mayor Harrison in 1911. This marked the beginning of the end of the Levee in the 22nd Street red light district.

Between 1912 and 1914 the Levee deteriorated into a slum. Colosimo’s Café where Big Jim did much of his wheeling and dealing was razed in 1958. Prior to that the building had changed hands over the years but many still remembered it as the place where Jim was gunned down in the entrance to his cafe (2126 S. Wabash Avenue) on May 11, 1920.

Many questions still remain unanswered today. Who shot Big Jim? Where were the hundred thousands of dollars in cash that Jim had stashed away? What did Ada and Minna do with the estimated one million dollars in cash and two hundred thousand in jewelry when they moved to Manhattan to live out the remainder of their lives? Perhaps Bilek will write a sequel to “The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosimo and the Ladies of the Levee,” if he can unearth this information.

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